A grandson of Uganda’s former military ruler, Idi Amin Dada, is Aziz Abdul, better known as “Ringo.” Like his grandfather, the young Ugandan is a super-heavyweight boxer who competed at the Commonwealth Games, which ended yesterday, August 2. He left the ring at the weekend convinced that he had been denied victory by a biased referee.
Reflecting on the defeat in an interview with the BBC, Ringo recalled the boxing philosophy his grandfather often preached: “Don’t try to win on points—you will be cheated. Knock out your opponent, so the referee has no choice.” Repeating the old man’s advice, Ringo told the BBC: “He said if you want to win, you have to knock out your opponent. There are only two decisions: win or lose. There is no draw here.”
President Bola Tinubu appears to share something of that Idi Amin boxing creed. Addressing members of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria (CBCN) last week, he declared that “all is fair in politics” and warned that anyone seeking to take power from him must be prepared to fight (dirty) for it. “I asked for this job. Those who want to take it from me will have to fight for it. Politics is about competition, and we will wrestle to the finish,” he said.
My president’s wrestling metaphor for politics is intriguing. Having lived in the United States for years, he must have had American professional wrestling with all its theatrics, rivalries and violence in mind. His generation and mine will remember the legendary professional wrestler, Bulldog Brower, a bruising character who fought by every rule and beyond every rule. He fought fair when it suited him, fought dirty when it didn’t. He usually found a way to leave with his hand raised.
I found much to ponder in Nicholas Sammond’s ‘Steel Chair to the Head: The Pleasure and Pain of Professional Wrestling’. In that collection, Henry Jenkins, in his ‘Never Trust a Snake’, argues that professional wrestling is less about fair competition than about the clash between the “perfect bastard” and the suffering hero. In bouts, spectators are not looking for justice; they crave spectacle: heroes and villains, betrayal and revenge; drama and a decisive ending.
French literary critic and semiotician, Roland Gérard Barthes (1915 –1980) made the same point decades earlier. Wrestling, he wrote, is not merely a sport but a “morality play.” People do not troop into arenas to watch an equitable contest. They come to witness good triumph over evil—or evil triumph over good—in a satisfying performance. Politics, especially in our clime, often follows the same script. Crowds cheer as combatants exchange blows, and when the curtain falls, someone is carried out of the arena or wobbles out. Sometimes it is only a political career that dies. Sometimes, as our history sadly shows, the casualties are flesh and blood.
In one of his memorable quotes, Idi Amin said “politics is like boxing – you try to knock out your opponents.” My president spoke of wrestling, not boxing. But wrestling has always borrowed something from boxing. That is why I bring into this story a boxing tragedy that occured in Lagos in June 1953.
Michael Gennaro, in his 2019 study, ‘Ban This Cruel Sport Boxing’, recounts one of the darkest episodes in Nigeria’s sporting history. At a promotion in Lagos, lightweight boxer Dapo “Homicide” Ilori was knocked out by Eddie Phillips. Assisted from the ring after complaining of exhaustion, Ilori died hours later at the General Hospital. Lagos newspapers splashed the tragedy across their front pages. The Nigerian Daily Times of July 1, 1953 carried the haunting headline, “The Last Punch.” The West African Pilot, also on July 1, chose an even more chilling epitaph: “He Walked from the Ring to the Graveyard.”
As if one tragedy was not enough, another boxer on the same fight card, same day, Billy Armstrong, was knocked unconscious and remained in a coma for five days. Deadly sport. Yet, as Gennaro notes, newspapers still described the evening as a thrilling spectacle for “the cheering crowd,” full of “fast and furious punching” and some of the finest boxing Lagos had witnessed.
That, perhaps, is the enduring lesson for politics. Look back at Nigeria’s previous electoral contests. Look, too, at what is unfolding in Osun State as it heads to the governorship poll on August 15. The spectators cheer; the contestants revel in combat; bullets and blows; arrests and protests. When the political war is over, victory will intoxicate the winners while the wounded are left sprawled in the ring—or carried to the hospital. In politics, the casualties are both physical and otherwise. People die. Careers are broken. Reputations are shattered. Friendships are killed and buried. Properties are lost. Popcorn in hand and mouth, the crowd moves on to the next theatre.
But, in talking tough before the Catholic bishops, Tinubu was merely stating the obvious. In 2023, he fought for that office and defeated a formidable coalition of friends and foes. Power was not gifted to him; he wrestled for it. And when he declared last week that “all is fair in politics,” he was repeating a political creed to everyone who cared to listen: to him, victory matters more than the finesse of legalese.
