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Nyayo stadium design encourages hooliganism

Kiambu
 Its location at the intersection of three major roads, Aerodrome Road, Uhuru Highway and Langata Road left no room for future expansion    Photo: Wilberforce Okwiri/Standard

First I should confess that I have swallowed so much teargas smoke during local soccer matches that I lost count. Football hooliganism at Nyayo Stadium started the very first day Gor Mahia played against Ingwe when the stadium was opened in 1983.

Looking at the facility, I sometimes ask myself some basic risk related security questions. Like it happens many times in Kenyan projects, authorities and planners rarely consider some key factors when drawing up plans for the public infrastructure like stadiums or markets.

33 years down the line, Nyayo stadium is a typical example of a structure that was simply ignored from the word go. Nobody thought about its future. They also forgot about issues like population growth, security of fans, expansion contingencies and even evacuation. They never thought about safety procedures and options in case of emergencies. They designers did not imagine what would happen when there are risks both inside and outside the stadium.

For starters, its location at the intersection of three major roads, Aerodrome Road, Uhuru Highway and Langata Road was wrong. The choice left no room for future expansion. Fine we understand the plot was donated free by Sir Erskine, the designers did not comprehend that Kenya would one time wish to hold an international soccer tournament like the FIFA World Cup, AFCON, CHAN or CECAFA. They did not ask themselves what would happen if all of a sudden around 40,000 people converged at the venue. How would traffic flow be affected?

They neither bothered to provide a proper parking lot for fans with vehicles nor a way of easing the exit of cars at the end of any game. The facility has only one entry and exit on the eastern side. Of course again like any other Kenyan public facility, whereas the stadium was meant for games, it now hosts other activities that are not directly related to sports. Remember any empty space in Kenya attracts religious crusades.

This sometimes happens at the expense of the facilities core business. It also affects the condition of the playing surface due to over usage.

The corridors are very narrow rendering the stadium a high risk place in case of say a terrorist attack. Furthermore only 6 gates out of 14 are usually opened, derby or no derby.

The pitch is not secured and it is so easy for even a drunk goon to overcome the barriers and access the perimeter area. And you can imagine how many sit on the Russia side of Nyayo Stadium. That is the origin of all match disruptions. The facility management has done nothing to secure the pitch exposing the players and officials to extreme danger. Our soccer federation of course expects the clubs to ' educate their fans against invading the pitch '. Do they expect football fans to behave like Sunday school choir boys?

The psychology of a football fans calls for several deterrent measures not reactive activities like it is done many times here.

At the 1983 first match at Nyayo chaos broke out after a local derby match. The Nairobi – Kisumu railway line provided a very good ammunition supply for stone throwers. It still does. Thereafter, it was known that whichever fans reached the railway first had ' adequate supply of missiles ' against their opponents or police.

The stadium has no extended tunnel or canopy where players and referees can walk through during entry or exit to the pitch. Apart from being a ceremonial facility, walkway sometimes acts as a protective overhead cover against any projectile. Besides it could be a prime advertising platform.

Inside the stadium, buses for both home and away teams are not secure either so are the Outside Broadcasting ( OB ) vehicles. These have many times fallen victims of hooliganism.

All these missing value added facilities were not envisioned by the designers who appear not to have known who the users were going to be. Maybe they thought they were doing a stadium for ballet dancers. Football fans behave more or less the same way in many parts of the world.

Majority are drawn from the poor working class areas of big cities. What does one expect from these lot. Are they teachable really? Instead of asking the clubs to educate their fans, the stadium owners should try and redesign the physical facilities in order to minimize any harm to infrastructure and innocent victims.

The next time a stadium is designed it should factor in what I have just mentioned by first understanding the mind of a Kenyan football fan. Even if it means erecting strong barriers around the pitch to protect hooligans jumping over so be it. Arresting them will not help much.

Since supporters sometimes behave like wild animals, my friend Abirry Wuoche Gweno once suggested the erection of an electric fence round the pitch to protect the referee and players from marauding fans. Maybe that's the way to go.

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