Minsep says one month needed to rehabilitate degraded Japoma stadium

The 50,000-seater Japoma stadium in Douala is not usable at the moment and will require at least one month to be rehabilitated, the Ministry of Sports and Physical Education (Minsep) has said.

ONIES, the body responsible for managing the stadium, said the Japoma has degraded due to heavy rainfall and overuse.

It hosted the CAF Champions League game between Victoria United of Cameroon and FC Smartex Smartex of Ghana on August 18.

Before then, Central African Republic borrowed the stadium to host a game between its home club Red Star and Djodiba AC De Bamako as part of the CAF Champions League.

ONIES indicated that the stadium’s turf had degraded and further use will mar the football experience.

Owing to this disability, the Japoma Sports Complex was disqualified from hosting the Cameroon-Namibia AFCON 2025 qualifiers game on September 7.

In a statement released on Friday after a preparatory meeting ahead of the match, the Ministry of Sports revealed that “…this infrastructure, faced with a case of force majeure, is in a state of temporary unavailability.”

It added: “This is for an irreducible period of around thirty days. During this period until September 19, 2024, curative maintenance and preventive upgrading work on the playing area will be carried out in order to remedy the degradation of the lawn following its overexploitation and heavy rainfall.”

Many Cameroonians were taken aback when it was revealed that the Japoma stadium, a relatively new infrastructure, could not be used after just a few months of rainfall.

The stadium was constructed in 2017 and opened in 2020 and hosted the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations and the 2024 African Athletics Championship.

The stadium is part of a sports complex that also includes an indoor arena for basketball, handball, futsal and volleyball, tennis courts and an eight-lane Olympic-size swimming pool, as well as conference and commercial centres, a hotel and a parking lot.

©Mimi Mefo Info