As the president huffed and puffed before the bishops, I told myself that the brass bracelet of power is already fastened to the wrist of this warrior-king. School or no school; certificate or no certificate; a ti t’òjé bọ olóòṣà lọ́wọ́, ó kú baba ẹni tí ó bọ́ọ̀. The mantle he wears from Borgu is woven with the threads of war. The one from Lagos bears the scent of the goddess of the sea. In Yorubaland, he would be called both ẹni ogun—the man of war—and ẹni oògùn—the man of medicine, mystery and magical power. In his shrine in pairs, steel and sorcery; money and the mint breathe life into each other. With one hand he wields the sword; with the other, he summons the charm.
And for those crying, “Ẹbi ń pa mí” (I am hungry), the president had something to chew on. He said: “There had been hunger in Nigeria before I was born.”
If you had working eyes, you would see in that statement a wide window into the president’s mind. It revealed a leader who sees hunger not as an emergency to be defeated but as an old national companion to be endured. The man elected to confront the country’s deepest afflictions reminded the hungry that their forebears also lived with empty stomachs. The message was stark: hunger predates me; endure it, as your ancestors did.
And he said so in the very presence of men commanded by their Lord to feed the hungry as a core duty of faith. Faith, in Islam and Christianity, demands that a leader actively advocate for the welfare of the poor. The president professes not Christianity but his wife is a Christian; some of his children are also. Could they read to him Matthew 25:35-40. When you give food to the hungry, you are doing it directly to God. There are other verses that bring light into the dark life of the hungry: Isaiah 58:10; even James 2:15-16.
The president is a Muslim. The Qur’an leaves little room for indifference to hunger. Alhaji Tinubu should ask his malam to take him through the Qur’an’s teachings on hunger and compassion. Surah Al-Insan (76:8–9) praises those who feed the needy purely for the sake of Allah. Surah Al-Balad (90:14–16) counts feeding the hungry among the steep paths of righteousness. Surah Al-Haqqah (69:33–34) condemns those who neither believed nor encouraged the feeding of the poor. And Surah Al-Ma’un (107:1–3) asks a haunting question: “Have you seen the one who denies the Judgment?” It answers: “It is he who repulses the orphan and does not encourage the feeding of the poor.”
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) reinforced the same ethic when he warned that a person is not a true believer if he goes to bed with a full stomach while knowing that his neighbour is hungry.
But the Villa is a long way from the streets bustling with hunger and beggars.
Those bishops, what was their reason for their invasion of the Villa? Someone said the bishops thought they could frighten the Commander-in-Chief into rethinking a second-term bid. Why should anyone expect the man who proclaimed Emilokan (It is my turn) three years ago and, against all odds, got it, to now quietly accept that his turn should end after only four years?
Since the beginning of man, not a few leaders have taken power for skin rather than the garment which Shakespeare knew it to be. In Measure for Measure, the playwright spoke of “man, proud man, dressed in a little brief authority.” But in Aso Rock, authority is rarely “brief” in the hard mind of those who possess it. Every occupant dreams of making the borrowed robe take on permanent skin. The truth is, for man, offices are much easier to enter than to leave. The Nigerian presidency, with all its seductive allure, has consistently proven to be the hardest office of all to relinquish.
So, even if the heavens were to decree, “Enough. One term is enough,” Tinubu would probably insist on another round. Power is honey; those who have tasted its comb seldom surrender it willingly.
The “I-will-spend-one-term” politician is rather like the man who whispers to a woman in bed: “I won’t go too far… Just the tip!” Liar. Experience teaches that such promises seldom survive contact with power. Appetite grows by what it feeds on. This husband will not be content with the usual ration. As it has been with his governorship in Lagos, Tinubu’s presidency gives every indication that it will not end after even the next term. He has shown every sign that he is not a man who embraces premature exits. Nigerians should prepare for a long haul.
Emilokan was the battle cry of entitlement in 2023. Three years later, it remains a governing creed. The President has made it abundantly clear that he has no intention of surrendering his mandate after one term. Not even a distinguished delegation of Catholic bishops heard from him the language of restraint or retreat.
Archbishop John Onaiyekan, who was part of the delegation, came away with one unmistakable impression: the President is determined to seek and win re-election at all costs. Tinubu himself had already unveiled his battle plan. Politics, he said, is wrestling. Wrestlers do not enter the arena expecting to lose.
Tinubu is already on his way to the battlefield. He has not pretended otherwise. He has sounded the bugle himself. Politics, after all, has often been described as war by other means. Nigerians should therefore prepare for a bruising contest this year and the next. There is nothing unusual about that. Every incumbent wants to remain incumbent.
What I found unusual was what came next from our man.
Having declared himself a wrestler, the President also volunteered to become the chief defender of the referee.
“The opportunities are equal. INEC is neutral. They have never intimidated anyone,” he told the bishops.
“If political opponents are crying wolf, maybe they are afraid of their own shadows and the company they keep, not me,” he added.
