Seidou Mbombo Njoya vows recovery after stripping of AFCON 2019 hosting rights.

Seidou Mbombo Njoya, the new president of the Cameroonian Football Federation (FECAFOOT), says he will rebuild the organisation’s credibility.

Cameroon’s football authority has been in turmoil ever since former president Iya Mohammed was jailed in 2013. He was handed a 15-year jail term after being found guilty of mismanagement at the state-owned cotton company, Sodecoton, by Cameroon’s Special Criminal Court.

The latest body blow for the country’s football arrived in late November when the Confederation of African Football (CAF) confirmed that it had stripped Cameroon’s hosting rights for the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON).

However, there is light at the end of the tunnel for Cameroon, with Njoya’s election ending a 15-month period under a normalisation period set up by FIFA and CAF.

“After five years of crisis, enough is enough,” said the newly-installed president. “We have turned our backs on ethics for too long and the time has come to re-evaluate them.

“We have to do our best to rebuild and professionalise football and change governance.

“We have a lot of challenges ahead but we want to breathe life into women’s and youth football as well as restructuring the national technical department,” said Njoya, a former development officer at FIFA and a member of CAF’s disciplinary committee under ex-president Issa Hayatou.