
Liberty Stadium Ibadan: An ‘Abandoned’ African Pride
The Liberty Stadium in Ibadan, the first to be constructed in Nigeria and Africa in 1960, shot the country into the world boxing fame in 1962 when it hosted the first world boxing title fight in Africa. The bout saw Nigeria’s Dick Tiger beating America’s Gene Fullmer to win the world middleweight boxing title.
The complex was one of the several infrastructure and institutions that the Chief Obafemi Awolowo government established and programmed to take the region and by extension Nigeria and the Black race to the pinnacle of global emancipation and development.
And from the early 1960s, through …