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SO the long-awaited Confederation of African Football Player of the Year awards ceremony finally took place in Abuja, Nigeria, and all eyes were on our Khama Billiat, who was a firm favourite to be crowned the best of the crop of players plying their trade on the continent.

But CAF, as they have often done when it comes to us, somehow conspired to rob the Zimbabwean international and Mamelodi Sundowns midfielder the accolade which we feel he richly deserved.

While we respect the democratic process that CAF used to select the finalists for the award, we have every reason to feel Billiat was cheated of an award that was clearly his in a year in which he did just everything to win the top gong.

As we report elsewhere in this newspaper, CAF and their selection panel shocked even themselves when, in a shocking move pregnant with some football politics, decided to reward Billat’s teammate and goalkeeper Denis Onyango of Uganda with the award.

We believe that the CAF award, just like the Ballon d’Or should be an award of excellence, an award that rewards the best there is on the continent for the period under review.

Statistics do not lie and those statistics show that Billiat was the best African Player for 2016 with the 26-year-old midfielder having done exceptionally well to inspire Mamelodi Sundowns to the African Champions League title.

Billiat was also instrumental in leading his national team — the Warriors — to qualification for the African Cup of nations finals in Gabon by scoring three goals in that campaign in which Zimbabwe became the only team from the Southern African region to have made it among the 16 finalists at the biennial competition.

Similarly, Onyango played a key role in keeping goals for Sundowns and captained Uganda to qualification for the same Nations Cup tournament that will start next weekend in Libreville.

The Sundowns pair had competition from Zambian Rainford Kalaba, who had helped his Congolese club TP Mazembe win the CAF second tier inter-club competition the Confederation Cup.

We believe the competition for the CAF African Player of the Year award was a shoot-out between clubmates Billiat and Onyango and this means the selection panel had to consider the head-to-head contributions of the players, especially for the Sundowns cause, as they had both proved crucial for their respective national teams.

And we believe it is on the basis of the two players’ contributions to the Sundowns cause that Billiat had an edge and richly deserved to be rewarded in Abuja on Thursday night.

After all, Sundowns were crowned the Club of the Year in Africa and their coach Pitso Mosimane was crowned the best coach on the continent.

But just when we thought we had seen the last of the CAF conspiracy against Southern Africa and Zimbabwe, after the diabolical refereeing decisions that robbed the Mighty Warriors a chance of advancing from the group stages at the Women’s African Cup of Nations, this body led by Issa Hayatou had another disappointment in store for this country’s football family.

As a newspaper we voted Billiat as our Best Footballer in 2016 and we believe that we are not alone in believing that he should have been rightfully crowned the African Footballer of the Year.

Zambian legend Kalusha Bwalya, a member of the CAF Technical and Development Committee, voted for Billiat and he is a man who knows a lot about this game having been crowned the African Player of the Year in 1988.

We take nothing away from Onyango, who is an outstanding goalkeeper for both club and country, but there is more to it when one has to be considered the best that Africa had to offer in the year under review and that best man was Billiat.

Our argument is not influenced by sentimentality, but by the fact that Billiat made a greater impact in the Sundowns cause.

Such was his impact that when he caught a cold, Sundowns sneezed as epitomised by the games that they lost in his absence, including a 0-1 Champions League first round, first leg loss to Chicken Inn.

Billiat ensured the South African champions won their games by not only by providing the goals, but also in terms of the assists he provided and crucially his work ethic, sometimes having to shake off niggling injuries for the cause of the Brazilians.

While we respect the opinions of those who voted, we are still convinced that Billiat was robbed and the flawed outcome is an indictment on CAF, whose awards that seem to reward certain regions first before considering an individuals’ exploits.

It’s a shame and that’s why African football remains in the doldrums because it’s never about Fair Play.