Student boxers in Yaounde revive campaign for boxing in schools

Nineteen-year old Grace Nankinga is in Senior Four at Star Secondary School, Busega. But the $5000 (Shs18m) which she won as a bronze medalist from the 2023 AFBC Africa Boxing Championship, can pay for her tuition even beyond university, if she chooses to invest it in education. That is one of the reasons boxing, like other sports, should be a complement to academics.

Yet Nankinga, should have missed out on this opportunity if her club University of Pain, did not ensure that her classroom success should not substitute her ring business.

Then there is Zahara Nandawula, Sharua Ndagire Musa and Nadia Najjemba, who earned bursaries at Nsangi High School, through Kyengera Boxing Club. They won their first medals in the National Schools Championships, juggled books and gloves until they were selected alongside Nankinga for the African Championship in Yaounde, Cameroon.

Featherweight Kasim Murungi and light middleweight Muzamir Ssemuddu, who also fought in Yaounde, are also products of school boxing.

But many out talented students might miss out because the government indefinitely suspended boxing in schools, a decision Uganda Boxing Federation Moses Muhangi calls hypocritical and self-defeating.

“It is becoming increasingly inevitable to have boxing in schools because boxing is an Olympic sport, it’s in the Commonwealth Games to which Uganda subscribes,” Muhangi said on the dinner that congratulated Nankinga and the other six medalists from Yaounde, at Captain Mike Mukula’s home on Tuesday.

Former sports minister Hamson Obua was the last official to suspend boxing in schools in 2021. But his successor Peter Ogwang recently promised to solve the impasse.

“We are going to have a holistic discussion with the stakeholders about how boxing can return to schools,” Ogwang said on May 1, when boxing enthusiast Sam Lukanga celebrated 30 years in the sport.

“We need to agree on the criteria regarding safety gears and medical teams to ensure a safe boxing environment in schools,” he concluded. However, three months later, nothing has happened.

Muhangi said: “It does not make sense that an 18-year old boxer is not accepted to do boxing while in school, but if he is outside school he is accepted.

“That’s what our ministers need to consider, and the longer we take, the more we lose as a country, because other countries are doing boxing in schools.”

Muhangi said UBF shall continue engaging the authorities. “But we shouldn’t even be explaining more because it is self-explanatory.”