Intrigues, strategic planning marked FKF elections campaign period

FKF President elect Nick Mwendwa and Doris Petra celebrates after wining the FKF elections at the Safaricom Sports Centre. Kasarani on 10th February, 2016. Mwendwa beat Ambrose Rachier after a long serving president Sam Nyamweya stepped down. PHOTO/DENNIS OKEYO

The Football Kenya Federation (FKF) polls wound up yesterday with the resounding election of Nick Mwendwa as president. This brought to an end an exercise billed as the most expensive yet to the candidates in local football.

Besides the dizzying amounts bandied unofficially by different camps, ‘behind-the-scene intrigues” – to borrow a cliche – played out right up to the eve of the elections.

For the first time in the history of soccer elections, would-be delegates right from the sub-branches were flown from such far-flung places as Garissa, Turkana, Kakamega, Kisumu, Busia, Isiolo by presidential candidates, who pulled all the stops to ensure they soothed the egos of the vote-carrying “honourables”.

On Tuesday night, the eve of the elections, all 77 delegates drawn from around the country were in Nairobi. All campaign teams ensured the well being of their supporters was taken care of.

They were accommodated in highly rated hotels and treated to the choicest meals to be found in the capital.

Team Change, which swept aside Team Stay of Sam Nyamweya, was streets ahead of all and it reflected inside the Kasarani Stadium, where President-elect Nick Mwendwa clocked a stirring 50 votes to 27 garnered by Ambrose Rachier.

Team Change’s well-oiled machine, both financially and in terms of innovative thinking, still needed that tried-and-tested element of intrigue that will “shock and awe” at the same time.
Team Rachier-Twaha, galvanised together disenchanted voices in Nyamweya’s administration to try and stop the juggernaut that was Team Change.

Nyamweya’s spending in elections legendary, but here was Team Change wallowing in liquid cash too and Team Rachier-Twaha, too, boasts individual riches that without doubt got poured into the campaign frenzy.

But while Nyamweya’s Team Stay dithered in spending and in campaign strategy, Team Change’s machine cranked up the gears right from the day the elections notice was put up way back in June of 2015.

In what is reminiscent of what Ron Ashkenas and Markus Spiegel wrote in the Harvard Business Review on October 28 that, “Ants have no central control”, no single “master ant,” yet the entire colony works together as one organism,” Team Change sought to have a structure to drive Team Stay out of office with ruthless efficiency.

“It was a simple strategy, but which required working your socks off,” said former Kariobangi Ward Councillor Michael Ouma Majiwa, who was elected the Nairobi NEC representative.

“We set up a secretariat with 12 employees under a CEO, Robert Muthomi, as the head.”