Ahmad’s campaign train hits Nigeria today

Confederation of African Football (CAF) presidential candidate, Ahmad Ahmad is expected in Nigeria today, sources close to the Malagasy FA president told The Guardian yesterday.

The two-time minister and current Vice President of the Madagascar Senate will arrive in Lagos from Burkina Faso today and move straight to Abuja, where he will meet with Sports Minister, Solomon Dalung and other Nigerian football stakeholders before taking his campaign to another West African country.

Ahmad, 57, who is the first serious challenger to 71-year-old Issa Hayatou’s 29-year leadership of CAF, has been crisscrossing the continent soliciting support for his bid for a new body, where ‘football will take centre stage again.’

He told a gathering of African football leaders recently that “our football has been too strongly relying too much on its ‘official’ course since 1957 when CAF was created. It is now high time for it to free itself and to update with the current situation.”

While in Nigeria, Ahmad is expected to explain how he would lead CAF to achieve financial transparency, promoting youth and women football, new legal protection and joining and focusing on new governance of FIFA.

In a recent interview on his programme if elected CAF president, Ahmad said: “I will be a president who will share the burden of the CAF finances with the presidents of the member associations. This body, called the Special College of Presidents, will meet twice a year and will dictate the various expenses rules and general operations of CAF.”

He has promised to improve the entire broadcast rights allocation system by creating a special department within CAF to supervise and monitor strategy and income.