Nigeria leads Africa’s breakaway ‘to save Olympic boxing’

Nigeria has become the first African federation to break away from the International Boxing Association (IBA) and confirmed its membership with World Boxing, an organisation that rose at the peak of IBA’s wrangles with the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

World Boxing started in April to secure boxing’s troubled Olympic future and wants to fill the void left after the IOC expelled IBA from the Olympic Movement in June.

USA Boxing, who broke away from IBA, from New Zealand, Germany and the Netherlands were the first federations to join World Boxing. Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Honduras and Sweden joined, among others, before Nigeria became  the 22nd member. 

However, this has deeply divided the Nigerian Boxing Federation (NBF). Vice-president Azania Omo-Agege insists that World Boxing’s claims of NBF’s membership is false and illegal, and reiterated Nigeria’s loyalty to IBA. He even threatened legal action if World Boxing does not "cease interference".

In an October 23 letter, a copy of which Daily Monitor received, NBF President Kenneth Minimah affirmed Nigeria’s affiliation with the new body, a decision he said was validated by the NBF executive board.

Omo-Agege is the Africa Boxing Confederation (AFBC) interim president since Cameroonian Bertrand Mendouga was forced out in August, just after a year in office.  Omo-Agege was seeking to make his presidency permanent in the forthcoming AFBC congress. But his NBF boss Minimah claimed that “his selfish ambition” to contest for the presidency “beclouded his reason of seeing the bold step taken by the Federation to salvage Nigerian Boxing from sinking with others.”

After missing the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, Nigeria qualified three boxers to the Paris 2024 Olympics through the African Olympic qualifiers in Dakar, Senegal, in September meanwhile denying the dominant Algeria two gold medals.

What next?

In May, IBA suspended New Zealand, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden for joining World Boxing, which IBA president Umar Kremlev christened a 'rogue' rival organisation.

Daily Monitor contacted World Boxing on how Nigeria’s membership could affect its affiliation with IBA.

“World Boxing has nothing in place to prevent a National Federation being a member of both World Boxing and IBA. Put simply, there is nothing to stop a National Federation that is currently part of IBA from applying for membership of World Boxing,” Lee Murgatroyd, director, Point Communications, replied via email.

“Initially IBA chose to suspend some National Federations that joined World Boxing…However, it may have stopped this practice as I do not believe it has suspended other countries that have gone on to join World Boxing.”

By press time, IBA had not responded to the several queries on the matter.

Both IBA and World Boxing need the numbers and every entry or exit matters. Earlier this month, 30 African federations accused IBA’s Boxing Independent Integrity Unit Nomination Unit of lacking integrity in vetting candidates for the AFBC polls. IBA dismissed the claims but the October 13 elections were postponed till November.

If Omo-Agege’s candidature is cancelled,  it favours other candidates like Uganda’s Moses Muhangi. Likewise if Nigeria does not reverse its World Boxing project—like SwissBoxing did in June—it could encourage other African federations to join.