7 Childhood Games Loved By Nigerian Millennials

These childhood games entertained us well before the days of FIFA and Candy Crush

As a 90’s baby growing up in Nigeria, your choice of games were limited. Okay, scratch that, limited is even an understatement. However, playing the few games we had helped shape a lot of us; we found our competitive edge, exercised and still had fun while making a nuisance of ourselves.

These games were played at school, home, parties etc. – there is no way you‘ve never seen or heard of most of them. Which of these were you the best at?

1. SUWE

This is arguably one of the most popular games played by Nigerian kids. This game is played by throwing a tile or stone on a rectangular shaped diagram, then the player hops on the boxes, simultaneously. The rule is to avoid the stone and the lines with your hands or legs, and just like monopoly, you eventually start buying the spaces.

2. I CALL ON

This game is played by kids in a circle. The first person in the circle calls out the alias of one of the players, every other person will have to run till the person whose alias was called, yells, stop! Then the player that yelled will count his/her steps to the person with the shortest distance between them.

3. TINKO TINKO

Tinko involves two or more people clapping in rhythm while slowly increasing the pace. When the game starts with a lot of people, anyone who falls out of rhythm leaves the group till it’s just two people standing.

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4. POLICE AND THIEF

Where there is a thief, there is police. With this game, there are a lot of participants involved; some will be the thieves, one or two will be the police. This is just a Nigerian version of tag but here, once you are caught by the police, you will be sent to the game’s “prison”.

5. NAME, ANIMAL, PLACE, FOOD, THING 

This one was sooooo cool. Someone yells out an alphabet then everyone finds it and quickly writes out names of five nouns that start with that alphabet. When the caller is done, he or she yells stop to get everyone else to stop writing and then the caller scores them. 

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6. AFTER ROUND ONE

This game involves a lot of slapping of your opponent’s hands. Everyone chooses a number and then the game begins with each player using their fingers to play a number on the table simultaneously. When all the fingers are added up, the person with the corresponding number is slapped on their hands viciously. 

7. BOJU BOJU

This is just plain hide and seek that schooled in Ibadan, lol.

#TheGoodStuff serves up some light reading with 2 shots of humor and a dash of sarcasm.