ABUJA: Legs taut, backs bent at the waist, the wrestlers slowly stretched out their arms towards each other, searching for a grip while trying to avoid becoming exposed themselves. In a flash it was all over—a tangle of grappling, pushing and jostling that ended with the Beninese fighter tossed to the ground by her Nigerian counterpart, the soft sand surface spraying out beneath her. Traditional west African wrestling—and the gargantuan, sometimes sumo-like men who step into the ring—captivates audiences across the region, from stadiums in Senegal to desert villages in Niger.

This week’s ECOWAS wrestling tournament, however, marked the first time that the annual showdown featured a women’s division, drawing competitors from across the regional bloc to the Nigerian capital Abuja. “Women know how to fight. We just had to be given a chance,” 33-year-old Ivorian fighter Celine Bakayoko told AFP on Friday from the sidelines. She only started competing professionally in 2019, but she said she grew up wrestling with her friends, adding that “for us, it’s not a sport, it’s an innate practice.” “They look serious, they don’t look like they’re just coming here to fill a gap,” spectator Yussuff Fashola said.

Though the tournament, which continued into the weekend, marked a step forwards for women in the male-dominated sport, “to get other females on your team, to be able to train with them... that’s the challenge,” said Ghana’s Jocelyn Asante. But even after suffering a defeat on Friday, Liberia’s Garmai Sanghno found a silver lining in “representing my country” and using the opportunity to “develop skills” for future bouts.

Missing champions

Missing, however, was last year’s medal table-toppers, Niger. Run by military juntas, Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali all left the bloc earlier this year after years of deteriorating relations with ECOWAS. The split came after the July 2023 coup in Niger, when the bloc threatened military intervention and pushed economic sanctions on Niamey. Though envoys have been sent to bridge the divide, and ECOWAS officials at the tournament spoke of regional unity during the opening ceremony, none of the nations sent fighters to this year’s tournament.

“Sport is supposed to unify us, right?” asked Fashola, 33, over the whoops and whistles of a men’s match, lamenting the countries’ absences. “They are our friends,” said Abdullahi Ahmed Libata, the former secretary general of the Traditional Sports Federation of Nigeria, who grew up wrestling each dry season as rivers would recede and leave soft sandy banks that were perfect for combat. “Niger are our neighbors, we love them,” he said. “They are our people, we came up together.”— AFP