A Nigerian sports facilities expert, Dr Christian Emeruwa, who is now the head of safety and security at Confederation of African Football (CAF) has reeled out a long line of factors that can help countries across the country have safer venues for the round leather game, megasportsarena.com reports.
Emeruwa disclosed as much while presenting a lecture during a recent workshop organized by the continent’s football governing body, in which he answered questions bothering on why the first CAF safety and security regional workshop became necessary and gave answers to issues many countries are grappling with.
A report published by the body’s website, cafonline.com, stated in part: “From 2 to 3 December 2020, the African Football Confederation organized a historic workshop under the theme “Promoting the safety and security of stadiums.
“CAF considers the various leagues affiliated to member associations across Africa as a great partner in the promotion of safety and security standards across Africa. The various leagues of each country represent the collective passion of football at the club level in each country.
“Clubs that participate in CAF Confederation Cup and CAF Champions League, all emanated from their respective country’s leagues. It has therefore become necessary for CAF to engage with these critical stakeholders in the bid to eliciting their bye in and understanding of the new crusade of change.
“We are optimistic that when we engage with the Leagues and National Safety and Security Officers of our respective member associations to discuss issues the promotion of safety and security culture and standard in their respective leagues, they are happy to be part of our team to change the negative stories.
“This is the very first time that our Confederation is organizing regional workshops on safety and security matters and involving the various premier and second leagues regulators and their respective safety and security managers from all member associations across Africa not to forget also that we will be inviting the member associations national safety and security officers to be part of the workshop.
“The objectives for organizing this Workshop are as follows: To Introduce the New CAF Safety and Security Regulations to all participants, to present best practices on safety and security for various leagues administrators and security managers on basic safety and security expectations of CAF.
“To build a good working synergy amongst all leagues from the various member associations that will be attending the workshop and encourage information sharing of best practices as well as challenges (and) to get direct feedbacks from participants on how CAF can help them to improve safety and security operations in their respective leagues.”
Emeruwa added in a post-event interview: “I consider it very successful because exactly one year ago we organized the first CAF safety and security officers’ workshop and during this workshop we invited experts from Europe and FIFA to support in facilitating the training and among these experts we had only one that was African.
“However, today we had nine experts that facilitated this workshop and out of the nine we had only one non-African the other Eight were Africans and seven of them were trained just a year ago. This is one successful story that Africans are taking responsibility in defining their affairs.
“Also, we received several feedbacks from participants and other experts that joined as observers and more importantly the full support received from the Acting General Secretary of CAF for us to host this workshop was unprecedented so again, I will say the workshop was a great success and it tells the African Football Safety and Security revolution story.
“The way forward now is for all the Premier and second leagues management across Africa to hit the ground running. Each club in these leagues must appoint immediately club safety and security officers and the leagues in conjunction with the respective member association national safety and security officers are to drop up a training programme,
“Send same to CAF safety and security department for validation and then train their clubs safety and security officers with of course technical support from CAF. Also, the clubs are to make sure they commence the revolution of maintaining law and order during their matches.
“We hope to see improve match venues across all the premier and second leagues in Africa. Another way forward is that we now have built through this workshop a network of all Premier and second league safety and security officers to enable them share ideas and experiences together.”
