Moroccaf’s AFCON 2025 con

IN case you haven’t noticed the adulterous relationship between Patrice Motsepe, his Confederation of African Football (CAF) and the Kingdom of Morocco, then consider the 2025 CAF Awards held in Rabat: Player of the Year (Men): Achraf Hakimi. Player of the Year (Women): Ghizlane Chebbak. Goalkeeper of the Year (Men): Yassine Bounou. Young Player of the Year (Men): Othmane Maamma. Young Player of the Year (Women): Doha El Madani.National Team of the Year (Men): Morocco U-20 team.Women’s Interclub Player of the Year: Sanaâ Mossy. Yeah: CAF of Morocco, by Morocco, and for Morocco. Nigerian players won the WAFCON, but were overlooked. Esther Okoronkwo with her key goals and assists did not even make top three: Chebbak won the award on a stage that had Rasheedat Ajibade. This notorious joint called CAF even gave the Women’s Coach of the Year award to Lamia Boumehdi despite her team, TP Mazembe, finishing third at the CAF Women’s Champions League. Justin Madugu, the man who led Nigeria’s Super Falcons to a tenth WAFCON trophy, was dumped in the trash can.

Through these awful awards, Motsepe and his goons want you to believe that everything good about African football is happening in Morocco, but this is blatant falsehood.  And the recently concluded, elaborate con called AFCON 2025 exposed corruption no one had thought to see so soon after the Hayatou years of the locust. As umpire, CAF– and its uncle FIFA – did not even hide their ludo game: watch the reaction of FIFA president Gianni Infantino to Brahim Diaz’s penalty miss against the Teranga Lions and whatever doubt you have instantly vanishes. That wasn’t a moment of mere football; it was corruption and politics exploding in the face of FIFA. Diaz wanted to ridicule Edouard Mendy, but ended up exposing the satanic plot. The scale of fraud weighed him down and he opted for a moment of flair but got flare in his face, like the lasers that his countrymen pointed at opponent goalkeepers’ faces all tournament.

Before another sentence, let’s give Morocco’s jack his jacket. Measured by purchasing power parity, the entire Moroccan economy is actually smaller than that of my home state (Lagos). But Morocco has clearly done well for itself. The facilities at the AFCON were top-notch. That’s incontestable. But the governance structure was noxious. Corrupt and rotten to the bone, CAF and its apologists did not even try to hide their Moroccomania. Nigeria forward Asisat Oshoala spotted the fraud: “The big question here is when will this whole @CAF_Online compensation to Morocco end? Awards, tournaments and all… it’s getting boring now. We need other countries to step up. Everything concerning African football happens in Morocco; it feels like that’s the new HQ.”

It’s poetic justice, isn’t it, that the most enduring image of AFCON 2025 will continue to be the Teranga Lions storming off the pitch after Morocco were awarded a soft penalty after referee Jean-Jacques Ndala had overruled a legitimate Senegal goal, not the CAF president and his FIFA boss handing Morocco the pre-arranged trophy? In that match, the Moroccan players were playing fall games and the referee was indulging them as usual. As analysts noted, during this cheating team’s game against Cameroon in the quarterfinals, the referee conveniently overlooked a penalty after a foul on forward Bryan Mbeumo. Bilal El Khannouss did notreceive a second yellow card after responding crudely to a Cameroon offensive. Referee Dahana Beida ignored Nayef Aguerd’s elbow strike on Christian Kofane.

Go through replays of the semi-final match against Nigeria, and you will see a Moroccan player defiantly kicking the ball into Afghanistan when a foul was called against him, with the full approbation of the referee, the ghost from Ghana who gave every 50-50 ball to the chosen victors. As someone said, even where the refereeing error was crystal clear, the broadcast refused to show playbacks. Morocco only allowed a sprinkle of Nigerian fans into the stadium, but even then, they were distributed among a sea of Moroccans. In the final minutes of Morocco’s game against Tanzania, Adam Masina’s foul on a Tanzanian player and the penalty that should have resulted were ignored.

