The first African to win
the English-Language World Scrabble Championships, Wellington Jighere, has stressed the need to improve the awareness of the game in Nigeria.
Jighere told newsmen in Warri that he hoped to achieve the feat through his Wellington Foundation for Scrabble and Mind Development in Africa project.
According to the world champion, Nigeria is a strong scrabble-playing nation, but its level of awareness does not match with its standard.
“My major focus now is not just to prepare for future tournament but to remedy the situation by the way of increasing scrabble awareness.
“Our activities are going to be taken round the continent to increase the level of awareness of scrabble in Nigeria and generally in Africa,’’ he said.
Jighere also noted that his foundation would use scrabble as a tool for mental capacity building, to correct the rapid decline in culture among youths.
“So, my focus now is not on tournament but using scrabble to better the lots of my countrymen, especially the young ones,” the world scrabble champion said.
Jighere, who earned his title late 2015 after defeating Lewis Mackey from Cambridge 4-0 in a best of seven series in Perth, Australia, urged corporate organisations to support the sponsorship of scrabble.
Mackey is ranked 19th by the body’s players’ association.
“It is pretty comfortable to invest in scrabble; it does not require much capital like other sports.
“Again, any investment in scrabble is an investment into the general well-being of Nigerians because we are a scrabble-playing nation,” he said.
Jighere identified some of the benefits of the game to include mental alertness and improvement of health condition.
“To the young ones who are in schools, scrabble is a veritable tool to meet academic requirements and assimilation; so, there are a whole lot of benefits in the game,” he said.