RWANDA FOOTBALL Federation (Ferwafa) has postponed the start of the 2014/15 Turbo King Football National League to October 18. Initially, the new season was due to begin today.

According to a statement, an investigative committee, which was set up by Ferwafa to do research on players who are suspected to hold double identity, is yet to complete its work, thus the postponement.

"The decision to postpone the league start has been take because the investigative committee has not completed its job because the time was not enough to know all the players who have been using double identity,”

"The committee will work closely with government institutions to know the real identifications of the players. Those are the Rwanda National Identity office, and immigration and emigration department as Ferwafa wants to know the real names of players, and Caf has advised Ferwafa that they have to know the real names of their players,” the statement reads in parts.

Ferwafa will not license players with dual identity following a decision taken by the general assembly last week.

The local football governing body wants the affected players to return to their real identity and if they feel they want to be Rwandan, they will pass through normal channels to acquire citizenship.

This came after it was discovered that quite a big number of players, mostly those coming from foreign leagues to play for Rwandan clubs, adopted new names once in Rwanda.

The investigative committee, chaired by Albert Mwanafunzi, has been given 28 days to complete the work of weeding out the players, who are not using their real names.

The decision was taken after Rwanda was disqualified from the group stages of the 2015 Africa Cup of National qualifiers for using a player with double identity — Dady Birori, known as Tady Egiti Etekiame at his Kinshasa-based club AS Vital.

The player was also on Wednesday suspended by Caf for two years from playing football.

Ferwafa said that they need at least a month to solve this problem before the 2014/15 season kicks offs.

peter.kamasa@newtimes.co.rw