Magogo faults govt, Ham for omitting FUFA in Namboole, Nakivuubo works

President of the Federation of Uganda Football Associations (FUFA), Moses Magogo has revealed that the Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES) and the director of Ham Group of Companies, Hamis Kiguddu did not consult the football governing body during the development of Namboole and Nakivubo stadiums, respectively.

Explaining to parliament why the two sports facilities have not been cleared by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) to host international football matches, Magogo noted that the stadium developers used the ministry of works and transport as their consultant, ignoring the rich expertise of the national football federation.

Magogo emphasized that sidelining FUFA partly explains the endless delays in the completion of Namboole Stadium and the inability of Nakivubo Stadium to host international fixtures despite being fully complete.

“Stadium construction requires a specialized type of engineering by experts [and] in Uganda, there is no one who has expertise in as far as stadium construction is concerned better than the federation [but] these projects have been executed as the usual civil engineering projects,” Magogo told parliament on Tuesday.

“We appealed that for the construction of the stadiums, as a federation we get involved right from the beginning to advise and be able not to make mistakes that have been made. Even Mandela [Namboole] Stadium is looking good but there were mistakes done because of lack of expertise,” he added.

Regarding Ham’s Nakivubo Stadium, Magogo said: “CAF has done an inspection, and it has the report about the stadium. Today, we can still not be able to host an international match there until certain things are done in accordance with standards.”

Magogo’s submissions attracted mixed reactions from the legislators with sports state minister Peter Ogwang dismissing the FUFA chief’s submission.

“In the entire renovation of Namboole, we have been working with the FUFA, I am aware that they have the expertise,” Ogwang said before being cut short by Parliament Speaker Anita Among, who referred the matter to an ongoing scrutiny by a parliamentary commission.

“I sent my advance team to [Namboole] for fact finding and we should be able to get that information from the report that is going to be presented. I don’t want you people to look ugly between yourselves,” Among said.

However, in a separate interview with Monitor, Ogwang expressed disappointment in the statements made by Magogo, suggesting that MoES HAS closely worked with FUFA throughout the renovation of Namboole.

“What we cannot accept is their wanting to be involved in matters of procurement; that is not possible. We have a law which governs the way government operations are run,” he added.

Uganda’s national team, Cranes, has not played from its traditional home ground since 2019 with the stadium renovation costs estimated over Shs97billion.

Meanwhile, Ogwang onTuesday confirmed that the management of Namboole Stadium has received the initially remaining Shs17.7b to complete renovation of the facility in an unspecified period.