Rules of Boxing

By

mmjega@yahoo.com

Right now, at least a dozen persons have signified an interest to seek the presidency of the Federal Republic in next year’s elections. There are many thousands of other Nigerians who have not publicly signified an interest to do so, but who have nevertheless been assured by bokaye and babalawos that the soon-to-be-vacated presidential chair will swing and twist and turn, only to land at their own feet. Thinking about this crazy political scene this week reminds me of Lt-Colonel Oliver North, the controversial officer who served in the American National Security Adviser’s office under President Ronald Reagan. Ollie North quoted his former boxing coach at the US Marine Academy to have said, “There are only three rules to boxing. Keep your hands up. Keep your feet moving. And keep your goddamn arse off the ground”. When you think about it, the boxing coach may actually be referring to the Nigerian political arena. Nigerian politics is very much like a boxing contest. Not the modern one, which has an elaborate set of do’s and don’ts, but the boxing contests of the ancient Greek and other eras. Boxing is the art of attack and defence with the fists. In Nigerian politics however, not only the fists, but the legs, the head, fingers, teeth and saliva are freely employed as well. A boxer requires very good coordination of the brain, hands and feet; a Nigerian politician requires a very good coordination of the mouth, tongue, eyes, ears, nostrils and the stomach as well. A modern boxer wears padded gloves with which he hits his opponent. If a Nigerian politician does wear padded gloves, you should expect to find some stones, nails, iron rods and pieces of broken bottle stuffed inside them. A modern boxing match lasts a maximum of 15 rounds of 3 minutes each, with a minute’s rest after each round. In contrast, a Nigerian election contest has no rounds, no time to rest and no time limits. A presidential aspirant must be ready to forgo sleep for many years, to receive uninvited visitors at all hours, and to solve every personal problem of his “supporters” from naming ceremonies to funeral expenses to hospital bills and house rent to paying dowries. Nor is there a time limit to an election contest here; the Obasanjo-Buhari election contest of 2003 was not resolved until last year, when more than half the tenure in question was gone. A modern boxing contest observes what is known as the Queensberry Rules. These rules, first adopted in 1867, were named after the Marquees of Queensberry, John Sholto Douglass. One of the rules’ important provisions is that boxers must be matched in categories according to their weight and ability. These categories include flyweight, bantamweight, featherweight, lightweight, welterweight, middleweight, light heavyweight and heavyweight. On paper at least, Nigerian political contest is also categorized into councillorship, local government chairman, state assemblyman, federal representative, senator, governor and president, but you often find politicians barely suitable for a councillorship running for President. This is akin to a 50-kg fighter, who should be in the flyweight category, wading into a heavyweight boxing contest. The Queensberry rules also sought to sanitise boxing by outlawing kicking, gouging the eyes, head butts, biting, and delivering blows below the belt. The fact that Nigerian election laws also sought to sanitise contests by outlawing bribery, campaigning in mosques and churches, use of foul language, consulting secret cults and deployment of militias [popularly known as ‘political thugs’] has not in any way banished any of these things from the scene.