And yeah, Hakimi the towel thief and his colleagues ended up winning the Fair Play award. They and their officials’ shameless behaviour on and off the pitch, including racist chants, didn’t bother Motsepe. I’ve seen clownishness, but this one definitely takes the cake. Article 8 of CAF’s AFCON Regulations says that “a Fair Play trophy shall be awarded to the team that will have shown the best fair-play spirit during the final phase of the Africa Cup of Nations, in conformity with the CAF Fair Play regulations.” But Motsepe and his gang gave the award to a team which used every conceivable trick to gain unfair advantage.

Of course, these fraudsters have their defenders. Something called Citizen Football wrote: “The claim that Morocco cheated their way to the AFCON final has no basis in fact. They beat every opponent fairly and deservedly.” You see, you can’t argue with people whose blindness is both innate and deliberate. Are we talking of the same Morocco that destabilised opponents’ goalkeepers by stealing their towels, the team that consistently hacked down Victor Osimhen and other opponents with zero consequences? The same Morocco that the referee favoured so blatantly that Alex Iwobi collapsed in exhaustion at a point? So it is fair to prevent opposition fans from getting tickets and cause opponents to travel long distances while you remain on the same spot? It is fair to try and spy on opponents? Truly, many are mad but only few are roaming.

 I guess it was extremely fair for the Morocco fans to throw bananas at Nwabali and others, and make monkey chants, exhibiting their bitter, violent hatred for Black Africans without as much as a whimper from CAF’s insanely corrupt, horrendously biased, Morocco-worshipping leadership!  A North African team tried to murder the Super Eagles mid-air during the AFCON qualifiers, but I guess that was fair too.

If you forgive all these atrocities in Morocco, surely you can’t forgive the mysterious deaths of two outspoken journalists, Mohamed Soumaré of Mali and Audrey Ibohin Ngoh of Cameroon, both of whom spoke out forcefully against the farce in AFCON 2025 but died mysteriously, less than a week apart, in their hotel rooms!

CAF won’t probe Morocco’s disgraceful behaviour, but it imposed speedy sanctions on Cameroon legend Samuel Eto’o, simply for protesting its corruption. It also descended on Senegal while ignoring Morocco’s murderous tactics. CAF isn’t just clueless; it is cruel and criminal. What a bunch of depraved clowns!

Re: Another word of caution for the Oyo palace

The current occupant of the stool of Alafin of Oyo, Oba AkeemOwoade, by my Google check, was 50 years old on July 17, 2025, while the current Olubadan of Ibadan, Oba Rashidi Adewolu Ladoja, was 81 years old on September 25, 2025. The age difference between the two monarchs is 31 years. According to Yoruba culture, elders are often accorded due/utmost respect willy-nilly if one is a true-born Yoruba individual. In your article of Saturday Tribune edition of January 17th, 2026, you offered enough historical accounts, advice and suggestions to Owoade to tread softly and realise that we are in the 21st century, not 17th century. And that “His Imperial Majesty should pursue the transformation of Oyo into a prosperous, modern enclave instead of chasing vainglory.”

I want to add my own unsolicited advice: he should tuck the hand of his child inside the cloth. In vernacular: ki o tèowoomo e boaso. Meaning: He should be very careful in his dealings and conduct with other monarchs. He is deliberately too confrontational and disrespectful. Since his ascension, he has been taking up too many needless battles with other neighbour Yoruba obas over supremacy of Obaship in Yoruba land. I suspect that he is being misled(?) by unscrupulous people in his kingdom of Oyo. Considering his youthful age, and the prospect of a peaceful long reign, Oba Owoade needs to cuddle humility and be a friendly neighbour. He should not imbibe arrogant and belligerent attitude, which can’t yield any positive dividends.

 Yacoob Abiodun (+17183079046), New York City, USA.