MONROVIA – A blunt challenge to Africa’s role inside world football has come from one of its own administrators. Nimba County lawmaker and football figure Musa Hassan Bility wants African associations to stop pledging their votes as one advance bloc. He made the appeal in an open message to CAF President Patrice Motsepe. It also addressed the presidents of all 54 African football associations. Bility argued that the continent repeatedly trades its collective leverage for grants and ceremonial praise. The intervention carries unusual weight because Bility himself once helped Gianni Infantino rise to power. His proposal for a rotational FIFA presidency raises a sharp question. Will Africa now demand genuine structural reform, As THE ANALYST reports,
Bility said that for too long, whenever a FIFA presidential election approaches, Africa’s votes have been bundled together, counted in advance and delivered as one package. In return, he argued, the continent receives grants, ceremonial praise and token projects that provide only temporary assistance without the structural transformation African football needs. THE ANALYST reports.
He contended that world football’s governing body, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), controls billions of dollars in assets while African football continues to struggle. Clubs are under strain, leagues remain commercially weak, infrastructure is poor, and young players still believe they must leave the continent before their talent can be recognized, he said.
Central to his criticism was a decision by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) to unanimously endorse Gianni Infantino for another term before any serious debate about FIFA’s future. That endorsement, he said, immediately devalued every Member Association president in Africa.
Bility reminded the association leaders that they were elected to represent their countries. Their votes, he argued, belong to their associations rather than to the CAF President, the CAF Executive Committee or the FIFA President.
He questioned the value of individual offices if all 54 votes could be pledged before candidates present their programs and before Africa identifies its priorities. That, he said, was not African unity but the surrender of African responsibility.
Pointing to Infantino’s background as a former General Secretary of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), Bility noted that Europe knew him best yet had stood up to him when it believed he had crossed the line.
He said Asia and Concacaf had also raised serious objections, and urged Africa to join Europe in holding Infantino accountable.
“We Africans cannot be more European than the Europeans themselves,” he wrote, arguing that Africa had no justification for remaining silent or blindly defending Infantino if Europe could confront one of its own. He stressed that his position was not a fight against Europe but a fight for football.
Bility directly addressed Motsepe, saying the CAF President had defended his support for Infantino in the language of friendship and loyalty.
Football governance, he countered, is a public trust rather than a private friendship, and nobody was asking Motsepe to betray a friend, only not to turn his back on Africa.
Presenting himself as an insider rather than an outsider, Bility recalled that he initially supported Prince Ali in the 2016 FIFA presidential election before later helping Infantino secure African support. He said he had travelled across Africa in search of change and joined the movement that ended the old order at CAF in 2017.
He said he later opposed what he described as an attempt by FIFA to take control of CAF, demanding accountability and an audit and accepting the consequences. Bility accepted a share of responsibility, saying those who believed they were backing change had instead helped create another system in which too much power was concentrated in one individual.
A Rotational FIFA Presidency
Bility proposed abolishing the elected position of FIFA President and replacing it with a rotational presidency among FIFA’s six continental confederations. Under the plan, each confederation president would serve as FIFA President for two years in an agreed order before the office automatically rotated to the next.
He said the arrangement would end the permanent struggle to capture the presidency, removing worldwide campaigns and the incentive to use development funds, appointments or political influence to secure votes. The rotational president would represent FIFA and protect its statutes but would hold no independent executive authority.
Under the proposal, all executive decisions would be reserved for the FIFA Council pending approval by the FIFA Congress. No president could unilaterally control the body’s finances, commercial rights, appointments, development funds, competitions or technical affairs.
Bility said FIFA’s permanent administration should consist of qualified financial, commercial, legal, administrative and technical experts who execute decisions without political interference. He added that independent audit, ethics and compliance institutions must be strengthened so they can investigate everyone, including the FIFA President.
A Call to Motsepe
The football figure urged CAF to withdraw its unconditional endorsement of Infantino and to place the reform proposal before the football world. Until FIFA is reformed, he said, no African vote should be pledged in advance, and every association should independently consult its stakeholders and decide what is best for its country.
Bility said the record of the current CAF leadership did not justify another term and urged Motsepe to announce that his present mandate would be his last. He called on the CAF President to use the remainder of his tenure to restore the body’s independence, commercialize African football and lead the campaign for a rotational presidency.
He linked the football debate to Africa’s wider cultural story, noting that African music and cinema had achieved global recognition while football lagged commercially. Africa produces some of the world’s greatest talent, he said, yet exports that talent and then pays through television subscriptions to watch its own players perform abroad.
Bility called for stronger domestic leagues, viable regional competitions, better stadiums, professional club management, modern broadcasting, youth academies and women’s football. Africa, he argued, must become an owner, producer and commercial beneficiary of global football rather than merely a supplier of raw talent.
He closed with an appeal to every African association president to look beyond grants, invitations, photographs and promises and to think of children playing barefoot and clubs struggling to survive. Africa had stood on the wrong side of football history too often, he said, urging leaders to withdraw the blank cheque and reclaim the continent’s voice.