The football team of legislators representing Uganda in the ongoing East African Community (EAC) parliamentary games in Arusha, Tanzania, has today reportedly assaulted the centre referee during the game with their Tanzanian opponents.
Reports from Tanzania indicate that the Ugandans lost their cool following multiple biased decisions against them by the Tanzanian centre referee.
An source who watched the game told this news website that the quality of officiating this year’s games is lacking and that Ugandan MPs had severally informerly raised it with the organisers but their efforts for a remedy hit a dead end.
In today’s particular case, the source says Tanzania was already leading with a goal after “fraudulently awarding them a penalty”, when a defender from Tanzania used hands to deny Kampala Central MP Muhammad Nsereko an opportunity to equalize.
“Uganda was playing against Tanzania yet all the referees were Tanzanians. They were very biased from the start of the game. This would be seen by whoever was watching and that, has been their practice against us,” says the source who is also a Ugandan.
“It started when Tanzania was awarded a fraudulent penalty that almost made Ugandans to leave the pitch had they not been persuaded to stay. Minutes later into the game, Nsereko was going to equalise for Uganda but the defender from Tanzania caught the ball in the box. The assistant referee raised the flag for the penalty but the referee rejected it,” he adds.
He says it was at this moment that one of the Ugandan players, the sports minister for sports, Denis Hamson Obua, engaged in a physical confrontation with the referee before other players ran to attack the assistant referees. Plus News could not independently verify this.
Our efforts to reach the Minister and Uganda’s team leader Asuman Basalirwa were futile since their known telephone numbers were out of reach by publication of this story.
The East African Inter-Parliamentary Games kicked off on Monday and this is their 11th edition. The same team on Friday defeated Burundi 2-0.