For weeks, the Kenyan football fraternity has been consumed by reports that Football Kenya Federation (FKF) CEO Harold Ndege is on the brink of dismissal following an alleged fallout with FKF president Hussein Mohammed.
What initially appeared to be routine internal friction has since snowballed into a revealing governance crisis – one that has reignited fears that Kenyan football may be drifting back to the dark, dysfunctional years many hoped were firmly in the past.
Speculation around Ndege’s fate has played out noisily on social media, with insiders and commentators offering conflicting explanations. A dominant narrative quickly emerged: that Ndege was being pushed out for demanding accountability and professional standards, particularly around financial controls, in a federation historically scarred by misappropriation of funds. FKF’s prolonged silence as accusations flew only deepened suspicion and fuelled comparisons to the Nick Mwendwa era, a period synonymous with chaos, secrecy, and institutional decay.
That silence finally broke when FKF released a statement detailing 21 alleged failures by Ndege, which will form the basis of a motion to remove him during a virtual National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting scheduled for January 15, 2026.
The list is sweeping – ranging from governance lapses and poor communication to youth team mismanagement, absenteeism, stalled projects, broken toilets at FKF headquarters, and failure to operationalise major initiatives such as the Sh600 million Machakos FIFA Arena.
On paper, the accusations depict a CEO who failed to grasp the scale and urgency of his mandate. In practice, however, the timing and breadth of the charges have raised uncomfortable questions. Why were these issues allowed to fester for months? Why did FKF only act after public speculation reached fever pitch? And are these legitimate grounds for removal – or a convenient justification to remove a CEO perceived as inconvenient?
At stake is more than a job. Ndege has claimed he is being bullied for protecting FKF’s bank accounts, with up to KES1.2 billion in FIFA funding hanging in the balance. For a football public traumatised by years of financial scandal, that claim strikes a raw nerve.
Commentator Nick Dee Dee believes the pressure is exposing cracks in Hussein Mohammed’s leadership. In his view, the FKF president’s tenure has leaned too heavily on optics and public relations while substantive institutional reform has lagged behind. Dee Dee argues that Mohammed has undermined the CEO’s office by allowing unelected figures – most notably Abdalla Yusuf – to operate as de facto power centres, weakening governance structures and centralising authority.
“FKF is not an executive presidency,” Dee Dee warns, noting that the CEO answers to the NEC, not to proxies operating in the shadows. He suggests that the growing unrest among chairmen and stakeholders could yet turn against the president himself, signalling a federation drifting into internal warfare rather than collective rebuilding.
Yet not everyone sees the saga as a simple morality tale of reformers versus villains. Veteran commentator Ombija Oguda offers a more complex reading. He argues that the crisis reflects a shift away from the old culture of “collective responsibility” that dominated Kenyan football under previous administrations – where failures were defended publicly until a scapegoat was eventually sacrificed.
Under Mohammed’s NEC, Oguda contends, responsibility has been individualised. Committee members and executives are expected to own their mandates and face consequences if they fail. In that context, Ndege’s predicament may be less about persecution and more about the brutal reality of a role that was always going to be politically and professionally unforgiving.
Oguda acknowledges Ndege’s credentials and insists his appointment was merit-based. However, he also insists that legitimate questions cannot be wished away. Who should answer when youth teams are poorly prepared? When competitions are mismanaged? When federation initiatives collapse without explanation? Accountability, he argues, cannot be selective.
This tension – between fear of regression and the need for genuine accountability – lies at the heart of the current crisis. Kenyan football has been here before: opaque decisions, personality clashes, public spats, and institutions weakened by internal mistrust. The promise of the post-Mwendwa era was that things would be different: transparent processes, professional administration, and leadership anchored in credibility rather than control.
The handling of the Ndege saga threatens to undermine that promise. Whether the CEO is guilty of the failures outlined or a casualty of internal power struggles, FKF’s approach has already eroded confidence. Silence bred suspicion; delayed action bred cynicism.
If Kenyan football is to avoid sliding back into its familiar doldrums, FKF must demonstrate that accountability is real, fair, and transparent – not retrofitted to suit political ends. Otherwise, the names may change, but the story will remain painfully the same.
