ASPIRING Zifa board member Eddie Chivero is confident that he will be voted onto the executive committee after he was encouraged to run for office by some councillors.
A former administrator of the now defunct Gift Banda-owned Njube Sundowns, Bulawayo City, ex-leader of the national supporters association, former Young Warriors manager and now Chegutu Pirates chairperson, Chivero hopes to make it onto the Zifa board in the elections to be held on January 25 in Harare.
“Most of the councillors, maybe 95% of them that are in the Assembly right now, I have worked with them for the past 15 years," he said.
“I have been working very closely with them. I know how some of them have been disappointed by the people that they voted into office and some people that they thought would deliver.
“So when the issue of elections came up, I was approached by a lot of councillors from different provinces and they said, Eddie with your vision and the things that you have been talking about ever since we started working together, we feel this is the right time for you to also go into the Zifa board."
Chivero said his nomination form was signed by more than 30 people.
“You cannot say I am an aspiring board member, I am a potential board member,” he said.
The football administrator showed up on Sunday at a closed-door meeting at a local hotel in Bulawayo where presidential candidate Nqobile Magwizi met with Zifa councillors from the Southern Region.
- It’s my time to sit on the Zifa board: Chivero
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Banda, whose nomination was rejected in the vetting process but has since appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, also popped up.
Chivero said he has been pushing of other candidates aspirations for a long time and feels it’s high time for him to get in and lead.
“It is a known fact to everybody that I have been a runner. I have been a campaign manager for quite a number of presidents and board members and I have seen things happening, where they were going wrong and when they were getting it right,” he said.
“I felt it was time for me to now join the fray, fix what I think is not done right. A lot of things have failed to happen in our football because at times people are selfish; they don’t care about how the majority of people feel. Remember, I am also coming from the supporters’ constituency where I know the pain for part of things not being done properly when you know they could have done the right way.”
Chivero said local football does not have grassroots, it’s only the leaves at the top.
“You won’t see where it is coming from because it has no roots. Remember we used to have a very vibrant junior policy. All those things have not been taken care of. They died a natural death, if you hear people talking about junior football, its individuals that are trying to maybe make a living out of it but it does not have any umbilical cord to the mother association, which is Zifa.”
He added: “Look at our Premier Soccer League right now. You cannot survive in that league because you pump in almost US$1 million to get US$100 000 in prize money, that’s if you win the title. I hear people saying councillors are deadwood. Not at all. These councillors are not being given the tasks that they are supposed to do.”
Chivero said there are qualified councillors in that Assembly but the unfortunate part is that when people go in there, there are no structures, like the committees to be given assignments and they write reports.
