CH: Good morning Abimbolu Ogunbanwo.
OA: Good morning Tolu.
CH: You are the organizer of Chess Heights Oyo Monthly, how has it been so far?
OA: Yea, it has been interesting,challenging and promising, all rolled into one.So.. , but we are trying our best to bring out the best in the situation now.
CH: What opportunity does Chess Heights Oyo Monthly present for chess players in Oyo state?
OA: Chess Heights Monthly in Oyo is an opportunity to keep chess pieces at the front border and provide a regular opportunity for chess players to come together for chess and other endeavour and that is also in line with our own vision of what chess should be. Chess should be a regular exercise for chess players, just like going to the gym, so people should have the opportunity of going somewhere every month,even we are still looking at every week if possible for other things, so they can have regular outings where they can go to exercise their mind and find games, meet like minds and have opportunities. Also, we are looking at a situation where chess would become so important and so much common that it will attract financial supporters, sponsors. It will attract government attentions, it will become a compulsory duty for parents, they will want their children to participate in chess tournaments. They would want their children to go out for chess games. Then it would be a way of comradery, where people meet over drinks, talk about chess and discuss other very crucial issues of businesses, national and international politics. Chess has a lot of immense benefits for players,for our society and this is what we are trying to pass across. We have seen that by partnering with Chess Heights to bring chess to Oyo State. We are doing a very notable project that only the future can tell, where we are going to now.
CH: What is your vision for Oyo chess?
OA: Oyo chess like i said, we are looking for where chess will become business that attracts value and gives value to the public, in terms of recreation, in terms of serious engagement with chess, we want a situation whereby from Oyo monthly Chess Heights we have champions coming up from people that were not taking their chess serious or were not very good or they are just coming into the Chess-world. When they get to meet with Oyo chess monthly they would improve on their strength, become good and in the future become champions.
CH: What is your vision for Oyo state chess outside Chess Heights generally?
OA: Right now apart from organizing the monthly, we also do school training, and there are a lot of challenges putting this proposal across to the proprietors and proprietors getting across to the parents, before we can have a reasonable number of students in the class, but if chess is more popular and the company has people who will convince parents and proprietors to allow chess games and chess clubs for their children and in their Schools our jobs would be a lot easier. We are looking for a situation where chess becomes a class subject, where students write chess exams at the ending of the terms, where chess becomes like a normal school subject,because this is the only way we can grow chess to the level we desire, so they can turn out champions, and other people who want to join to get the health/and leadership benefits of playing chess analytical, critical thinking, decision making in case of later in the future can also be part of the training.
CH:What champions have Chess Heights Oyo Monthly produced?
OA: Chess Heights, we are just in our third month, and getting ready for our fourth month, and we have not produced any champion, but we are consistent since we started this January and hoping that very soon we would bring out some champions, and we have people that have been in Chess Heights, now playing their first chess tournaments and we have kids that have also been consistent and hope to become champions in the nearest future.
CH:What challenges are you having with Chess Heights Oyo Monthly?
OA: Our major challenge is the attitude that has been put toward chess in Oyo, you know before Chess Heights came to Oyo state, some people thought if they are not the ones organizing a tournament, then the tournament should not be organized. We thought it should be made open. Some people felt that they owned the monopoly of chess in Oyo state before Chess Heights came and we did not think it was proper, and then they don’t have so much coverage in the geographical space in the city of Ibadan alone not to talk about the massive Oyo State. Someone to just be organizing in one corner of Ibadan and think he will be the alpha and omega of chess I don’t think that is proper.most of the activities of chess revolves around the university of Ibadan, and most of the people playing chess are just students of university of Ibadan, and that means they are players of four to five years life span in Oyo state. Once they graduate they will relocate out of the place and go to their respective places and then it will keep going around this circle, but we want a situation whereby Oyo children that come early into chess, early as 4 to 6 years to chess up to their primary, secondary and to their higher institution, and probably go into higher institutions outside Oyo state and still come back to Oyo state to settle down, and they will still be in the chess circle. So we want a situation where we are going to have all levels of players both children and up to adults, playing chess in Oyo state. This is the only way we can sustain chess, this is the only chance that chess can attract its sponsors, this is the only chance that chess can become a serious business in Oyo state, and that is what we are pushing for.
CH:What are your future plans for Chess Heights Oyo Monthly?
OA:Yea, our future plans first is to sustain Chess Heights Monthly. To bring in other people to support the endeavour and if Chess Heights keeps to the rapid organization, rapid tournaments alone, we are still looking at where we can have other tournaments like classical games organization regularly. We are even planning conferences, where we would be discussing the benefits of chess, like why we play chess, what are the benefits of playing chess, professional and business value chain around chess and ways to grow chess generally. Going to people telling them that chess is relevant to what they are doing. And I was saying that we want a situation where security leaders, politicians, and other strategy thinking people and other innovators, will encourage people to play chess because of the critical thinking elements of chess, analytical elements of chess, problem solving elements of chess, decision making elements of chess, these are the things that we can use to promote chess among people. I am not promoting chess in school because we want the children to become chess champions only, because the ones that can’t become chess champions can use the benefit of discipline to their brains and their minds to go into so many things and the cruise is endless. People are able to take endless decisions because in every stage people need to be analytical and also is in every stage people need to be critical like can we do this thing in this way or in another way so we can have the better results? Managing it so we can have the best result, as you know chess make people to sit down and be strategizing like in real life situations.