That should worry every democrat.
In football, when a player begins defending the referee before the opening whistle is blown, suspicion naturally shifts from the terraces to the centre of the pitch. The same will be true of wrestling, Tinubu’s favourite sport. Contestants are expected to compete under the rules, not certify the neutrality of those enforcing them.
The cameras spared us the faces of the bishops as those heavy words fell from the lips of the emperor. The bishops urged the president to leave behind stronger democratic institutions and elections that are demonstrably free and fair. The President responded by personally certifying INEC’s neutrality and dismissing its critics as people “afraid of their own shadows.”
Should a contestant be the one vouching for the impartiality of the umpire?
If the ancient Romans and the great English jurist, Sir Edward Coke, could hear the president, they would remind him of the enduring maxim: nemo judex in causa sua—no one should be a judge in his own cause. A litigant does not write the judge’s character reference. A footballer does not certify the referee’s neutrality. Neither should a presidential contestant become the electoral commission’s public relations officer.
If I were one of his real opponents, I would fasten my seat belt because a turbulence is ahead. As the incumbent, Tinubu enjoys enormous structural advantages. He commands the prestige of office, the machinery of the federal government and the immense powers that accompany the presidency. He (possibly) has INEC, he has the NURTW, he has the police, the army and all their guns and goons. He owns all the monies in our pockets and bank accounts. His opponents know this. That is why they cannot afford to fight only the battle they see. They must also anticipate the battle they do not see.
That takes me back to the wrestler many younger Nigerians may never have heard of: Dick “Bulldog” Brower.
For readers too young to remember him, Brower was one of professional wrestling’s greatest villains in the 1970s to early 80s. Cruel, ruthless and delightfully unpredictable, he was the archetypal heel—the bad man the crowd loved to hated; the villain who delighted in being disliked. Opponents he could not beat, Brower bit, his savage teeth deep in their flesh. The man’s greatest rival was the immensely popular Mighty Igor, a fan favourite whose strength and simplicity made him the embodiment of virtue inside the ring.
One famous 1975 contest between the two has survived as a lesson in strategy. Brower realised that he could not defeat Igor in a straightforward fight. So he changed the contest. Instead of concentrating on his opponent, he turned on Igor’s manager, Ivan Kalmikoff, beating him mercilessly before the horrified crowd. It was psychological warfare. The attack drove Igor into a blind rage. Forgetting the referee, the rules and even the championship itself, Igor pummeled Brower without restraint. The spectators roared. Justice, it seemed, had been done. But wrestling has its own logic. Igor was disqualified. Brower, though battered and beaten, retained his championship belt.
There is a lesson there for Nigeria’s opposition.
Tinubu did not become President by underestimating his opponents or by respecting the rules and the law. Nor did he get there by expecting them to play according to his preferred script. He understands politics as combat, not conversation. He said as much when he hosted those bishops. Anyone hoping to defeat him must therefore resist the temptation to fight by the rules.
The opposition should remember Brower and Igor. In politics, as in wrestling, there are traps laid by the foxy. A careless opponent can win the applause of the crowd and still lose the contest. It happened to Idi Amin’s grandson at the weekend.
When Tinubu stood before the Catholic bishops and declared that “all is fair in politics,” he was not just speaking about the next election. He was advertising his understanding of power. He was telling friend and foe alike that he intends to remain champion even if the poll says otherwise. Whether one admires or detests that philosophy is another matter. What no one should do is pretend not to have heard him.
The president’s enemies are saying that a president should never preach a politics of “anything goes.” They say that is the implication of President Tinubu’s declaration that “all is fair in politics.” The occupant of the highest office in the land should elevate our democratic culture, not legitimise the law of the jungle. Democracy is meant to be a contest of ideas, principles and programmes, not a boxing or wrestling ring where victory justifies every blow and the loudest cheers drown out the cries of those left battered on the canvas.
But the man who set the whole village ablaze will always have admirers who praise the warmth of the flames. Tinubu’s fans have asked me to tell you that if you dislike what the president said, you can do what Fuji General, Kollington Ayinla, once advised: go to the nearest police station and lodge a complaint with the DPO. Ìpàkọ́ ò gboṣùtì, orí elégàn ló bàjẹ́. The back of the head does not hear a hiss; it is the head of the mocker; the scoffer’s head, that has gone bad.
Where do I stand? I will not end without firing a shot in the arm. When politics is embraced as a blood sport where “all is fair,” its participants should remember the warning etched into Nigeria’s sporting history: the boxing tragedies of Lagos in June 1953. Every contest promises applause, but not every victor survives the victory. Some fights end with “The Last Punch.” Others end with a man who, in the unforgettable words of the West African Pilot, “walked from the ring to the graveyard.” Politics fought as war can consume even its winners.
The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.
