Wellington Jighere, the 2015 World Scrabble Champion, on Tuesday unveiled the `welly board’ as an affordable means of getting a scrabble board that is of high quality and affordable.
Jighere told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), on the sidelines of the event at the VIP lounge of the Abuja National Stadium that it was part of his contribution to give back to the country and make Scrabble boards available to all.
He noted that the major factor militating against development of the game in the country was access to affordable and quality playing materials.
The former champion added that the board, which was of high quality, would bridge the gap between the highly expensive materials and the affordable one (the welly board).
“Today’s event is the unveiling of the welly board; you see, one of the major things that has militated against the development of Scrabble in Nigeria is access to affordable and good quality Scrabble playing materials.
“We have a situation whereby most of the Scrabble playing materials that are good enough for use by professionals are actually costly, while the other class of materials are very low quality in our supermarkets.
“So this initiative was to find a bridge between this high ended boards and this other one, something that is of high quality and at an affordable price.
“I have been working on it for quite a while now, so I feel good to have this accomplished today. Starting from today, we have the welly board,’’ he said.
Also speaking with newsmen, Umoh Bassey, Vice President, the Nigeria Scrabble Federation, commended Jighere for the initiative, which he termed as “giving back to the community’’.
“This young man conceived it in his heart that what can I do and even brought the price of the materials down for the people to be able to afford it and get the game going.
“Many of us have become on and off in Scrabble and have not been able to give back. We should be able to bring the younger ones who will take over from us.
“That way, we can also know that we didn’t leave the game the way we met it.
“That is the most important thing in what Jighere has done,’’ he said. (NAN)