Nigerian board games for family nights

Ask a Nigerian about family games and you will rarely get a polite answer. You will get a story: the uncle who never lost at Ayo, the aunty who swore Ludo had a rule nobody else had heard of, the cousin who hid a Whot card under the table. In Nigerian homes, a board or a pack of cards is not a quiet thing. It is a whole evening.

Here are the traditional Nigerian board and table games that families play, how each one works, and how to put together a family games night, whether you are in Lagos, London or Lansing.

Ayo: the Yoruba seed game

Ayo, in full Ayò Ọlọ́pọ́n, is the Yoruba people’s version of mancala, the family of “sowing” games played with seeds and pits across Africa and beyond. It is very close to Oware, played in Ghana and across the Caribbean, which spread to the Americas during the Atlantic slave trade.

What you need

• A board with two rows of six pits. A carved wooden one is lovely; an egg box works.
• 48 seeds, beans or pebbles, four in each pit to start.
• Two players. Each one owns the row nearest them.

How to play, simply

1. On your turn, pick up all the seeds from one pit on your side.
2. Sow them one at a time into the pits that follow, going counter-clockwise around the board. If you have enough seeds to go all the way round, skip the pit you started from.
3. If your last seed lands in an empty pit on your own side, you capture the seeds in the pit directly opposite it.
4. Do not starve your opponent. If their row is empty and you can make a move that gives them seeds, you must.
5. When a player cannot move, the game ends. The other player takes what is left on the board, and whoever captured the most seeds wins.

Rules vary from family to family and town to town, so agree yours before you start. That is half the game anyway.

Why it is great for families

Ayo is counting, planning and patience, dressed up as play. Younger players learn to count seeds and think a move ahead. Older players learn they are not as clever as they thought. And it is calm, until it suddenly is not.

Ludo: the one with the arguments

Ludo is not Nigerian by birth. It was sold as “Ludo” in England from 1896, and it shares its shape with older cross-and-circle games such as India’s Pachisi. But the version Nigerians play is very much their own, and African variants of the rules are played in Nigeria, Ghana and elsewhere.

The basics

• Two to four players, four tokens each, all starting in their yard.
• Roll a six to bring a token out.
• Move clockwise by what you roll on the die.
• Land on an opponent and send them back to their yard.
• Get all four tokens home first and you win.

Nigerian house rules are where it gets lively: whether you need an exact roll to go home, whether two tokens can block a path, and what happens when you roll three sixes. Our page of naija ludo rules goes through the common ones. The only universal rule: decide before you roll.

Whot: the national card game

Strictly speaking Whot is a card game, not a board game, but no Nigerian family games night is complete without it. It was invented in England by William Henry Storey, who trademarked it in 1935, and published by the British games company Waddingtons. Nigeria adopted it so thoroughly that it is now called the country’s national card game, and local versions of the cards are printed there.

Whot is a shedding game, a cousin of Crazy Eights and Uno. You match the card on the pile by shape or number, and the first to get rid of their cards wins. The Nigerian special cards are what make it loud: Pick Two and Pick Three make the next player draw, Hold On lets you play again, General Market makes everyone draw, and the Whot card lets you call any shape you like. Full rules in our guide on how to play Whot.

Which game for which night

How to run a family games night

1. Pick a regular night. Sunday evening, after the big meal, works in a lot of homes.
2. Start with Ludo so everybody plays, then split off into Ayo pairs.
3. Write down the house rules. Stick them on the fridge. It will not end the arguments, but it will shorten them.
4. Finish with Whot, because nothing ends an evening like a General Market.
5. Bring in the family abroad. A video call and a phone version of Whot or Ludo lets the cousins overseas join in.

And when the children are in bed

For the adults, once the board is packed away, there is AJ Cities, our free open-world browser game set on the edge of Ajegunle, Lagos. It is for adults only (18+), so it is not one for the family table. But its world is full of Lagos family life: the family at No. 8 June 12 Street, Dimeji and Yelena with five children, a gym in the yard, a radio that never goes off and three guard dogs that sometimes get out. Somewhere in a house like that, somebody is losing at Ludo.

What is the traditional Nigerian board game?

Ayo (Ayò Ọlọ́pọ́n) is the best known: a Yoruba mancala game for two players, with two rows of six pits and 48 seeds.

How many seeds do you need for Ayo?

Forty-eight, four in each of the twelve pits at the start.

Is Ludo a Nigerian game?

Ludo was first sold in England in 1896 and is related to older games such as Pachisi, but Nigerians play it with their own house rules.

Is Whot Nigerian?

Whot was invented in England in the 1930s, but it is now so popular in Nigeria that it is called the national card game.