Athletes’ Representative on the board of Nigeria Scrabble Federation, Kayode Fashola has spoken up against the recent sport listings preceding the National Sports Festival (NSF) scheduled to hold in the FCT, Abuja later this year.
Fashola has demanded that the Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports Development remove scrabble from the optional list of sports to be competed in during the NSF due to the very many accomplishments of players in the sport and their world wide recognition.
Former scrabble world champion, Jighere Wellington, and Fashola both stood on unified grounds requesting that the ministry rescind their decision on the place of scrabble in the festival.
“If there is any sport that must be considered, I think Scrabble stands shoulder high above all other sports in terms of our achievements continent-ally and globally.
“As of today we remain the only black nation to have won The Scrabble World Championship in Perth Australia through Mr. Wellington Jighere and Mr. Moses Peter came second at the immediate edition in Kenya… African championships had been held 12 times and we have won it 11 times and the current championshipwas won by Ogun State coach, Mr. Seidu Ayorinde, who is still the reigning champion.
“Besides, the aim of any organiser is to win medals at Sports Festivals, FCT is one of our strongest locations where we have high concentration of expert players who will definitely perform brilliantly at the festival as they did in Eko 2012 where they won gold medals in Scrabble Sport.
“We have a Scrabble playing data base of almost 10,000 players of which about 1,000 are rated internationally on World English Scrabble Players Association (WESPA) rating list on which we have the highest numbers of players in the first 100 best players of the game worldwide.
“So, I am calling [that you\ please help me and all Scrabble game lovers to impress on our Sports administrators especially the Sports Minister, Solomon Dalung, that this game must be included in this year’s National Sports Festival coming up in November 2018 at the FCT ABUJA.” – Fashola
Source: GongNews