By NDI EUGENE NDI

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Former African football president Issa Hayatou, who died on Thursday after a long illness, one day before his 78th birthday, presided over Confederation of African Football’s (Caf) affairs for 29 years from 1988 until his ouster in 2017.

He also served as acting Fifa president from 2015 to 2016 after Sepp Blatter was suspended by the world football governing body. He also served as senior vice president of the world’s football governing body, Fifa for 25 years (from 1992 to 2017).

He was an International Olympic Committee member from 2001-2016, after which he became an honorary member. Hayatou even challenged Blatter for the Fifa presidency in 2002, but lost heavily.

He began his sports career as a sprinter, and held Cameroon’s national record over 400 metres and 800 metres. But the former Physical Education teacher became known for endurance and longevity, perhaps in preparation for his long career in sports administration.

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He had been a member of Cameroon’s basketball team. By the end of his life, few could remember Hayatou’s impact in the classroom. He was better known on the pitch and off it, for football administration until 2017.

On Thursday, Cameroon’s State radio announced that Hayatou had died in Paris, from where he had been following events at the 2024 Olympic Games while also nursing a long-term undisclosed illness. He was 77, just a day to turning 78, the radio information indicated. He had been frail in recent months and had been in and out of hospital for some time.

His death came shortly after Morocco had beaten Egypt 6-0 in the bronze medal contest of men’s football.

But the internet had ‘killed’ him long before he actually died. He had initially been forced to deny those rumours, somehow mimicking his resilience in life.

Hayatou’s first engagement with African football administration was in 1985 when he joined the leadership of Cameroon’s football federation, Fecafoot, as Secretary General and later became its president. He would then be elected CAF President in 1988, a position he held for 29 years until he was replaced by Madagascar’s Ahmad Ahmad.

He had a checkered career in football administration. While some have accused him of corruption and mismanaging African football, others praised him for expanding the reach of the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon), Africa’s premier national football team tournament, from 16 teams to a 24-team affair, enabling countries previously thought of as minnows to rise.

He left Caf to join the world football governing body Fifa, after its President Blatter was banned from all football-related activities in 2015 as part of corruption investigations.

Born on August 9, 1946 to an influential royal family in Garoua, north of Cameroon, Hayatou first started out as Sports and Physical Education teacher, and moved on to sports administration. In the early 1980s, he served as director of Sports in Cameroon under the Ministry of Sport.

He became secretary-general of Cameroonian football federation Fecafoot in 1974, at the age of 28, and also served as its president from 1986. The same year in 1986, Hayatou was elected to sit in Caf’s executive committee.

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Hayatou presided over Caf’s affairs at its Cairo headquarters from the time he was first elected in Casablanca, Morocco in 1988 following the retirement of Ethiopia’s Ydnekatchew Tessema, till March 2017.

Like Cameroon’s President Paul Biya, Hayatou won term after term as head of Caf, serving six in all. In 2017, he unsuccessfully sought an eighth mandate as head of Africa’s football governing body, losing to Ahmad Ahmad, then president of Madagascar’s football federation. Many observers thought he had overstayed his welcome at Caf.

When he took over the running of continental football body, its flagship competition, Afcon involved just eight teams, and only two spots were reserved for Africa at the Fifa World Cup.

Under Hayatou’s watch, several continental football competitions were introduced, and the Afcon expanded. In 1990, Caf changed Afcon from a 12 eight-team affair to a 16-team affair. Currently, the Afcon is a 24-team affair.

Under his watch, Caf created women’s age-group competitions (CAF Under-20 and Under-17 Africa Cup of Nations), and the African Nations Championship (Chan) which involves national teams playing in home-based leagues.

At the World Cup, Caf successfully persuaded Fifa to increase the number of slots reserved for Africa from two to five places, and to increase the number of seats reserved for Africa at the Fifa executive Committee from one to four.

During his term, Africa hosted the Fifa World Cup for the first time in 2010, in South Africa. As African football rose, his stature also rose.

One incident best illustrates Hayatou’s growing influence on the continent. In November 2014, he placed a call to Equatorial Guinea’s President-Teodore Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, asking his country to host the 2015 Afcon after Morocco pulled out, citing the outbreak of Ebola virus. The North African nation had feared that hosting the tournament at a time when Ebola was rocking west Africa would be a kin to opening up the country to ravages of the killer disease.