There are three main types of punches in modern boxing, namely the straight jab, the hook, and the uppercut. Varieties of these punches however include the jab, the swing, bolo, and the cross. True to what the Marine Academy coach said, a Nigerian politician must keep his hands up to protect himself from body jabs [such as, allegations that he has nothing to offer], or left hooks [charges that he is a non-performer], right crosses [charges that he stole public funds] and upper cuts [accusations that he supported Third Term]. In fact, Nigerian politics resembles the ancient Greek sport of pugilism, more than it resembles modern boxing. A Greek pugilist, unlike a modern boxer, had no use for cleverness or agility; what he needed most were raw strength, courage and endurance. For, pugilists fought in the open air, bound by spectators, with no resined canvass to manoeuvre upon, no ropes, no corners, no rounds and no referee. The fight continued until one pugilist admitted defeat, or if he simply died. In fact, during the XXXIII Greek Olympiad at Athens in 648 BC, a sport called “complete contest” was introduced. It was a combination of pugilism and wrestling. This looks very much like the modern Nigerian political contest, a bare-knuckled affair where all means are allowed as long as victory is secured. In addition to keeping his hands up, a Nigerian politician must keep his feet moving-----between political parties, between camps within political parties, and between the shifting fortunes of political godfathers. No wonder that in the past year, many ambitious Nigerian politicians printed campaign posters without any party symbols on them. A man will print and circulate posters announcing that he is running for president or governor---but won’t say to which party he belongs. Some major presidential contenders who are members of some parties, nevertheless created other parties and held them in reserve, just in case. A governor who led a ruling party in a state for seven years suddenly abandoned it for another party. Yet another governor formed a party all his own; one curious newspaper report I read last week flatly stated that “the DPP is owned by the Governor of Sokoto State, Alhaji Attahiru Bafarawa”. I am yet to see his denial.

A modern boxing contest has a referee and two other ringside judges. If the match goes the full rounds, all three will tabulate their results to determine who won on points. Nigeria’s electoral contest however has only one referee, INEC, whose impartiality is totally unbelieved by most of the contestants. A boxing referee can declare one boxer knocked out if he is unable to resume the fight after a count of 10. In Nigerian elections, the referee sometimes declares you knocked out while you are still standing on your feet. In 1983, when I went to the polling station at 9am to cast my vote in an election, the presiding over told me that everyone had voted and all the names on the voters’ register had been ticked. A boxing referee has other powers. He can declare a boxer to be technically knocked out if he thinks the man is no longer capable of defending himself [that is, can’t keep his hands up], or when he thinks a fighter has sustained too serious an injury to continue the fight, or even, when he thinks one of the boxers is too far behind ability-wise to have any chance of winning the fight. The Nigerian election commission’s powers exceed those of the boxing referee, because it can declare a candidate to be TKOed [by disqualifying him], without following similar stringent processes. Under existing rules, an election candidate in Nigeria can only be disqualified by INEC if he fails to meet the age and minimum education requirement, or he had been convicted by a court for crimes involving dishonesty. However, INEC has now extra-legally invited the EFCC to screen election candidates, using criteria not mentioned in either the Constitution or the Electoral Act. EFCC chairman Nuhu Ribadu, who is more powerful than the president of the World Boxing Federation, has said “no corrupt person will be allowed to contest for election”. ‘Corrupt’ in law means one who was convicted as such by a court, but Ribadu’s definition apparently means anyone on whom EFCC has a dossier, one supplied by the PDP secretariat and the Obasanjo presidency. Anyway, a referee can also end a boxing contest when one of the boxers asks for it, or when his coach “throws in the towel” into the ring in order to protect his fighter from further suffering. This is not a power that any Nigerian election official will get to exercise any time soon. For, it will be unNigerian for any politician to ever admit that he was defeated by the aggregation of popular votes. There is a good reason for that. In 1997, a local government election in my native local government, which ended in victory for DPN, resulted in a protracted battle at the election tribunal. I therefore asked a UNCP chieftain at the time, Alhaji Garba Dandiga, why they will not simply concede and end that agony. He said, “In Nigeria here, if you lose an election and in the so-called spirit of sportsmanship you concede victory, by tomorrow, all your supporters will cross over to the house of the winner and you will be left all alone. However, if you go to the tribunal, your supporters will gather in front of your house every morning. You will eat together, exchange political information and gossip, then move out together to go to the court. There, you will meet your opponent, also with all his supporters. There will be pushing, shoving, insults and even some exchange of blows between your supporters and his supporters. By the time the court case ends, even if you don’t win, so much bad blood has been generated between the two camps that no member of your camp can cross over to the other side, even if he wants to” In other words, in Nigerian politics as well as in boxing, you must keep your a--- off the ground.