Nigeria Scrabble players will take a center stage from today at the Scrabble event of 13th All Africa Games currently holding in Ghana. Ably led by the national coach, Anthony Ikolo, eight top Scrabble players have been announced to fly the nation's flag at the games. The Scrabble event will be showcased as a demonstration sport at the games and will begin from March 15 -17 2023, at the Alisa Hotel in Accra.
The Pan African Scrabble Association (PANASA) recently announced that a total of 13 countries will be participating, and also that the Scrabble event at the Games in Ghana will be streamed live on its official Twitch channel for viewers globally. Interested viewers can connect to the PANASA official Twitch channel by clicking here to follow the games live. The Scrabble event at the games are in two languages; English and French.
In the English language Scrabble event, Nigeria will be joined by the host nation Ghana, as well as Liberia, Kenya, Uganda, Sierra Leone, The Gambia, South Africa and Zambia while the French language Scrabble competition will feature Benin Republic, Gabon, Togo and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Nigeria Scrabble Federation (NSF) recently selected a team of eight (8) players to carry the nations flag after an intense three-week camping at Ibadan, Nigeria. The team along with NSF officials including NSF president, Toke Aka and the federation's secretary Ejiro Thukson, are currently in Ghana and are in high spirits to defend the nation's rating as the best Scrabble playing nation in Africa.
Nigeria yet again proved to be the dominant force in African Scrabble by retaining the Africa Scrabble Championship title at the 13th ASC held in Kenya from November 28 to December 2, 2018. The National Scrabble team took the top three positions at the 4 day event won by current National Champion (2018) Moses Peter who had 26 points and a spread of +2051. Former African champion Jighere Wellington was first runner-up with 22 points (+2083) while Eta Karo came third with 21 points (+88). Four other Nigerians were also placed in the top ten (10) positions at the end of the 32-round tournment ensuring that Nigeria also successfully retained the Best Team title won in Ghana in 2016.
The new champion Moses Peter (who was also team captain of the squad) displayed the strong form that won him the National Scrabble Championship title earlier this year (July 2018) and runner-up at the WESPAC Championship last year (November 2017) from the start of the tournament. He won his first 5 games and was consistently among the top 5 on the standings to the very end, a feat that ensured he had effectively won the title by round 30 with 2 games to spare.
Other members of the team performed brilliantly, with members of the team in the 5th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 15th, 25th, 26th and 38th positions ensuring that 7 Nigerian were in the top 10 prize table. Sixty-two players from seven African countries attended the tournament. The countries are Nigeria, hosts Kenya, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Tanzania and Zambia. At the end of the event, team Nigeria topped the team performance charts with a mean spread of +1722, an average rank of 3.8 and a win rate of 63.73% playing against players from other countries. Kenya took the team runner-up position with a average spread of -626.2, an average rank of 10.0 and 46.98% performance against others.
