Olopade reiterates continuous support for scrabble

The Director General of the National Sports Commission (NSC), Bukola Olopade, has reassured of the Commission’s support for the continuous growth of the game of scrabble in Nigeria.

Olopade made the remarks while receiving the Nigerian scrabble delegation, which recently emerged as the new world champion in Ghana and in the process dethroning the United States of America.

The DG said the Commission sees every sport as equal and will continue to give its support, saying the era of football getting all the attention is gone.

“For myself and Mallam Shehu Dikko and our cerebral team at the Commission, whenever a sport that is regarded as a small sport brings joy to the table, we are always extremely proud and grateful because we said from the very beginning that the era of just focusing on football is gone.

“I personally followed your competition in Ghana, and when you emerged world champion, I celebrated it with my team. I have always been a big fan of Scrabble from my days as Commissioner of sports in Ogun State.

“On behalf of the NSC, I want to extend the appreciation of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to you all. The President from the beginning gave us a mandate to put more emphasis on every sport and more importantly to make sure the economics of Sports is felt by every stakeholder in the industry because Sports is a serious business,” the DG stated.

Olopade has also charged the new board of the Nigeria Scrabble Federation (NSF) to organise more domestic competitions that can generate earnings for athletes and officials of the sport.

President of NSF, Idahosa Bright, said it has become a niche in the scrabble family to always be champion, which is why out of the fifteen times the African championships have been held, Nigeria has emerged the winner 14th times.

“We have no doubts that our objectives to make Nigeria an unrivalled number one scrabble country in the world will be achieved because of the kind of support we are already receiving from the current leadership of the NSC, in every area of our programmes, including our grassroots initiatives which we are launching aggressively next year.”

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