I Want To Conquer The World

African Scrabble Champion, Wellington Jighere, has disclosed to P.M.Sports that his immediate mission is to conquer the world during the forthcoming World Scrabble Championship, WSC, slated for Warsaw, Poland, this year.

“My target is to go to Warsaw and out-do my past outings by winning the world scrabble championship. I want to be third time lucky because I have been there twice in the past. I finished 3rd at my first attempt in Mumbai 2007. My feat in that championship brought me into limelight. At the last edition, I finished 11th in Malaysia 2009”.

“As far as preparations for the forthcoming World Scrabble Championship are concerned, the Nigerian Scrabble Federation, NSF, is enmeshed in some in-house issues, thereby making any training for us inexistent and scrabble is not featuring in the All African Games, so there is no activities going on right now. We players are preparing ourselves through personal training and invitational tourneys.”

“I am not relenting in my effort to make sure I am in top shape despite the pervasive inactivities right now within the Scrabble Association. I will rather pick up the challenge and make sure I put in my best performance at the world championship for me to come out top at the end of the tourney,”he concluded.

Jighere became the highest ranked scrabble player in Africa by virtue of his exploits at the last African Scrabble Championship held in Ghana last year, where he defended the title he won in Nairobi 2008.

The recent ranking released by the Nigerian Scrabble Federation, Saidu Ayorinde tops the list as the best scrabble player in the country, while Wellington Jighere is ranked 6th in Nigeria.

The 30-year-old Delta-born player, started playing scrabble about 15 years ago and played his first tournament in 2002 and has not looked back since then.

—Bamidele Olowosagba