The owner of Sierra Leone’s East End Tigers FC Victor Lewis is fighting for his life after being knifed in the head and neck when a fight broke out inside the football headquarters during the Sierra Leone Football Association (SLFA) elective nominations.
Many football stakeholders blame Sierra Leone former Inter Milan striker Mohammed Kallon, Lawyer Emmanuel Abdulai Saffa and the brother of th Mercury betting company manager, Rodney Michael for the stabbing attack, but the Football Association is yet to make a statement on the issue.
The Football Association was plunged in a near fatal incident on the 8th January 2021 during a clash between a delegate Victor Lewis, CEO of premier club East End Tigers and a supporter of Mohammed Kallon and betting businessman Rodney Michael.
The Sierra Leone Police have detained Augustine Kambo, an Executive member of Central Parade FC as the alleged suspect who stabbed Victor Lewis. Reports are that Kambo was unhappy about the nomination presented by Lewis, and so started using invectives on Lewis. Kambo entered the nomination room to destroy the nomination forms Lewis submitted. Few minutes later when Victor was about to leave for home, he was stabbed by Kambo outside the SLFA Office.
“I heard the voice of Honorable Samba, telling Kambo to show me the ‘tricks of Eastern men”, Victor Lewis narrated his ordeal from the hospital bed.
“I also heard Hawa Dauda saying ‘look at Victor, he wants to runaway’. The next moment, Kambo stabbed me on the neck and I fell down”, Victor stated.
Augustine Kambo is the Treasurer for Premier Club Central Parade FC , a club associated with matchfixing associations as its Chairman Abubakaar aka Sweetkay Kamara was found guilty by the Fifa Ethics Investigative Board of Match-fixing in the 2010 South Africa v Sierra Leone Fifa World Cup Qualifiers.
Sweet Kay was fined fifty thousand dollars and a ten year ban from all football activities. Sources close to the Footaball Association say Sweetkay was one of Rodney Michael’s closest allies, and running mate to Michael in his 2012 SLFA Presidential race.
Over the past seven years, Sierra Leone’s football family has been rocked by one intrigue after the other ranging from political interference to internal rifts within its membership. But the recent stabbing incident has left the nation in shock. In some of the strongest criticism of the incident, many people told this reporter that Mohammed Kallon, Emmanuel Abdulai Saffa and Rodney were to blame for Friday’s extraordinary violence. “Insofar as he encouraged people to attack and insofar as Rodney, Kallon and Saffa-Abdulai consistently challenge the SLFA administration and desperately want power at all cost, I think that they are to be held responsible for the violence,” one football stakeholder said.
Emmanuel Abdulai Saffa was reportedly seen trying to assist Kambo to flee the scene after the attack on Lewis but was apprehended by angry onlookers. Reports are that Abdulai Saffa was later again intercepted at the police station seen acting as a lawyer trying to negotiate the release from police custody of Kambo.
It could be recalled that Kallon and Michael both suspended by Fifa from active involvement in the administration of football have been at the centre of the continuous accusations of mutiny and boycotts of league participation in leagues recognised by CAF and Fifa. Michael for the past seventeen years unsuccessfully contested for the presidential seat was expelled by Fifa in 2013 after contravening the Fifa code of ethics on the grounds of his active involvement in the country’s leading gambling firm MERCURY International of which his brother Martin Michael heads.
Football stakeholders are now urging the President of SLFA to hold the perpetrators for the violent. The Police are also urged to take immediate action to restore sanity and peace in the football administration. Reports are that more arrests are believed to be made over the weekend as the search intensifies for female journalist Hawa Dauda working for the betting firm (Mercury Radio) and a parliamentarian Hon. Samba believed to have aided the attacker in the stabbing incident intensified last night.
The victim of the stabbing remains in a critical but in a stable condition with neck and head injuries according to reports.
Senior officials of the FA were unavailable for comment.
Mohamed Kamara
Sierra Leone Football news
Freetown, January 2021
