CHESS AND THE NIGERIAN CHILD: CHALLENGES AND PROSPECTS by Tolulope Ogunwobi

The spiced chicken was sizzling tasty making the ice cool drink even more refreshing. I looked up from my quiet revelry to take in my surrounding but soon bent again to my fried rice meal as if oblivious to life. If you are thinking this was a party, you are wrong. It was the final round of the Under 20 National Chess Championship sponsored by Agusto & Co. at the splendid Muson Center. It was our heady youthful days in which chess was a decent passion. Yes decent in the sense that there were many high class tournaments at both the youth and professional level, in comparison to now. Now, Agusto & Co. no longer sponsors the Under 20 championship. In fact, the tournament no longer takes place. What is even worse is the apathy of stakeholders in the game to this dreadful situation year after year.

In the meantime, we have witnessed flurries of secondary schools and below tournaments that fold up or reduce in quality after a short while. Nevertheless, kudos must be given to these private organizers.

One such is the first secondary school chess league in Nigeria organized by Joachim Idada. In its heydays, it had scores of schools and some hundreds of players participating. It gave many others motivation to start chess clubs and grow a school team. It also caused many chess players to have rewarding employment as chess coaches.

Though that league is defunct, another has emerged. The “Nigeria International Secondary Schools Chess League” organized by Kunle Fasan. The other competitions for youths are the now declining “Femi Badejo National Under14 Chess Championship” and the hardly known chess event of the “National Secondary Schools Sports Festival”.

This hardy situation of chess by the Nigerian child necessitates the question, why? One big factor is the lack of commitment on the part of the state organ responsible for chess, the Nigeria Chess Federation, to its altruistic mandate. The NCF has consistently displayed lack of vision and capability to such an extent that I might end up depressed in my course of writing this essay if I continue to point out its lapses.

Another factor is poor business skills on the part of private organizers. As challenging as the market may be, good concepts and proper packaging should help organizers to obtain and retain sponsorship.

But does this progressive decline and poor state mean the future is bleak for chess by the Nigerian child? This answer may surprise some…

NO.

Because chess is good for growing children and appeals to the competitive and curious, the Nigerian child will continue to play chess. It is that simple.

It doers not matter the lack of organization, marketing skills and will. It doesn’t matter. A Nigerian child and another will be taught by an elder brother, a book or friend or some other means. He will fall in love with it and become a chess player for life.

Chess as a strong appeal to the competitive intellectual and to those who love to figure out puzzles. It is a challenge to self. Watching children you can ‘hear’ their attitude. ‘I am intelligent, I can outthink you, I can beat you at chess’.

However, the progress of chess with the Nigerian child should not be left to happenstances. It should be organized and focused. The basis for this should not be so much a love of chess playing as for its benefit to the growing child. Without a doubt, chess helps children develop their power of concentration, logical thinking, creativity, imagination, confidence and some sundry other intelligence attributes. In fact, chess benefits children more than any other category of humans. It is on this basis that chess must be taken to the Nigerian child.

Who is to do this? It is you and I. It is we who are actors in these whole chess business. The “double exclamation move” and deepest idea in this situation is to get it written in the constitution of Nigeria that sports should be in the curriculum of all lower education schools and chess must be one of the available sports. These will necessitate a syllabus and competent teaching resources. Of course, the teaching capacity at present is not big enough but being motivated by the benefits to these kids will enable us to achieve this in two years. As ambitious as this idea may sound, it is beneficial, feasible and already in force in many developed lands.

The second idea is to have state-wide schools chess leagues in as many states as possible. There are so many big businesses that will like to associate with an idea that moves the nation forward and is popularly acclaimed. This means that the Nigeria Chess Federation or/and a proxy body appointed by it must launch a sustained media campaign of the benefit of chess to the Nigerian child and package a competition that will reward big business with positive media mileage. Once there is so much noise about chess, big business will naturally gravitate to it.

There are so many other possible ideas that could litter these pages but it suffices to state these ones. The challenges of chess and the Nigerian child are mere stepping stones to the bright prospects of the future.