Racism Allegation: FIFA Tackles Stephen Keshi

Nigeria coach Stephen Keshi, and his employers the Nigeria Football
Federation, has responded to the query FIFA issued him. The query
is over his alleged racist remark targeted at Malawi technical
adviser Tom Sainfiet.
The Nigeria coach was given a September 16 deadline to respond to
the query.
The General Secretary of the NFF Musa Amadu who spoke with The
PUNCH on Tuesday confirmed that the response to FIFA’s Zurich
headquarters was dispatched on Monday deadline.
He said, “Yes, we met the deadline. The response was sent by email
and fax. And today (Tuesday) we are sending the hard copy by
courier service.”
Amadu said he was positive that FIFA would understand the
background under which the statement was made.
“We’ve explained the circumstances under which the statement was
made; it was under normal pre-match antics we see of different
coaches.
“Of course we all know that Keshi is somebody who has cross-
cultural background and incidentally played his professional football
career in Belgium where Saintfiet comes from. He was never involved
in any racist row all through his career as a player. His intentions
were pure and not the way it appears; they were merely based on
football relations.”
The Malawi federation reported to FIFA what it called ‘racist’
remarks by Keshi aimed at the Belgian.
“We feel the racist remarks by Mr Keshi are not acceptable,” FAM’s
general secretary Suzgo Nyirenda said after their federation sent
official complaint to Zurich.
“We thought it was a personal attack on our coach and we had to
defend him regardless of skin. We felt we should help our coach and
at the same time put a stop to the racist remarks from Mr Keshi.
We have sent evidence of what Keshi said and we hope FIFA will
come up with some measures to control Mr Keshi.”
In the phone interview aired on UK-based African television show,
Keshi was quoted to have said, “I think the coach of Malawi is
crazy. If he wants to talk to FIFA, he should go back to Belgium. He
is not an African person, he is a white dude, he should go back to
Belgium.”
It is not yet clear what type of sanction may be handed Keshi if
found culpable. Active players are usually suspended from a number
of matches and fined as well while teams are made to play their
games in empty stadiums if their fans are guilty of racist acts. In
recent times acts of racism have been rampart in the Italian league
while the separate cases involving Luis Suarez and former England
captain John Terry made the headlines in English football.
FIFA and other regional football governing bodies have stepped hard
against racism in response.