Nato inquiry reaches dead end
Mqondisi Dube | Friday February 24, 2017 15:51
Nato joined Rollers in February last year from Indian side, Atletico de Kolkata, a move which sparked the mother of all brawls, and shoved local football into an abyss. There were protests after protest in subsequent matches in which Nato featured in, with differing judgements on the cases.
Initially, the Botswana Premier League (BPL) Disciplinary Committee (DC) cleared Rollers of any wrong doing, but the Botswana Football Association (BFA) Disciplinary Committee (DC) overturned the decision, docking points and fining the club. This necessitated a play-off to close the drawn out saga where Rollers beat Chiefs to be crowned last season’s champions, in the most controversial of circumstances. Rollers, at the time of the play-off, had already taken the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Zurich, Switzerland.
But the BFA, through its president, Maclean Letshwiti, brokered a deal to have Rollers withdraw the case from CAS. Part of the condition of withdrawing the case was that the BFA will write to FIFA seeking clarity on the registration of Nato.
“The withdrawal of the case should not be misconstrued in any way to mean concession on the part of Township Rollers to mean that indeed Mr. Nato was a defaulter at the time he was declared such; hence the need for the establishment of the true situation from FIFA,” the BFA said in statement in August.
But in December, FIFA had not received any inquiry from the BFA and Rollers spokesperson, Bafana Pheto said the mother body has been mum.
“No, not yet. We have been waiting for them to give us feedback as promised, but there is nothing,” Pheto said yesterday, when asked if the BFA had reverted to them on the matter.