THE pride of the north, Real Tamale United (RTU), must be born again if it is to regain its past glory, so says the immediate past Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the club, Mr Abdallah Kassim.
According to him, the club has been plunged into a crisis which has stifled its progress for some years now.
Speaking to the Daily Graphic in an interview, Mr Kassim, who is also the Chairman of the RTU Old Players Association, said the first step towards revamping the club was to apply its constitution and “sanitize its governing and management bodies.”
The former CEO backed calls being made from some quarters for the dissolution of the Board of Directors, citing non-performance as the key factor.
“The present board has been in place for the past 17 years and they have little to show for it. They did relatively well at the inception of the professional league but since five years ago they have lost track, thereby dragging the club through relegation scares every year since 2006,” he noted.
Mr Kassim believes that the poor performance of the club in the premier league could be traced to the inefficiency of the board and not the management.
He observed that almost with each passing season, the club changes management, but the results remain the same.
Currently, the frenzy to dissolve the board is catching on rapidly and rising to a feverish pitch, but the pervasive question within the RTU fraternity is who has the power to reconstitute the Board when the need arises.
He noted that the power to do that is vested in the club’s chief patron. “This is contained in RTU’s constitution. RTU has a constitution that sets out the organizational structure of the club and how it must be managed,” he mentioned.
While some stakeholders deny the existence of a constitution, others acknowledge that there was one but it became null and void when the club became incorporated and came under the companies’ code and that once a company is incorporated it does not need a constitution.
“That assertion is misleading because, besides the companies’ regulations document which is statutory, ideally, a company requires a written statement of its principles, aims and objectives which it voluntarily develops, internally, to guide its operation - call it a constitution, a policy or a charter,” Mr Kassim countered.
“RTU has a constitution which the current Board has conveniently jettisoned, because they don’t want to be accountable to anybody,” he alleged.
The former CEO explained that the RTU constitution makes provision for a Council of Patrons chaired by a Chief Patron; the Council of Patrons is responsible for the Board of Directors which is also responsible for the Management Committee.
He said, as things stand now, neither the Board nor the management committee is working in accordance with any document, which spells out clearly their roles and responsibilities.
“There is no document to guide the governance and management of the club. There is no job description for the chief executive officer and this explains why the Board has a field day running the club at their own discretion and plunging it into dire straits,” he further asserted.
Mr. Kassim states that since the inception of RTU, the Chief Patron has always been vested in the Office of the Northern Regional Minister, and successive Regional Ministers have occupied that position, until some members of the current Board tried, and are still trying, to abolish the position-contrary to the constitution.
“It is evident that the Board of RTU has deviated from the path laid down by the constitution and using the fire brigade approach to decision making. The Board does not report to the Chief Patron, and it has never held any annual general conference,” he further stated.
The former CEO stated strongly that “the constitution must be revisited and applied to its letter and spirit. The organisational structure prescribed by the constitution must be adhered to. RTU must be born again. And the Northern Regional Minister is the only midwife to deliver it. And I mean the only Messiah to salvage it.”
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