World Boxing Champion Says Nigerian Boarding School Improved His Life

 IBF heavyweight champion, Anthony Joshua who will be fighting Vladimir Klitschko on April 29 has a Nigerian mother, and spent six months in Nigeria in 1999, when he was 11.

Speaking with Daily Mail, Joshua said:


“I thought I was going there (Nigeria) on holiday, I wasn’t prepared for it. It was a boarding school as well. At the time you think, ‘Why’, but as you get older you think it was good that you experienced it. It was good for me,” he added.

“It was a change and I thought I was going to go for the full course: 5.30am
in the morning, up fetch your water, put like an iron in your water to warm it up. Your clothes had to be washed and ironed.

“It wasn’t an issue but I wasn’t prepared. It was a good discipline. We got beaten. That’s my culture: beating.”

Joshua believes communal raising of children is much better than the one in which the government has taken over.

“The government raise your kids now; parents aren’t allowed to raise their kids because there is so much control about what you do or what you say.

“In the (Nigerian) culture it’s family, outside support; everyone has a role in raising the kids.”

And though Joshua has not been in Nigeria in a long while, he has the tattoo of his country on his right shoulder.

“(But) when you are in sport you become a representation of people. I’ve got it (an outline of Nigeria inside Africa) tattooed on my arm, so people can relate to me,” he added.