In a league teetering on the razor’s edge of climax, where every decision now carries the gravity of a title’s destiny, FUFA has, with baffling audacity, chosen not excellence, not credibility, but familiarity with controversy.
The appointment of Asadu Ssemere to officiate the seismic clash between Vipers SC and Kitara FC this Friday, is not merely questionable, it is an act of administrative self-sabotage dressed up as routine procedure.
One would imagine that with the Uganda Premier League entering its decisive stretch, nine games that will sculpt history, only the most refined, most trusted, and most internationally certified officials would be entrusted with the whistle.
Yet here we are, watching FUFA reach past a pool of FIFA-badged referees, bypassing competence like an inconvenient obstacle, to hand the stage to a man whose résumé reads less like a mark of distinction and more like a catalogue of disputes.
A referee without a FIFA badge in such a fixture is not just an oversight; it is a statement. A statement that standards are negotiable. That credibility is optional. That the guardians of the game are, perhaps, more enamored with controversy than they are committed to integrity.
And Ssemere? His history does little to soothe the growing unease. This is not a blank slate being given a chance, it is a repeat performance. From phantom goals that defy the laws of physics, to red cards dispensed with theatrical excess, his officiating has too often resembled chaos masquerading as authority.
The memory of that infamous Vipers vs KCCA encounter still lingers like a bad aftertaste, as does the farcical triple dismissal in the Express vs BUL saga. These are not minor blemishes; they are glaring red flags waving furiously in plain sight.
Yet, astonishingly, FUFA has looked at this record and thought, “Yes, this is the man for the job.”
It raises an uncomfortable question: what exactly is being rewarded here? Consistency? Hardly. Excellence? Certainly not. Or, one team is being targeted? If anything, this appointment feels like a nod to notoriety, a perverse validation that controversy, when persistent enough, becomes qualification.
Worse still is the dangerous implication that accompanies such a decision. A referee without international accreditation, without the burden of global scrutiny, walks into the most critical fixture of the season with little to lose and everything to gamble.
Accountability, in such circumstances, becomes a distant rumor rather than a governing principle.
For the integrity of the league, this is not just about one man with a whistle. It is about the message being sent, that when the stakes are highest, the system is at its most casual. That when precision is demanded, improvisation is supplied.
FUFA may call it an appointment. To the rest of us, it looks suspiciously like negligence with a uniform on.
And if this match descends into yet another chapter of officiating infamy, as history ominously suggests it might, FUFA will not have the luxury of surprise. They will, instead, have the burden of authorship.
