Why Otumfuo holds the key to Kwasi Appiah’s permanent resignation from GFA Executive Council
On Monday, October 7, 2024, Kwasi Appiah was compelled by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) to temporarily resign from his position as a member of the Executive Council of the Ghana Football Association.
CAF, in a statement, basically gave Kwasi Appiah an ultimatum to decide between his role as head coach of the Sudanese national team and a member of the GFA Exco.
“Resolve the conflict of interest, including, at minimum, temporarily stepping down from one of the two roles until the conclusion of the competition,” part of the statement reads.
Consequently, Kwasi Appiah announced that he has temporarily resigned from the GFA post to focus on his job in Sudan.
“Coach Kwasi Appiah has temporarily stepped aside as Executive Council Member of the GFA until the end of November 2024. In response to CAF copied GFA, he cited conflict of interest as the reason. Since the start of AFCON qualifiers, Appiah has excused himself from all EXCO activities,” Asante Forkuo, an aide of Kwasi Appiah, shared on X on October 7, 2024.
As the discussion wages, Kessben FM has provided a background story to the election of Kwasi Appiah as Executive Council member and why he cannot, on his own accord, resign from the position.
According to Kessben FM, ahead of the last GFA elections in October 2023, some leading members of the GFA, including Kurt Okraku, the president of the FA, approached the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu, on the need to have a representative Kumasi Asante Kotoko on the Executive Council.
Otumfuo, as per the report, proposed Emmanuel Dasoberi, who was a member of Asante Kotoko’s Interim Management Committee (IMC), as a possible candidate for the elections. The GFA leadership reportedly opposed the nomination of Dasoberi on the grounds that he was not someone they could trust.
Otumfuo then suggested Kwasi Appiah and this time around, there was agreement amongst all parties that the ex-Ghana coach would be a suitable candidate on the council.
Kwasi Appiah, following Otumfuo’s intervention, was then allowed to contest and secure one of the Premier League seats on the Exco.
However, following the 2025 AFCON draw in July 2024, which paired Ghana in the same group as Sudan, Niger, and Angola, the dynamics changed.
Pressure began to mount on Kwasi Appiah to resign from the post with the discussion being topical in most meetings of the GFA Exco.
The report further states that there were moves by the FA, particularly at the Exco meetings, to get Kwasi Appiah to resign, but the ex-Black Stars coach referred them to Otumfuo as the one who could get him to resign permanently from the post.
Source: www.ghanaweb.com
