As president of CAF since 1988, Hayatou had over the years exerted his influence over all corners of the confederation.
The Cameroonian for 29 years, dominated CAF, ruthlessly sweeping apart any form of resistance and for seven tenures had no viable oppositions.
The first real challenge to Hayatou in his 29 years as CAF boss came in 2017 and how did Ahmad plan the ouster?
A former footballer, Ahmad's journey in football administration began in 2003 when he became the president of the Malagasy Football Federation. After watching from the outside, Ahmad started making the moves to become CAF president in 2013.
He first won a seat on the CAF Executive Committee because of a rule restricting eligibility to the CAF presidency to only members of the committee.
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Immediately joining the CAF Executive Committee, Ahmad quietly began to pick his allies. The Malagasy started with his neighbours, members of Council of Southern Africa Football Associations (COSAFA)-South African, Botswanan, Namibian, Angolan and the Zimbabwean FAs.
His ambition to become CAF president wasn’t secret at this point but Hayatou and his camp were not bothered. In their almost 30 years at the helm of CAF, they encountered opposition which they had decimated ruthlessly.
Ahmad was going to be the next victim, no big deal.
The game changer for Ahmad was to convince the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) boss, Amaju Pinnick to be on his side.
Ahmad and Pinnick first sat down to discuss this issue at the 66th FIFA Congress in May 2016. The NFF boss quickly got on board and started to rally some other federations.
Pinnick in July 2016, hosted the president of FIFA -these were allies of Pinnick. That was one of the first moves in making the FIFA boss a supporter of Ahmad.
With Ahmad absent from that meeting in Nigeria, Hayatou did not suspect any foul play.
At the CAF level, the growing Ahmad movement was still unknown until the turn of the year when several federations publicly backed Ahmad. South African and the Nigerian federations did not join in the public support of Ahmad. They held back.
Ahmad needed more federations, so with the help of Pinnick and the South African FA, he convinced some of the North African federations to join them. The likes of Egypt and Morocco did.
Despite the rumours of Nigeria’s backing of Ahmad, Hayatou wasn’t sure. He asked Pinnick, but the NFF boss denied. The Cameroonian was however shocked when Ahmad in an interview, claimed that he had the support of Pinnick.
“NFF president President Amaju Pinnick is a close ally and he supports my bid to head CAF,” Ahmad said in a February interview with .
A week later, Pinnick confirmed it, telling that he believes CAF need a ‘new generation’ and also praised Ahmad’s courage in challenging Hayatou
Ahmad finally got Infantino’s support as the FIFA boss visited Zimbabwe one of the major backers of Ahmad.
Infantino made that visit in the disguise of coming to celebrate Zimbabwe Action Forum (ZAF) president Dr Philip Chiyangwa’s 58th birthday.
Pinnick, South Africa FA boss, Danny Jordaan and Liberia FA president, Musa Bility were the influential leaders from the 24 federations that were present.
It was at this meeting that strategies were planned and concluded for the election.
Hayatou was beaten but he wasn’t out yet. He went through the Cameroonian government to reach out to the Nigerian government and South African government.
Both governments made attempts to force Hayatou on their federations. They ignored and stood by Ahmad.
Ahmad won. Hayatou was beaten and now he’s out for good.