Abstract This article argues that the fissures and fun times within colonial society during the war become visible when looking through the lens of wartime sport. Specifically, the commentary that sport generated about social, political, and economic conditions in the colony reveals the various ways Nigerians used sport to challenge the colonial system, while for the British, sport was used to cement the bonds of empire and to gauge Nigerians’ patriotism for the war. Sport as a lens, then, has a lot to contribute to our understandings of the war, the experiences of Nigerians, and the transformations to the social economy, through which sport was an integral aspect of leisure, labor, politics, and wartime fundraising. As sport continued throughout the war in Nigeria, as elsewhere across the continent, sport was used by Britain to tie the colonies into a wider cultural bond. In addition, sport allowed Nigerians to contest colonialism’s unequal social state.