Hayatou was in a dilemma.

Barely two months to the start of Africa’s premier national football team tournament, Hayatou jetted into the Equatoguinean capital Malabo, and was received by Obiang Nguema himself at the presidential palace on November 14, 2014. The two struck a deal to replace Morocco as hosts.

“Following fraternal and fruitful discussions, the Head of State of Equatorial Guinea has agreed to host the tournament from January 17 to February 8, 2015,” Caf said in a statement at the time.

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“Therefore, the Executive Committee of Caf confirms that the Afcon 2015 will be held in Equatorial Guinea on the dates agreed,” the statement went on.

“The Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone should not paralyse continental programmes and events… Ebola outbreak is being surmounted and is by no means a reason to stall the Afcon,” Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma who was African Union Commission Chairperson at the time said in a statement, praising Equatorial Guinea’s acceptance to host the tournament.

But that episode also signaled the start of the end for Hayatou’s tight grip on African football. After the next edition in 2017 hosted in Gabon, his stay at the head of CAF came to an end.

Many Cameroonian football writers and stakeholders believe Fifa had a hand in Hayatou’s humiliating election loss to Ahmad Ahmad.

Prior to the election in Addis Ababa, Philip Chiyangwa, then president of the Council of Southern African Football Associations (Cosafa) had organised a meeting with members of the regional football association during which Ahmad was endorsed to succeed Hayatou in the presence of Fifa president, Gianni Infantino. Infantino had been “invited” to the meeting as a guest.

“The strategy to bring someone from nowhere worked as Hayatou already had a grip on influential members of the Caf executive committee, a few had tried to succeed him and ran into trouble,” Cameroonian football analyst, Franklin Sone Bayen said of Hayattou’s fate.

In 2002 when Hayatou contested the Fifa presidency against Sepp Blatter, even the Cameroon FA voted for Blatter. It is said that Hayatou’s compatriot Iya Mohammed who was president of Cameroonian football federation at the time, had been instructed by his government to vote for Blatter, who had earlier met President Biya in Yaounde during his campaign tour.

Yet Hayatou still played a key role in the awarding of the hosting rights of the 2019 Afcon to Cameroon. Caf, under Ahmad, later moved the tournament from Cameroon to Egypt, citing security challenges and delays in stadium construction. To critics, Ahmad was using the opportunity to settle scores against Hayatou.

Cameroon was then given hosting rights of the 2021 tournament, which was delayed by 12 months due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Two years after losing the contest for Caf’s leadership, Hayatou flew back to Cameroon from Cairo where he had lived most of life at Caf headquarters.

President Biya appointed him the chairperson of the Board of Directors of National Football Academy of Cameroon.

One thing always stuck out though. The Hayatou family had wielded so much political power, having been traditional holders of the sultanate known as Lamidat. The family remained influential throughout the reign of Cameroon’s first president, Ahmadou Ahidjo and later Biya. Hayatou’s brother Sadou Hayatou, served as Cameroon’s Prime Minister under Biya.

Hayatou’s other brother, Alim Garga Hayatou who had become the Sultan (Lamido) of Garoua, served as Secretary of State in the Ministry of Public Health as the officer in charge of epidemics and pandemics.

Speculation was rife that Hayatou would be appointed to the government peaked upon the death of his brother Alim Garga in 2021. When Garoua kingmakers gathered to pick a new Lamido, Hayatou was touted to be the next king (Lamido) of the dynasty, but his younger nephew, Army Captain Ibrahim El Rachidine, chosen for the royal seat.

Around the same time, Fifa slapped Hayatou with a one-year ban from all football-related activities for breach of code of ethics during his tenure as Caf boss. He was also fined $33,189.

Fifas investigations centered on $1billion deal Hayatou had signed with French company, Lagardere Sport for the commercialisation of media and marketing rights of Caf-organised competitions during his time as CAF president.

He appealed the matter at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

In February 2022, CAS ruled in his favour, and the ban was dropped.

The ban had deprived Hayatou of participating in the opening ceremony of 33rd edition of the Afcon in his homeland in January 2022. But the CAS decision meant he could attend the closing ceremony.