May 10, 2022
Nigeria’s scrabble team has set its sight for total dominance at the inaugural West African Scrabble Championships slated for Accra Ghana from May 14-19.
President of the Nigeria Scrabble Federation, Engr toke Aka, stated this on Monday while speaking to LEADERSHIP sports at the media center of the Moshood Abiola National Stadium Abuja, venue of the qualifying series to pick the 10 players that will represent Nigeria at the regional mine game.
Team Nigeria will slug it out against hosts Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Gambia and having established itself among the elite nations in the sport with eight out of the top 20 ranked scrabble players in the world are Nigerians, Aka is confident of a successful outing in Accra.
“Our chances of winning the championship is over 90 per cent. The reason I said this is that in the top 20 in the world, we have eight players and there is no other country in Africa that has a single player in the top 20.
We have had 12 African Championships in the past and won 11 of them. So, coming to the regional championship, I do not see anything that will be too difficult for us to win. However, we have been the country to beat and those who have not won before will strive to to beat us, that is why we are also not relaxing but will be selecting the best to represent us.
I could see the threat coming from Liberia, so I’m not going into this competition with 100 percent sure but 90 percent confident that we will win, once again.
Not only Liberia, even host Ghana and Sierra Leone will give us a good fight,” Aka said.
Apart from Wellington Jighere, former world champion, in-form Oduwole who sits atop the national ranking as well as the likes of Eta Karo who is the world number four, Emmanuel Umujose, Victor Godwin and others will form Team Nigeria’s squad to Ghana.
