Traditional Nigerian games: Ayo, Suwe, Ten-Ten and the street games of Lagos

Before anybody had a phone, a Nigerian street was a playground. Chalk on the ground for Suwe, two girls clapping Ten-Ten by the gate, a row of seeds on an Ayo board under a tree, and a football made of whatever was round enough. Many of these games are fading now: Wikipedia’s overview of the traditional games of Nigeria notes that many have faded through lack of support and the dominance of Western sports, though several are still played at the National Sports Festival.

This is a guide for the grown-ups who remember them, and for anyone who wants to know what their parents are talking about. Here are the classics, how they worked, and where they came from.

Board and seed games

Ayo

Ayo, in full Ayò Ọlọ́pọ́n, is the Yoruba version of mancala, the family of “sowing” games played across Africa. The board has two rows of six pits, one row for each player, and 48 seeds, four in each pit at the start. On your turn you scoop all the seeds out of one of your pits and sow them one by one into the pits that follow, going round the board, and you try to capture your opponent’s seeds. When nobody can move, whoever has captured the most seeds wins.

Ayo is very close to Oware, another West African mancala, which crossed the Atlantic with the slave trade. A University of Lagos study treats Ayo not just as a pastime but as part of Yoruba verbal art: the talk, the teasing and the proverbs around the board are part of the game. Anyone who has watched two old men play Ayo knows this is true.

Arin

A Yoruba game something like billiards, played by flicking seeds instead of using balls and a cue.

Mineral cork football

The Lagos version of table football. Bottle corks, from “minerals”, which is what Nigerians call soft drinks, are flicked across a pitch drawn in chalk, into a goal made from a packet of St. Louis sugar. All you needed was a flat table and a steady finger.

Playground games

Suwe

Nigeria’s hopscotch. You draw a large rectangle divided into boxes on the ground, with chalk or with a stick in the sand. You toss a pebble into one box, then hop through the others on one leg without stepping on a line or on the box holding the pebble. In one version, a player who clears every box “buys a house”, and whoever owns the most houses at the end wins.

Ten-Ten

Mostly a girls’ game, and a fast one. Two players face each other, clap in rhythm and throw out one leg on the beat. If you throw the same leg as your opponent, they score; if you manage to keep throwing differently, you score. Done properly it is a blur of hands and legs and it ends in laughter or accusations. A group version where players follow a leader is called Kpokoro.

Tinko Tinko

A clapping game for pairs or groups, slapping palms in a pattern while singing its theme song.

Boju Boju

Hide and seek, Nigerian style. The seeker closes their eyes and sings or counts while everyone else hides, and only opens them when the hiders say so. The first person found becomes the next seeker.

Police and Thief

Inspired by the action films everybody watched. Everybody wanted to be a thief, which left the police with a lot of running to do.

Circle and chant games

A lot of Nigerian childhood games were really songs with rules. A few that most people will remember:

• Who Is In The Garden? Players stand in a big circle. One goes into the middle and starts a call-and-response chant, asking to visit; the others refuse and send for a brother or sister instead.
• Who Stole The Meat From The Cooking Pot? An accusation goes round the circle, each player passing the blame to a numbered friend. If you do not answer fast, you are out.
• After Round One. Everyone sings, then shows between one and five fingers. The player showing the fewest gets their palm slapped by the others.
• I Call On. The indoor one: everyone writes names of people, places, animals, fruits and things beginning with a letter that someone calls out, and the highest score wins.

Games of strength

Langa

A team game played in rounds. Everybody hops on one foot, holding the other foot behind them with a hand. Each team sends its point-scorer, the Ruwa, to reach a marked spot on the other side, and the other team tries to stop them. If an opponent makes you let go of your foot, you are out for the round.

Dambe

Not a game for the playground. Dambe is a traditional Hausa martial art, a form of boxing usually fought over three rounds, and it can cause serious injury. Its fighters are called Yan Dambe.

Kokawa

The Hausa name for West African traditional wrestling, known in Senegal and the Gambia as Laamb and contested internationally at the Jeux de la Francophonie.

Abula

Something like volleyball, except players hit the ball with a wooden bat.

And then, football

No list of Nigerian street games is complete without football: barefoot, on any patch of open ground, with goalposts made of slippers or stones and a match that ends when it gets dark or the owner of the ball goes home. Plenty of professional players started out on ground like that. Ajegunle in Lagos, for example, counts Odion Ighalo, Taribo West and Emmanuel Amuneke among the footballers who come from there.

The street in AJ Cities

AJ Cities is a free open-world game for adults, set in a fictional estate on the edge of Ajegunle. It does not have Suwe or Ayo in it. But it has a street that remembers. Chuks, who cooks for the whole of June 12 Street from his coal pot, and AJ were small boys on the same street before AJ’s mother took him to London. Now AJ is back, broke, and the old street football is still going: in the bush beside the estate, Creek Rovers play Palm United most days on a rough pitch, and AJ earns ₦1,000 a break as a ball boy and bets what he can with a bookie called Tunde Lines. It is game money, and it is a long way from Suwe, but anyone who grew up on a Lagos street will know the sound of it.

More from the series: how to play Whot and Naija Ludo rules.

What is Ayo?

Ayo is a Yoruba mancala game: two rows of six pits and 48 seeds, four in each pit to start. Players sow seeds around the board and try to capture their opponent’s. It is very close to Oware.

What is Suwe?

Nigeria’s version of hopscotch. Players toss a pebble into one box of a grid drawn on the ground and hop through the others on one leg without touching a line or the pebble’s box.

How do you play Ten-Ten?

Two players face each other, clap in rhythm and throw out one leg on each beat. If you throw the same leg as your opponent, they score a point.

Are traditional Nigerian games still played?

Some are. Many have faded, but several traditional games are still played at Nigeria’s National Sports Festival, and Ayo and street football never went away.