I gather that the bunch of unimaginative clowns that we the people of Kisii County have for leaders intend to plead to President Uhuru Kenyatta to purchase a team Bus for Shabana FC. This they intend to do during the Mashujaa Day celebrations at the Gusii Stadium on Tuesday. The level of idiocy of this idea isn’t so obvious until you turn it over and take a peek at what lies beneath the lie that a Bus for a dead Football Club is the project that would deliver the greatest good for the greatest number of Kisiis. Just two of the many reasons that can illustrate this will suffice.
First, of all the ‘goodies’ that they’d have petitioned the President to offer us, a Bus is an insult to a Community that owns way more than their fair share of Buses. We got so many of those that someone once asked, “na Wakisii huwa wanaenda wapi lakini?” Forget the Community for a moment. Even within the Club, a Bus would never come up among the top three of the most important and pressing needs of a Club that can hardly pay its players, buy equipment or even honour all their fixtures. The team’s transportation needs can happily be catered for by ‘Guardian’, ‘Transline’, ‘Ena’, ‘Premium’ or even ‘Nyamira’ if asked nicely, but only after posting positive results.
Secondly, anyone that knows anything about the current state of the health of Shabana FC would tell you that it is slightly more dead than a Dodo. That is to say that Kisiis loved Shabana FC, but God loved it more. After a couple of failed attempts to make it out of the National Super League and into the Premiership, the die was cast. They were on course to die. And they eventually did when their sponsor one Jared Nivaton chose to redirect his sponsorship to Lilian Muli and a whole community of others, leaving ‘Tore bobe’ very ‘bobe’.
However, it is the birth ~ or emergence ~ of two Clubs on the Football scene in Bosongo that promises to deliver the death blow that could see the final and permanent death of one of only three Community Clubs in Kenya. The first is ‘Gusii FC’, a new Club formed recently by a local businessman which has signed a good chunk of the best players that Shabana had, and appears to have the focus and resources to run a successful Football Club.
The other is the team that was born in Kakamega Town, grew up in Kisumu City and is now set to settle in Kisii Town. It is the team that was formerly know as Western Stima, which upon losing the sponsorship of Kenya Power, was bought by another local businessman, with the intention of making the newly refurbished Gusii Stadium their home ground, guaranteeing us top flight football soon.
With these two on the plate, who needs a Bus for a Club that ain’t going anywhere soon?
By O Nyakundi via Facebook
