CAF concludes two-day Senior Supervisors Commanders’ workshop in Nairobi ahead of TotalEnergies CAF CHAN 2024
Dr. Christian Emeruwa, the Head of CAF’s Safety and Security department is confident that the East African region is well on course ahead of its first ever joint major tournament, the TotalEnergies CAF African Nations Championship (CHAN) set for August.
Dr. Emeruwa says he is impressed with the caliber of the security workforce and the zeal to work exhibited by personnel from all the host countries, after conducting the last of three workshops for senior supervisors in Nairobi on Friday.
“In terms of personnel, what we have seen is impressive and commendable. We are happy with the people we have trained. They have been very positive and receptive in terms of the training and we are confident that we have the right people. But, we still have some way to go in terms of getting enough material for the personnel to work,” Dr Emeruwa said.
He conducted the first workshop in Tanzania, culminating with practical work at the TotalEnergies CAF Confederation Cup final between Simba SC and RS Berkane in Zanzibar before heading to Uganda.
He then conducted the workshop in Nairobi, bringing together 40 senior security personnel from the National Police Service as well as officials from both the Ministry of Sports and Interior Coordination.
“For us it is very important to get all the security stakeholders in a room and expose them to the CAF way of doing things. We are not here to teach them how to police the country. Football has its own security requirements and programs which are not openly available to the conventional police,” Dr Christian said.
He added; “We needed to expose them to this kind of training and also let them know what is coming to them. CHAN is the second biggest tournament in CAF; it is not just a once-off game. We have tried to show them what has happened in other countries, and for a country well connected from the borders we expect quite a lot of people coming in for this tournament.”
The two-day workshop culminated in a practical session at the Nyayo National Stadium, one of the principal host stadia of the tournament. They were taken through various crowd control measures, including managing entry of spectators and manning ticket verification points.
“This was a brilliant platform for us to get rolling in terms of helping our security personnel understand how football security operations are done. It is very different from the normal day to day job of the police and there have been massive benefits from this training by CAF. Locally we have endeavored to train as many police officers as possible to ensure that we have a very safe CHAN in August,” said Austin Oduor, CAF’s National Safety and Security Officer, Kenya.
The TotalEnergies CAF CHAN is scheduled for August, and this will be the first time three countries will be co-hosting the tournament specially tailor-made for locally-based players.
