Last week, I chanced upon a public-interest petition to the Auditor General requesting for a forensic audit of Fufa accounts.
This detailed petition comes in the wake of the damning fraud scandal that saw Moses Magogo admit to using the office of the Fufa president to enrich himself by stealing World Cup-bound tickets meant for Ugandans.
That same afternoon, a friend sent me photos of three individuals purporting to be SC Villa fans displaying placards praising Magogo as a ‘historical Fufa president’ during a game between SC Villa and Tooro United in Bombo.
My first impression is that Magogo is indeed historical because he is the first sitting Fufa president to be convicted of fraud against Ugandan football fans. What an irony!
On closer scrutiny, I remembered these were the ringleaders of hooligans during my tenure as Villa president. In fact, in one incident, they vandalised St Mary’s stadium in Kitende during Villa’s game against Vipers in 2017. In the aftermath, Magogo swiftly acted by docking Villa two points without punishing the individual culprits that caused the damage and that proved costly in the final season’s final bend.
Back then, it didn’t occur to me that these individuals were being used by powers at Fufa to soil the name of Villa but over time, I’ve come to realise how Magogo’s underhand methods worked to destroy SC Villa.
Magogo is a shrewd character who has mastered the art of intrigue and manipulation. He is trying to use these fellows to show he still holds support amongst football stakeholders in spite of the overwhelming evidence to show otherwise, ask yourself why is he using Sc Villa and not KCCA which has benefited more from his time in office he even gave them 1000$ each cecafa Kagame cup player, or even supporters of Express FC
He knows he cannot account for the billions Fufa receives from government, Fifa and sponsors as well as gate collections. He knows the noose is tightening around his neck now that government has interested itself in the fraud.
His last throw of the dice is to create apprehension in the minds government that Fufa is untouchable. Last month, Magogo’s machinery authored a fake letter from FIFA secretary general Fatma Samoura threatening sanctions if government investigates him.
Now that he is running out of options to cling on to the seat, he has deployed his most trusted cadres – the hooligans – to bail him out by showing he has support amongst fans.
All these are futile attempts to hoodwink the public from the gross fraud he has done at Fufa.
For goodness sake, the Fufa presidency is a voluntary job where one is not expected to benefit financially. That Magogo wants to cling on in the face of an undisputed plea of fraud is further testament that he has he is using the position for enrichment.
World over, we’ve seen the likes of Michel Platini, Kalusha Bwalya and many others who have contributed to the development of the sport on and off the pitch quit in the face of shame but to see a schemer who has never injected a penny into the game trying to cling on is despicable.
What’s even baffling is that the current Villa management seems to be playing along his game to create a fake idea that he is popular.
Villa should come out to condemn the acts of the three individuals using its name to airbrush Magogo’s fraud.
I’m even informed Fufa has set aside more than Shs 50m to print pro-Magogo T-shirts to give them away to unsuspecting fans for Uganda’s game against Malawi on November 17. All this is done at a time when clubs are financially struggling to stay aloft in the Uganda Premier League (UPL). Such funds would be useful to refurbish stadiums destroyed by the heavy rains of recent.
It is on that background that I urge the Auditor General’s office to take keen interest in Fufa accounts because we cannot entrust a self-confessed thief with managing the billions of shillings government pumps into football.
Moses Magogo has mastered the art of blackmail by tagging with close government elements who have been benefiting from his illicit manicures to make his critics appear like government protagonists,
The author is Nyamityobora FC president.
