“No Manipulation for Awards” -LFA Award Committee Chair Onanuga Clarifies Allegations

By H Matthew Turry    

MONROVIA – The Liberia Football Association (LFA), through its 2024 Award Committee has clarified controversies of allegations surrounding the LFA 2024 awards being politically manipulated, stating in unequivocal terms that the awards process was fair, transparent and done in accordance with standards.

Addressing a news conference Wednesday, December 11, 2024 at the LFA Headquarters in Congo Town, the LFA 2024 Award Committee Chairperson Ambassador Christopher Hayes Onanuga said, “This 2024 awards was established and executed on some fundamental principles, and of the most important fundamental principles upon which this award was established was the principles of fair-play, fairness, the rules of due diligence and our ability to spread the positive image of footballing in Liberia.

“I would like to address the so-called controversies during and after the awards night. First, before the award we established the rules of engagement, and the rules of engagements were clear. In our first press conference, we said we were going to eliminate people from the voting process that will not be eligible to vote,” he asserted.

The LFA 2024 Award Committee Chairperson pointed out by saying, “We also showed you through power point presentation how the voting system will work through the filling of form and email that were sent to show who were eligible and who were not eligible to vote. We also said to you that there will be no double vote, the system was set to identify one email, one vote, and one phone number, one vote.

“After the awards, there were various social media comments on how the LFA has turned the Liberia football award into a political arena,” he said, cautioning, “it is always good to gather facts with evidence before running into the worldwide web, because things you put there you can’t take them back.”

According to him, no amount of deletion can take them back because millions of people would have screenshot them, and so they become public materials.

He further emphasized his point by saying, “We want to inform you that there is no way we can eliminate journalists, coaches, referees, captains, and others from participating in the vote at point in time and category,” noting that there are categories that statistics will determine, and when it comes to the statistics, the committee with ensure that statistics will be in the public glare for everybody to scrutinize when issues are raised.

“We also make sure that for those who will vote, like the captains, the coaches, the referees, amongst others, if there should be a reason to do reportage, our report will juxtapose our results,” he expressed.

“We want to tell you that we are 100% glad that we hosted the LFA awards, knowing very well that we were not involved in anything clandestine, but produced an award that the Liberia football community should be proud of”.

He cautioned that Presidents of clubs, Captains of clubs, Coaches of clubs, and Referees of the game are supposed to work together daily and should avoid mixing politics with the reality of the day.

Expressing gratitude to the Liberia football body, the 2024 Award Committee Chair Christopher Onanuga said, “We must thank the Liberia football federation for giving us the opportunity to lead this cause, as well as DoxxBet-Liberia along with other sponsors.

In conclusion, Ambassador Onanuga said, “We must thank the news makers who went ahead with the many attacks, creating a huge controversy. That is the beauty of such an occasion.

“Because those controversies allowed us to come at the end of the day to justify, to provide to the general public what was done and let the public be the judge between the controversy and the reality,” he said.