Dear Speaker of Parliament, don't blame Ghanaians for Nyantakyi's downfall

If you really think that we as Ghanaians brought down Kwesi Nyantakyi, then I'm very disappointed and it seems like those in charge of this country have not really been following football as they should.

Respectfully, if you think that Ghana football is all about the Black Stars because we enjoyed a lot of success under Nyantakyi then it's very unfortunate.

Kwesi Nyantakyi really did well by leading us to three World Cups of which we didn't disgrace ourselves except for 2014 in Brazil, but in terms of the Africa Cup of Nations, he didn't do anything extraordinary. In fact, he failed woefully because finals are not the standard of the Black Stars. We cannot praise Kwesi Nyantakyi just because he led our national team to the finals of the AFCON when others won the trophy.

The Ghana Premier League which is the soul of Ghana football started deteriorating at a fast rate under Nyantakyi and was worse at the time his revelations came up that led to his ban by FIFA. Kwesi Nyantakyi inherited the GFA office at the time that our domestic football was at its peak and I mean club football.

Asante Kotoko and Accra Hearts of Oak were competing very well in Africa and Ghana had four slots in the CAF inter clubs competitions but now, we only have two slots thanks to the bad leadership of Kwesi Nyantakyi and his one hundred percent attention on the Black Stars to the neglect of all the other national teams including the league.

We say Nyantakyi collapsed our domestic football which is what represents Ghana football and not the picture the Speaker is trying to paint because just as we credited him with the success of the Black Stars within that period, we will equally blame him for the decline of domestic football.

I won't talk about women's football, juvenile teams, and colt football because it was worse under his stewardship. Throughout Nyantakyi's stay, we never qualified for the Olympic Games which was one of our birthrights before he assumed office.

Now to Anas Expose

Nobody brought Nyantakyi down because he caused his own downfall and he had it coming. You can say that he was entrapped but you can't make an excuse for what he did in the video and the kind of things he said in the video that was premiered at the Accra International Conference Centre on June 6, 2018, and later shown on TV3.

Anytime a sponsor came on board for the Ghana Premier League under the Nyantakyi era, the association will miraculously announce that the deal was brokered by an agency that needs to be paid. The so-called agency always takes 10% of the total sponsorship money which makes them earn more than either Asante Kotoko or Accra Hearts of Oak who are always the main marketers of the Ghana Premier League.

Is there any agent in the world who will earn more money than Zamalek or Al Ahly over a sponsorship package meant for the Egyptian Premier League? That has never happened anywhere in the world but it surely happened in Ghana under Kwesi Nyantakyi.

In 2008, Glo Mobile Ghana came on board as title sponsor for the Ghana Premier League in a deal worth $3M for five years. The deal meant that the 16 clubs who were competing in the league were going to earn $187,500 each from the money.

But Kwesi Nyantakyi claimed that the deal was brokered by a company called Midsea and they deserved 10% of the total package which was $300,000 more than what individual clubs were supposed to earn from that money.

This involvement of an agent in the Glo Ghana Premier League deal was challenged by Mr. Abraham Boakye, popularly known as One Man Supporter, who was the Globacom Ambassador for Ghana. He stated that Glo does not deal with third parties so the claims that there was a certain agency in the deal was a blatant lie.

Kwesi Nyantakyi shot himself in the foot in the Anas Number 12 documentary when he proved that all the reports that he had been creating false agencies to dupe Ghanaian clubs and also to get kickbacks from deals were true when he created a fake agency to dupe Ghanaian clubs of supposed sponsorship deal from the investigators who claimed to be investors from Dubai in that documentary.

I don't want to talk about the words he uttered in that video but I know that you watched it and will urge you respectfully to go and watch it again.

I don't drink nor smoke and no amount of inducement or entrapment can make me do it. But if I'm corrupt and you test me, I will jump out of my seat and embrace it with open hands like the way Nyantakyi planned to cheat clubs of sponsorship deals.

Nyantakyi was accused of creating fake agencies just to get kickbacks from deals such as the one from Glo, Zylofon Cash, StarTimes, etc. and he proved his doubters right.

Finally, in 2018 when Nyantakyi reached his peak as a football administrator by winning a seat at the FIFA Council, Ghana football was nothing to write home about, and the Black Stars he was using to cover his tracks too had abandoned him with bad performances.

Ghanaian clubs were struggling to even qualify from the preliminary stages of CAF-Inter Clubs competitions and the Black Stars failed to qualify for the World Cup. Juvenile national teams were the worst so the least said about them the better.

Kwesi Nyantakyi, according to GHALCA President Kudjoe Fianoo, told them at an Executive Committee meeting that he will invite his friend Anas Aremeyaw Anas to investigate the reported cases of corruption in Ghana football.

“At one of our ExCo meetings, we all accepted the fact that our football was being played at the mercy of match officials. So a decision was taken that we should do something about it. The president himself offered that being a good friend of Anas he was going to engage him, that was in September 2015," he told Bernard Avle in an interview on the Point of View show.

So Mr Speaker, do not blame Ghanaians for Kwesi Nyantakyi's woes because he caused his downfall and he was a big fan of the very person who investigated him. Our football was already dead when Nyantakyi was still the GFA President in 2018.

Nyantakyi was punished by FIFA and not Ghanaians because it's been four years and the government is yet to take an action against him for the allegations he made against the President, Vice President and other Ministers of State. Nyantakyi should even be grateful to Ghanaians for not putting pressure on the government to punish him.

I really admired Kwesi Nyantakyi while growing up and what happened to him was unfortunate. But, he cannot blame anybody but himself because he caused his own downfall and nobody else.

FIFA might be one of the most corrupt organizations in the world as many politicians claim but one thing that you can never take away from them is that you will never escape punishment when you are caught. Former FIFA President, Sepp Blatter, and former UEFA President, Michel Platini, got their own share when they were caught.

Joel Eshun sends his regards, Mr. Speaker.