Govt funds delaying Bombers preps for African Championship
Behind the smile. Boxing president Moses Muhangi (L) is a tight spot as govt where Peter Ogwang is state minister in charge of sports has not released money to the former's federation. PHOTO/JOHN BATANUDDE
What you need to know:
Muhangi is concerned that if UBF does not receive the money by the end of June, they might not get it at all.
Had the AFBC African Boxing Championships been held this month, Uganda would have surely missed out due to lack of the funds.
But now that the Championship was postponed to July 25, the Uganda Boxing Federation (UBF) has about a month to prepare the Bombers for the trip to Yaounde, Cameroon, but still the money equation has to be solved, immediately.
“We definitely want to participate in the championship, but that will depend on when we get the money from the National Council of Sports,” UBF president Moses Muhangi told Daily Monitor.
“NCS has our Shs800m for this financial year (2022-23) but just days to the end of the financial year, we haven’t received the money.”
Muhangi is concerned that if UBF does not receive the money by the end of June, they might not get it at all.
UBF’s concerns are understandable because the pending balance of over Shs800m is nearly three times higher than Shs300m it expects in the 2023-24 financial year.
NCS general secretary did not answer our calls about the matter. But sports minister Peter Ogwang had on Friday told us about instructing the NCS to release the money to UBF.
“I had told NCS to hold money aimed for federations which still faced accountability queries. And UBF is among them,” Ogwang told Daily Monitor. “But we don’t want the federation’s problems to stifle the athletes’ progress. So we released the money so that the boxers can go to the tournament in Cameroon.”
Muhangi admitted seeing the minister’s letter and submitting the federation’s budget for the Cameroon tournament to NCS, but wonders what is delaying the release of the funds.
Muhangi faces charges of forgery and falsification when accounting for government funds to UBF. But since his release on bail from Luzira Prison on May 31, NCS locked up UBF offices in Lugogo, demanding Shs10m rent arrears.
Muhangi has been vocal against the NCS’s handling of monies for sports federations and calls the office closure a witch-hunt.
Meanwhile, the boxers have big reasons to gun for this tournament. It will not only prepare them for the African Olympics Qualifiers in Dakar, Senegal in early September 9, but also promises juicier money prizes for the medallists.
At last year’s edition in Maputo, featherweight Jonah Kyobe and middleweight Yusuf Nkobeza won $2,500 (nearly Shs9m) each for getting bronze medals.
But this year the prize money was doubled: gold medalists will get $20,000, silver medalists $10,000 and bronze medalists $5,000.
