THE world football governing body, Fifa, will appoint a normalisation committee to run the Namibia Football Association’s affairs as soon as possible.

In an email to the NFA on Wednesday, Fifa secretary general Fatma Samoura said that the mandate of the normalisation committee will include the running of the NFA’s daily affairs; to ensure that members of the NFA whose executive committees are out of mandate, organise and conduct relevant elections; and once elections have been held at member level, to organise and conduct elections of a new NFA executive committee. 

The normalisation committee will be drawn up by Fifa in consultation with the Confederation of African Football (CAF) and relevant Namibian stakeholders as soon as possible. 

According to Samoura’s email, all members of the normalisation committee must pass an eligibility check to be carried out by the Fifa review committee, while Fifa reserves the right to revoke the mandate of the members of the normalisation committee, and to appoint further members at any time. 

The normalisation committee will act as an electoral committee and none of its members will be eligible for any of the positions in the elections.

The normalisation committee will perform its functions until it has fulfilled all of its tasks, but no later than 31 May 2019. 

The appointment follows a recent visit by a Fifa delegation to Namibia during which it observed that ‘there are two factions within the NFA that are irreconcilable and that this situation is adversely affecting football as a whole.’

“The bureau took note that this situation of paralysis has even resulted in the cancellation of football matches because the NFA could not pay for expenses,” it added.

It said that Fifa had mandated a forensic audit of the NFA since there seemed to be ‘several occurrences of financial mismanagement and conflicts of interest at the NFA.’

It added that since the mandates of the NFA executive committee had expired on 5 December 2018, Fifa had been informed that some NFA members whose leaderships were out of mandate had apparently decided to postpone their own elections.