Corruption Among Kenyan Rugby Officials Threatens To Derail Driftwood Sevens

It is an unfortunate problem for Kenyan society that corruption has become part of our moral fabric. The scourge affects not only government positions, but it cuts across to the sports industry of Kenya, despite it being in its embryonic stages of growth.

Rugby events have become not so much about rugby, but they are also quite the cultural gathering, and the afterparties are quite sick as well. This led me to follow up on what was happening at this weekend’s Driftwood sevens, in order to plan my plans. What I ended up discovering was rather disturbing.

A friend of mine, who is currently stationed at the Mombasa Sports Club that was to host Driftwood, happened to overhear various arguments between the organisers of the event. Apparently the 7s tournament had been planned for a whole year, during which Mombasa Club had put out a tender for guys for the right to sell beer and water.

The real drama came two days to the event, when EABL, a frequent sponsor of rugby events wanted in on the action. Unfortunately for them, SAB Miller, the brand that sells Redds, Castle and other alcohol brands, had already applied and got the contract a few months back.

When EABL heard of this, they were not deterred. They talked to the Kenya Rugby Union(KRU), who apparently had previously signed a contract with EABL for 45million KShs. for EABL exclusivity in their tournaments. Here’s the catch: KRU had not disclosed this to the rugby venues. One may wonder why information as important as this was not availed. Could it be that the Rugby Union kept this major detail silent so as to avoid proper distribution of the proceeds between them and the venues?

To deal with this sticky situation, if EABL was to come in, the rugby union would have been forced to pay the Mombasa Club owed proceeds of around 500,000, backdated to 2011, when the contract was signed. Having been backed into a corner, the Kenya Rugby Union opted to cancel the event and put the blame on Mombasa Sports Club. KRU accused Mombasa Club of signing a contract with SAB Miller when they knew of the contract with EABL. Counter to that, officials from Mombasa Club and SAB Miller deny any knowledge of said contract.

In all this furore, someone is being economical with the truth. These are very large contracts, so it’s unintuitive for both sides to claim that it slipped their minds to tell the other. One would also ask as to why the KRU had not yet given the Mombasa Sports club their 500,000 KShs share of the 45million EABL contract since 2011? Further to this, the EABL contract with the Kenya Rugby Union was signed two years ago, with the view that proceeds would be split between them and the rugby venues, so it was KRU’s obligation to make this public information. That it hadn’t been done till now is a bad sign.

Eventually, Mombasa Club officials claim that they feel lied to, and have informed the Kenya Rugby Union that they don’t want their tournament to be on the Kenya 7s circuit. Driftwood 7s shall now be an independent tournament to which they have invited players. So the tournament is still on, but all the players at Driftwood are there under invitation, not under the rugby union. just now not under Kenya Rugby Union.