By Satish Sekar © Satish Sekar (June 22^nd 2021)

Incredible

Cameroon has established itself as a giant of African football. The Indomitable Lions – their national team thrilled the world on football’s greatest stage, the (Federation of International Football Associations) FIFA World Cup twice, 1982 and 1990. They won Africa’s most important competition, the historic African Cup of Nations (AFCON) five times, 1984, 1988, 2000, 2002 and 2017, as well as being beaten in the final twice, 1986 and 2008. They are also the second African team to win the Olympic Games Football Tournament in Sydney’s Olympics in 2000, four years after Nigeria won gold in Atlanta.

On any view they are one of Africa’s most successful national men’s teams. Strangely their success at club level in the continent – exceptional in the early days of competition in the continent – starting with Oryx Doula’s triumph in the inaugural African Cup of champions Clubs in 1965 ended as the Indomitable Lions established themselves. Union Doula won that competition in 1979 and the Cup Winners’ Cup 1981. However, the most successful Cameroonian team is Canon Yaoundé which won the African Cup of Champions Clubs thrice (1971, 1978 and 1980) and the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1979. They lost in the final of the Cup Winners Cup thrice, 1977, 1984 and 2000.Tonnerre Yaoundé won the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1975 but lost in the final the following year. They also finished runners up in CAF Cup in 2002, a feat matched by Cotonsport de Garoula the following season. The golden years of Cameroon’s club football predated the emergence of the Indomitable Lions, but it occurred in strange conditions.

Short Terms

The glory years coincided largely with a series of short terms as Presidents of FECAFOOT. After several short terms presidencies, which largely coincided with the glory years of Cameroonian football especially at club level, but also at international level, Vincent Onana was appointed in 1996, only for scandal to unseat him quickly and add him to that list, but with a proviso of disgrace too.

The 13^th and 14^th Presidents Vincent Onana and Mohamed Iya disgraced the office, ending up jailed for corruption. Onana was jailed after abusing his ticketing privileges at the FIFA World Cup of 1998. He was removed from office and replaced with a unit. Iya was appointed in 1998. He won elections and seemed to provide much needed stability. He was the longest serving FECAFOOT President by some distance, but eventually he was removed after being disgraced by the Sodecoton Scandal in 2013 and the shameful attempt to govern from his jail cell. This meant the last two FECAFOOT Presidents had been removed from office and were subsequently jailed for their actions.

The Malaise

The organisation of Cameroonian football was a mess – it wasn’t difficult to see why. A Normalisation Committee was established by FIFA under Professor Joseph Owona (2013-15). It organised elections which were won by former FECAFOOT General Secretary Tombi à Roko Sidiki, but that ended badly too. Sidiki was removed from office in 2017 by FECAFOOT’s Ethics Commission. It found that he had misappropriated funds set aside for developing stadia for local football. He was banned for life – a verdict and punishment that was upheld by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. A hat-trick of FECAFOOT Presidents had been removed from office and a brace jailed. What a mess!