The former Gambian sports minister Modou Lamin Kabba Bajo was elected as president of the Gambia Football Federation (GFF) on Saturday.
The election was called following a decision by Fifa’s emergency committee in July, to sack the previous executive Gambia administration, led by Mustapha Kebbeh.
A normalisation committee was put in place by Fifa, who organised the weekend’s elections for a new GFF board. The election was held at a local hotel in Senegambia.
The members of that normalisation committee were not allowed to run in the election.
Kabba Bajo, aged 50, secured 28 votes from the 51 available. His opponent Buba Mbye Bojang got 23 votes.
In other key elected positions, Abdoulie Jallow, Ebou Faye and Martin Gomez were named as GFF vice presidents.
Alhagie Faye, Adama Lowe, Mam Lisa Camara and Sainabou Cham become co-opted members of the GFF board, and all seven regional football association presidents are part of the executive.
The country’s recent football issues emerged at the start of May, when Caf banned The Gambia from all its competitions – including the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations – after ruling that the GFF had fielded five over-aged players during a game against Liberia in the African U-20 Championship qualifiers.
In addition, Caf ruled that Ali Sowe, born in June 1994, had been found to have registered in 2012 in the Confederation Cup with an identical passport number but a birth date going back to 1988.
As a result, Fifa threw its support behind Caf, supporting the African body’s sanctions.