Accra, April 24, Ghanadot - On February 8 this year, Accra Hearts of Oak clashed with Kumasi Asante Kotoko in a nerve-jangling premier league tie at the Baba Yara stadium in Kumasi and four soccer fans were reported dead after the match.

After the match, the government called for a probe into the causes for the incident that  had resulted in the death of the soccer fans.  The probe was announced on Ghanadot website on February 12, 2009.

A committee was set up by the Minister of Youth and Sports, Hon Muntaka Mubarak and it was headed by Mr James Marshal Beblie, a seasoned lawyer. After nearly one month of sitting, the committee came out with the cause of the deaths and made some recommendations as well.

According to the committee's report the unfortunate incident was not  a result of crowd control geting out of hand but to overcrowding. It discovered that, Mr Sylvester Asare Owusu, the CEO of Kumasi Asante Kotoko football club collected money from fans who were scaling the wall to watch the game at a time when the stadium was already full to capacity.

Mr. Asare confessed to have collected GHC 820 from the football fans under the pretext that, "I could not have allowed the club to loose such revenue".

The committee has therefore recommended to the Ghana Football Association to ban the Kotoko CEO from all football related activities for five years.

Also among the Beblie Marshall recommendations, the CEO of National Sports Council, Mr Price Oduro Mensah was to be shown the exit. He was alleged to have been the brain behind the tampering of the Close Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras at the stadium and which had been damaged as result. He has again been charged to pay for the cost of repair.

However with determination by the government to provide sanctions on those who caused the deaths of the football fans, some football commentators and football fans are politicising the issue.

According to the football fans, because their rival, Accra Hearts of Oak is connected to the ruling National Democratic Congress, the government wants to destabilise Kotoko to the advantage of Hearts of Oak.

In an article written by Mr John Vigah, a sports Journalist and which was published by the Ghanaian Times newspaper of yesterday, he expressed worry about how the whole episode had been politicised. He said, the inference made by the Kotoko CEO shows that he does not care a hoot about the security and safety of his own fans so long as he makes money for the club.

"It is so sad that nobody is talking about the four innocent lives lost. Perhaps , it is not important to the fans-because they shed no blood relations", he observed.

According to him, this is not the time to politicise the situation.
"We have been taken things for granted for far too long and it is time to take some draconian measures to serve as deterrent", Mr Vigah noted.

Ghanadot