How Ministry of Sports Cartels Looted Funds – But with the aid of CS Amina?

Sports CS Amina Mohammed is under fire over fears of uncontrolled corruption involving billions of shillings at the Sports, Arts and Social Development Fund.

The troubled CS had earlier admitted that the Sports, Arts and Social Development Fund had collected a whopping Sh30.3 billion since it was operationalised in February 2019.

Interestingly, in March 2019 just a month after the formation of the kitty, Uhuru Kenyatta moved Amina to the ministry of Sports where she replaced Rashid Echesa who was kicked out.

The fund whose main source of revenue are proceeds from betting, gaming and lotteries was established to offer support to sports federations, training and technical initially collected Sh8.1 billion between February and June 2019.

The figure drastically rose to Sh10billion in the 2019/20 financial year and facilitating Team Kenya for their under the but suspiciously dipped to a paltry Sh6.8 billion in the 2020/21 financial year.It is imperative to note that sportsmen in the country expressed hopes when in 2018 before money started trickling into the kitty, Uhuru appointed a seven-member oversight board to manage the fund, formerly the National Sports Fund formerly the National Sports Fund.

The board is made up of five principal secretaries from the ministries of Education, Health, in National Treasury and Sports which is also the funds administrator.

The docket came into limelight following the controversial appointment of former vice president Moody Awori as its chairman. Awori shared the same position with athletics Kenya boss Jackson Tuwei.

Awori and Tuwei, together with other players involved, are charged with the key roles of managing the fund, preparing and submitting quarterly reports to the Finance CS. Some of the functions of the board include, developing infrastructure and facilitating Team Kenya for their national assignment.

Standard procedure dictates that allocation federations should be accountable to impleme ning and be able to give full disclosure to the the secretariat which is monitoring the funds to avoid double payment sports, art from the fund and their international federations.

All unutilised monies for specific functions are set out by federations the for the purposes of remitting back to  the fund, under stewardship of the board. Also, the board is to monitor and evaluate the activities and programmes heir under the fund as well as review guidelines, priorities and criteria for allocation and disbursement of funds to implementing agencies.

The seven-member board approves a limit for funding under sports, art and culture development annually. Its other mandate is to review the annual revenue and expenditure of the fund and recommend them to the Sports CS before handing it to the Finance CS.

But there seems to be trouble regarding accountability of billions of shillings already channeled into the docket and the board appears to be helplessly watching from a safe distance or is part of the alleged dirty deals. Recently, eyebrows were raised when a consultative meeting that was to be held last month, between the national assembly committee on sports and Amina was deferred to this month.

The meeting was to deliberate on the operations and management of the sports fund and it emerged that the CS was out of the country on the date that she was scheduled to face specific erations of the the national assembly committee utilising members.

However trouble started when the committee chairman Patrick Makau revealed to the committee that PS Joe Okudo had also skipped the important meeting on allegations that he was unwell.

The irate MPs vowed to issue a summons compelling Amina and Okudo to appear before the house team and explain how billions of review shillings have been spent.

Consequently, Luanda MP Chris Omulele tabled a question on the floor of the house inquiring on the status of utilisation of sports fund. He sought to know from Amina whether the sports fund CEO is qualified for the job or is a crook used to facilitate looting.

It appears that billions of shillings that were meant for construction of new stadiums had been hijacked. As a highlight of possible looting of the fund, a concerned Kenyan whose stand is shared with many shocked the perceived looters when he demanded CS Amina to share a breakdown of the allocation and expenditure by the ministry and the sports, arts and development fund.

In a letter addressed to CS Amina, Anthony Mwangi demanded for the audit following conflicting reports on the same in the mainstream media which also appears to be beneficiaries of such money in one way or another.

“There is a general outcry and complaints by sports persons that federations have not been optimally funds received from government and other sponsors and upon inquiry federations have likewise complained and faulted the ministry of Sports together with the administrator of the sports, arts and Fund for lack of accountability,” argues Mwangi.

Irate Mwangi particularly asked Amina, PS Okudo and the commissioner of sports to make public the amount of money deposited in the sports fund in 2020 alone.