4.3 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 29 May 2018
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
In 2015 Wellington Jighere, a 34-year-old from Nigeria, became Africa’s ‘man of the moment’ when he won the World Scrabble Championship, the first ever African to do so. The youngest of 20 siblings from a rural village in Delta State, Wellington now has bold dreams of how the board game can transform other’s lives in the way it did his own - and even help to remedy the nation’s developmental problems.
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0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Neil McCarthy. Just before the documentary starts, I want to bring you up to date with my podcast, because a lot's been happening during the last few weeks. |
0:09.0 | Death in Ice Valley has become quite popular around the world, and thanks if you've downloaded it and our |
0:14.0 | investigation is progressing as we try to piece together as much as we can about the life |
0:18.7 | of a woman whose body was found in Norway in 1970 it's's becoming a Cold War mystery. There are now seven episodes |
0:26.0 | to catch up on. Search for Death in Ice Valley. This is a |
0:35.7 | Daniel Manning for the BBC World Service. |
0:41.3 | Join me in Lagos Nigeria as I meet Africa's first Scrabble World Champion. |
0:44.0 | I have addicted to Scrabble. It's highly addictive game. |
0:45.0 | You've got to come back for more. |
0:47.0 | I'll play Scrabble until I die. |
0:49.0 | The game is so difficult. |
0:52.0 | It requires a lot of intellectual ability, tenacity, dexterity, temerity. |
0:59.4 | The average Nigerian player is a winner. He wants to go out there, wants to go for any tournament and he wants to win it. |
1:07.0 | The word game Scrabble has been played for fun for nearly a century. |
1:12.0 | Two players pick lettered tiles from a bag and make words |
1:15.2 | on a board. Each word carries a score and the board offers opportunities for double and |
1:20.1 | triple word scores. As you exhaust the bag of letters you accumulate points |
1:24.8 | and try to outscore your opponent. The game has a vast following worldwide but |
1:30.7 | also a hardcore of committed and even professional players who compete in high stakes |
1:35.2 | tournaments across the globe. |
1:37.8 | Here in Lagos, Nigeria, there's a man who's special amongst them all. |
1:41.9 | My name is Willington, J Giggery. I became the world |
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