Sierra Leone official AOD George told 'Beyond The Test World' the WACC would continue as a loose link between West African cricket playing countries once the four countries obtained individual ICC membership.

Apart from the four Commonwealth countries of West Africa, cricket is also played in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cote D'Ivore, Liberia and Togo. BTTW has also received unsubstantiated reports of cricket activity in Senegal.

(1) Consenus was also reached that to offset potential loss of funding by opting to terminate the WACC, which receives funding as an Associate member of the ICC, Nigeria would share the funding it would receive as an Associate member with Gambia, Ghana and Sierra Leone

(2) Nigeria has pulled out from the west African cricket conference at an extraordinary meeting of the Regional body held in Lagos Nigeria on Sunday 14th October,2001. Sierra-leone, Gambia and Ghana agreed to support Nigeria's bid for Direct Associate Membership of the ICC. The other 3 countries will become Affiliate members.

(3) Hoosain Ayob will do a preliminary inspection visit to Nigeria from 12th – 15th November, 2001. He will visit cricket Grounds in Owerri, Imo state in the South East Zone of the country and also Port-Harcourt in the South South Zone. Also he will launch the Zonal cricket development programme of the Nigeria cricket Association.

(4) Ayob will have a strategic meeting with the Board of the Nigeria cricket Association and then meet with members of the Association of cricket Umpires and Scorers of Nigeria and also with the Nigerian cricket coaches Association.

(5) Nigeria is ready and ripe for an ICC inspection visit as we have the structures on ground. Schools cricket development programme, Grounds, qualified coaches, Umpires, increased media interest, indigenous local participation, competitions, clubs and a long history of cricket.

At the weekend an Emergency General Meeting of the West Africa Cricket Conference comprising of Gambia, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, a dissolution proposal was considered and adopted as the best possible way for each member-country to pursue its aspiration cricket-wise. It has been extremely difficult to operate a multi-country institution made worse by the fact the member-countries though in a region, don't share common boundaries and inter-country communication was poor and commuting to other member-countries was similar to travelling to Europe/South Africa in terms of cost.

As a result the WACC resolved to dissolve and encourage its most developed member(Nigeria) for associate membership while the other three downgrade to affiliate members in the interim until facilities can be improved to enable them bid for associate level. This is on the caveat that if Nigeria's application succeeds, it will share funds that will accrue to it as an associate with the other three based on the WACC sharing formula. So once again, Nigeria will bid for associate membership having carried out a totally unco-ordinated bid last year which resulted in one of its sponsors not being convinced enough to support the application. Under a new chairman in Dr John Abebe, the present attempt will be more co-ordinated and hopefully will be far-reaching enough to get the ICC nod in June 2002 just like Tanzania did this year.

Wish us the best of endeavours.

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