![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Esayas-Jira-EFF-president.jpg?resize=639%2C356&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\nBBC – Esayas Jira has been voted in as the new head of Ethiopia’s Football Federation (EFF), following a long and protracted presidential election.<\/p>\n
The EFF presidential elections have been beset with problems and have been postponed by Fifa on four occasions.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The 46-year-old Esayas beat three other candidates for the top job, winning 87 of the 145 votes from the General Assembly in Semera.<\/p>\n
He was able to run as a candidate after receiving backing from the Oromia region, and secured a big lead over his closest challenger, Teka Assefaw, to seal the victory.<\/p>\n
“I am so overjoyed. After a long, overdue and rocky journey we put an end to this nightmare. I am just elated,” Jira told BBC Sport.<\/p>\n
In the first poll on Sunday 3 June, Jira beat Assefaw, outgoing president Juneidi Basha, and the outsider Tesfaye Kahesaye – but a FIFA representative deemed the election illegitimate after Jira failed to win a majority vote.<\/p>\n
In the re-run later in the day, Jira secured a landslide victory over Assefaw as Kahesaye and Basha resigned their candidatures.<\/p>\n
The election took eight months to conclude, after Fifa ordered Ethiopia to make changes to its electoral process in a bid to bring it in line with FIFA statutes.<\/p>\n
Jira has worked as a football administrator for the last 20 years, and most recently has been working as general manager at Ethiopian Premier League outfit, Jimma Aba Jifar FC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BBC – Esayas Jira has been voted in as the new head of Ethiopia’s Football Federation (EFF), following a long and protracted presidential election. The EFF presidential elections have been beset with problems and have been postponed by Fifa on four occasions. The 46-year-old Esayas beat three other candidates for the top job, winning 87 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":220242,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-220210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ethiopian-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Esayas-Jira-EFF-president.jpg?fit=639%2C356&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-VhM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220210"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":220243,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220210\/revisions\/220243"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}