Kumasi Asante Kotoko are currently on the drawing board plotting for a successful  2012/13 season and more importantly next year’s CAF Champions League, after a week of massive celebration in the Garden City which was climaxed by the presentation of the Glo Premiership trophy to Otumfuo Osei Tutu II at the Manhyia Palace.

It was indeed a very colourful occasion, rich in tradition and it was very symbolic that Otumfuo was in a Porcupine cloth to mark a very momentous occasion. One observation the press pass has made is that the Glo Premiership trophy is too small.                 The size of the trophy does not match what it symbolizes, which is the biggest prize in Ghanaian football.  Perhaps the headline sponsor of the premiership should consider changing the trophy in the very near future.   

It was also evidently clear that the float was not properly organized, perhaps it was done in a hurry which is understandable but the issue is, with a club as huge as Asante Kotoko, everything about the club is expected to measure up to a very high standard if not the highest standard. It is for this reason that Kotoko is referred to as the Soccer University.

The team could have sat in the bus and driven straight to Manhyia without any issue but if we want to go on a float, it should be a proper float so as we don’t give room for our “enemies” to open their mouths wide.  As the saying goes; “drink deep or taste not”.

Now to the main menu for today which was the embarrassing blackout at the Baba Yara Sports Stadium in Kumasi last week during the Black Stars- Lesotho world cup qualifier. I have never felt and experienced such embarrassment in a major international sporting event like what happened last week. In fact the unfortunate incident broke all the records. Not even the disqualification of Ghana’s men 4 X 100 metres relay team at the Atlanta 1996 Olympic Games even before the athletes took their positions on the running tracks could surpass the gargantuan embarrassment at Baba Yara. This is simply unacceptable.  I am very upset and heads must roll. I mean the right heads must roll.

With the skies of Baba Yara in total darkness for well over an hour and half  and the match being beamed live not only on national television but also on satellite T.V as well as streaming live on the world wide web, this cannot be allowed to pass without people being held responsible for their actions or inactions. This is unprecedented disgrace of the highest degree.  People should not get me wrong, it is not the fact that the lights went off that irks me so much but it is the amount of time that elapsed before power was restored. Power does go off at stadia all over the world but it is restored very quickly.

Ghanaians wait to hear the technical explanation for this national defamation because it beats one’s imagination that if a generator develops a fault, power from the national grid cannot be channeled to floodlights in a matter of minutes in middle income Ghana after all the technological advancement that has evolved in the last decade.  We want action to be taken because in Ghana it has often been the case that after a major incident that like this, there will be a committee of inquiry whose recommendations are subjected to selective implementation thereby not completely curing the anomaly.

Incidentally, we are currently faced with one of such issues; the report of the Maputo All Africa Games embarrassment which is taking forever to see action. Perhaps if the implementation of the report has begun in earnest, some people would not have been in office and perhaps more competent people in charge, which could have somehow averted last Friday’s debacle.  The big question is why all these negative incidents in the sports sector? From the Maputo Games disaster to the Aftermath of the Black Stars failed campaign in Gabon-Equatorial Guinea to last Fridays Blackout, it’s all embarrassment here, embarrassment there and embarrassment everywhere in Ghana sport. Why?

The problem is that in this country we don’t take the right decisions at the right time but rather politicise everything and so in times like these where we need to bite deep and let the chips fall where they may, we rather start looking for opportunity to nail people we consider “perceived enemies” and also absorb cronies irrespective of whether he or she is guilty or vice-versa.

Now after surviving a near “suicide” in last Friday’s encounter with Lesotho who they defeated 7-0, the Black Stars have descended down south of the continent to seek revenge from Africa Champions Zambia who booted out the Stars in the semi-final of AFCON 2012. It is a very tricky encounter considering the fact that the Chipolopolo lost their opening group game in the qualifiers 2-0 away to Sudan and will move mountains to get the results that will put their campaign back on track and perhaps avoid any form of national embarrassment.

But the Black Stars are on track to avenge the AFCON defeat if one considers the ruthless manner Kwasi Appiah’s boys demolished Lesotho and also the fact that they have been in South Africa preparing feverishly for this all important match. There is always reward for hard work and therefore let’s pray for the Black Stars to once again shine like never before in the skies of Lusaka.

Cheers!