Scrabble in the Jungle King, Lateef, wants to become world champion

Former World Champion Wellington Jighere, President Scrabble Las Vegas Musa Olasupo (R) present prizes to SITJ GenZ Winner; Musa Lateef (M)

He may sound too ambitious, but Musa Lateef, who just won the Gen Z edition of the Scrabble in The Jungle Championship believes that he has the qualities to become the world champion soon.

Lateef, a 200-level Biochemical Engineering student, deployed great word skills and strategy to keep his score above other top players to be crowned ‘King of the Jungle’ with 20 wins and a cumulative of 654 points.

He told The Guardian after the win that his maiden victory in the event would propel him to work harder to make it a higher level.

He said: “It was a tough one, but having won day two as ‘the champion,’ I was shocked when I started the third day with a defeat to Kareem Jamiu. I was like, is this how the day is going to be? But, as my luck would have it, in my second game, I played a non-word which my opponent failed to challenge so, I used it to earn my first win.

“It was a very tough tournament but at the end, it was at the very last game I secured my victory.”

The new champion promised to return to his drawing board to prepare for more challenges, saying he wants to continue making his growing band of fans happy.

Lateef, Ojih, Hassan and Jamiu who came first second, third and fourth respectively at the championship received N300,000, N220,000 N150, 000 and N80,000 respectively, just as fifth-placed Emmanuel Enyi earned N50,000 for his efforts.

Muyiwa Mosope won the prize for the Best-Behaved Housemate at the end of the three-day tournament.

Other participants at the boot camp championship were Akeem Ogundokun, Priscilla Akhabue, Oghenekaro Onakpogbe and Ola Joy.

Speaking at the end of the