CH: How do you see chess development in Nigeria as a whole?
OA: Chess development in Nigeria as a whole is still an element of what we have in our general society. Today at our national level we looking at what we know as “state capture”, some people that have taken over government space, government organisations, and they are just trying to hold it for their family members and their cronies to take over, so the same thing has happened in chess space, which few people that are supposed to help the organisation are not forthcoming, because some sets of people are there year in year out. It is not a growing circle, we have the same set of people all over the places who feel that they own the chess space. Something that is dynamic and sustainable is that we have people coming into it. Like I said it is not going to be about just chess circle, that is because people think that is only about winning the game, owning championships that is when you become superior. Some on the other hand feel that their family is chess future holders. Puting their chidren into National and world tournament when there are far better competitors, when they are doing their competion they always make sure that their children are the ones representing the states and also the country and this is one of the problem of chess, and I am looking forward to when representation of chess should be based on merit and be competitive, whereby it is only the best that will be put forward to represent us, when we see that our children are not so good in the game and when we see other more competent players we can remove them in that area and not pushing them forward to represent so that they can have the opportunity to travel outside the country and such things. Lets put the best forward to represent the country so they can bring glory to all of us to benefit all. These are things we should not do in the Nigerian chess space, where the same click of people are dominating the space year in year out. That is the only way we can have the best so our champions can also stand shoulder to shoulder with their colleagues from other parts of the world. This is a situation where we see, for example only South Africa and Egypt that i think have produced Grandmaster (GM) in Chess in Africa and i think why not Nigeria, why can’t Nigeria produce champions, but if we allow this in bridging space to the level, then talents will come and we would grow them, i guess we would move forward and emerge, and we also need to have corporate organizations putting their money there because they see the chess crowd as a business opportunity where they can use it to promote their organization. That’s my intentions that i desire and dream for chess. I am an alternative thinker in so many areas, we should not limit it to chess tournaments, because Nigeria as a country we can strategize like people going to strategy schools to study. In Nigeria, the Nigerian military should have chess as a popular sport among them, as a popular game, the people who study management, the people who study leadership and all our leaders should embrace chess. These are some of the things we chess promoters should be doing, putting chess first in everything, chess should be about so many possibilities, so that is when we can take advantage of numerous benefits chess provides for us.
CH: Who is your favorite Oyo chess player?
OA: There is a young guy that I just like his effort, his name is Promise. Promise is a student of UI, i like the commitment of the young guy, he was part of the January Chess Heights, and also he won the Chess Heights in January. I have met him in so many tournaments in Lagos. He is the most consistent person I know in Ibadan, because most of the competitions and tournament in Ibadan and Lagos i see him there. He is always pushing, always trying to a very large extent. He is very level headed, and there’s this other guy am not sure of the guy’s name, the two of them are always regular attendees in the monthly, these two guys are students of UI that i see are coming up in Oyo state.
CH: Who is your favorite Nigerian player?
OA: My favorite Nigerian players should be Femi Balogun, Deborah Quickpen and Abimbola Osunfuyi. These are the people that I started chess with five years ago, these are the people that have been putting a lot of effort into chess. I follow their strategy and always try to catch up with them.
CH: Who is your favorite chess player anywhere and any era?
OA: My favorite chess player in any era should be Garry Kasparov. Garry Kasparov, was the one that defeated Deep Blue in 1996. It was at that time that he caught my attention, when they said that a human defeated a machine in chess, that was way back before i got into University. When i got into higher Institution i watched a few people at the UI student union building playing Chess but unfortunately my course of study always involved one rehearsal or one production then especially in the evening, i did not follow chess although like i said, i only came back five years ago, and then i also realize that Garry Kasparov has also founded a Foundation, that has produced a training manuals, that has been doing a lot of things to promote chess in Africa, and this makes him take a lot of my respect , and then he is my all time chess player.
CH: When you retire fully, what would you have liked to achieve in chess?
OA: When i retire fully, what i would have liked to achieve is chess should have become so popular, so competitive, so free and fair, so respectable in tournament, and when somebody says that he is a chess player, coach or professional, i want the aura of respect should be around that person, aura of fair play, aura of respect and stability. I want everybody to appreciate chess as sports of noble people that believe that chess is worth it. It is the measure of what you put into chess, that you get out of chess. Chess is like so many other things in terms of education, if you want to be educated, the ratings stated in chess is a format that we should not try to manipulate it, whatever is your standards, whatever is your ratings dictates your level, we should not try to manipulate it. I want be proud of my years working promoting chess, organizing chess tournaments, doing this for chess, i want to be able to look back and be proud of whatever chess has become in Oyo state, in Nigeria, in Africa and worldwide.
