(The Confederation of African Football (Caf) has said it will lift The Gambia’s two year suspension if it is happy with federation elections held on Saturday.
Former Gambian sports minister Modou Lamin Kabba Bajo was elected as president of the Gambia Football Federation (GFF).
At its annual meeting in Addis Ababa the executive committee of Caf agreed: “To lift the suspension of The Gambia in the event that elections at the FA were well conducted.”
Caf suspended The Gambia from all of its competitions for two years, for deliberately falsifying players’ ages.
Saturday’s GFF elections were called following a decision by Fifa’s emergency committee in July, to sack the previous executive administration, led by Mustapha Kebbeh.
A normalisation committee was put in place by Fifa organised the weekend’s elections for a new GFF board, but were not allowed to run in the election.
The situation in The Gambia is also on the agenda for this week’s meeting of Fifa’s executive committee in Zurich.
Kabba Bajo, aged 50, secured 28 votes from the 51 available. His opponent Buba Mbye Bojang got 23 votes.
In other key elected positions, Abdoulie Jallow, Ebou Faye and Martin Gomez were named as GFF vice presidents.
Alhagie Faye, Adama Lowe, Mam Lisa Camara and Sainabou Cham become co-opted members of the GFF board, and all seven regional football association presidents are part of the executive.
The country’s recent football issues emerged at the start of May, when Caf banned The Gambia from all its competitions – including the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations – after ruling that the GFF had fielded five over-aged players during a game against Liberia in the African U-20 Championship qualifiers.
In addition, Caf ruled that Ali Sowe, born in June 1994, had been found to have registered in 2012 in the Confederation Cup with an identical passport number but a birth date going back to 1988.
As a result, Fifa threw its support behind Caf, supporting the African body’s sanctions.
