By Awa Macalo
The Gambia Basketball Association GBA has complained to the National Sports Council NSC about their frustration and inability to recover banking and other documents from the former secretary general of the association, Aboulie Jallow who, along with his executive, resigned last year.
Addressing a press conference recently, the newly-elected president, Gheran Senghore said the GBA could not function as expected because the new executive could not access bank funds following numerous unsuccessful attempts to change signatories to the accounts.
The GBA further alleged that the new executive has not been recognised by the International Basketball Federation FIBA, because the international body is still dealing with the former secretary general who is no longer in that position having resigned since last year.
“After many attempts to get Mr Jallow to cooporate with the new executive, the GBA wrote to the NSC, the regulatory body of all sports in The Gambia about the matter in a bid to arrive at a closure to this issue but there is still no solution,” GBA officials said.
The Standard contacted the NSC whose executive director Marcel Mendy confirmed they have received complaints from the GBA about the matter and have taken up the issue with Mr Jallow to have him cooperate with the new GBA executive so that the new executive can start their activities without delay. “We are still working on the matter so that it can be amicably resolved,” Mr Mendy said. The Standard called up Mr Jallow for comments and he confirmed that he and his executive have resigned “after the NSC virtually took control of the association”.
“However, we have handed over all documents in our custody to the NSC and have written to the banks to explain that we are longer executive members of the GBA. That’s all we can do. I am not sure how they could not access the funds. In fact, we even told the NSC the balance, D59,000. When we were taking over nothing was in the account but we brought back basketball and left a healthy D59,000,” he said.
About FIBA, Mr Jallow said international federations are never happy with government interference in the affairs of national federations which seem to be the case with the action of the NSC.” We have shared all our correspondences with the NSC with FIBA throughout and they are in the picture of the situation on the ground,” Mr Jallow said.
