10th January, 2018
Suleiman Gora, the President of Nigeria Scrabble Federation (NSF), on Wednesday in Abuja said late release of fund has remained a major challenge to the country’s performance in international tournaments.
Gora told newsmen that government’s attitude to the funding of sports was not encouraging and was thereby affecting its development.
“Nigeria could have lost the chance to defend her title as the best scrabble-playing country in the world due to government bureaucracy.
“We applied to the Federal Ministry of Youths and Sports in March that the Federation will be defending its title in November, but the ministry’s response came very late.
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“If the little we get from government comes on time, it can make the necessary impact. For this championship, we got the approval on the day of our departure.
“At this time, our players were already at the airport and the tickets provided for us by the agent were very expensive.
“Meanwhile, we did not see the federation’s secretary with the needed funds until the closing day of the tournament, which made the funds approved to be inadequate,’’ he said.
Nigeria won the world’s best scrabble-playing country trophy first in 2015 at Perth in Australia, and again in 2017 at Nairobi in Kenya.
Nigeria’s Wellington Jighere emerged world’s best player in 2015, while Moses Peter was the second best scrabble player in the world in 2017.