CH: When do you expect Nigeria to have a grandmaster?
OA: I can’t foretell, but I sincerely wish we have a GM with the first class standard not by any shortcut. We should have a GM that really deserves to be, we will have a GM that can stand shoulder to shoulder to other GMs. i myself am really passionate about Africa, so i want by the time a GM emerges in Nigeria, it will be a GM that will make clarion call that will pass GM to Africa, that will be a role model for other GMs that will come after him in Africa, to portray Africa in good light. I wish we have one within the next 2 to 5 years. I wish we have one as soon as possible.
CH: When will Oyo state produce a grandmaster?
OA: Oyo state is one of the highest rated chess states in Nigeria, and the reason is because we have Ibadan Polytechnic, we have University of Ibadan. Most of our chess players are students of these institutions and this guy Adebayo (Small B) used to be the coach of Ibadan Polytechnic Chess team , and still on the growing chain system, i think he has relocated either to Canada or USA, so we want a situation where people go out and still come back to want their space. In a situation our people relocate i.e [the japa syndrome] so we should be going forward to learn more about more things and still come back to our land, so as to give the results back to our land, so these are some of the things that should encourage us. I even think that Femi Balogun is even on record as an Oyo state player and we have Tobi, like i said these people are close to achieving GM and they have relocated to US, i don’t know if they will become fully GMs. I am still trying to find out what exactly is the parameter for the title of GM. I know i have seen a lot of people who played chess whether earlier this year or last year, they created a strong form of competition. In other for one to become a GM, he has to play with other GMs, either beating a famous GM or racing neck-and-neck with him that will raise popularity. These are things in which you see in Oyo state, of course the current Governor of Oyo state, Engineer Seyi Makinde plays a little bit of chess that is to tell you that we have a lot of opportunities to promote chess in Oyo state, and it is by government involvement and endorsement that can also bring corporate organization and also is when we have competitions that we can have opportunity for having a great number of talents that we can put forward we can have the best of them in management and make them very good in their competition. These are some of the things i think we can do so that we can have ultimate GM in Oyo state and Nigeria grandmaster.
CH: What developments would you like to see in Oyo chess generally?
OA: I would like to see a venue where chess games will be available at regular intervals. There was a time when I suggested it to a hotel that we should have a friday night chess game but the hotel people did not see how it would affect their bottom line, but they are not seeing it yet so i want a situation where chess becomes popular whereby business owners will be looking for chess promoters, organizers, sponsors to come and use their spaces and facilities because chess will bring value to them. Also where we also add value to ourselves as chess players and also chess tournaments organizers. Where we go into so many schools, there are some schools where we teach them for free and we donated chess boards of my own. We gave them like four chess boards and some gifts, and these has also facilitated some to donate like ten chess boards to public schools so that the children that their parents can not afford to pay for chess tutorials, they can also learn on their own because that is when we can have challengers, so i want a situation where chess will become like i said earlier a class subject and seven out of ten schools will have chess clubs and it should be regular in their school, where we can bring a lot of talent who can eventually bring out chess champions or they can use their discipline of chess to go into other fields, so these are my dreams for chess in Oyo state these are my vision for chess in Oyo state.
CH: What would you like to see in Nigeria chess?
OA: What i would like to see is when chess becomes so popular, becoming a school subject, chess clubs becoming so regular in schools. Where chess is also part of schools inter house sports competitions, so that we have a lot of chess participants available for chess competitions in Nigeria. We are looking at where we have a national chess championship,we are looking for the biggest stadium in all cities, where we can use or even build chess auditoriums where everything will be designed for chess playing. Chess arrangements, the viewing, the internet facilities to relay the tournaments for other people to watch where we have nothing less than a hundred or even a thousand digital chess boards for every competitions, where we have a chess city or a chess estate where it will be used for promoting chess, playing chess having chess equipments,chess training and where we hold chess tourism, people come to know about chess, having trainings, and also qualifying, where other people from other parts of the world visit Nigeria to have conference discussing chess, the manufacturers of chess app or equipments will come, the manufacturers of electronics, digital equipments for relaying chess games and of course, people selling drinks and foods, hotels owners, government department in charge of tourism promotion even technological companies will want to call and chat because their innovative product is going to be used, so they need to get involved with chess players, and people that manufacturer chess app, equipment and materials, they will want to bring them to Nigeria for test. If you want to put your chess related product into African market, then you need to test run at a Nigerian chess tournament and also you can also pay bill at a continental level and good imagery of chess in Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt and other top chess playing countries in Africa. I want a situation where Africa will be at the top, whereby we would be talking about Abuja city tournament, Johannesburg tournament, Cairo tournament. We are not talking about all these small countries who can’t sustain what we are saying, these are countries that their population are close to it, so Africa because it has been fragmented, we are now talking about Nigeria with a population of over 200 million, being the largest country in Africa, but if we have a unified continent, we will have a population of over 1.2 billion people in Africa, we can only be talking about the cities of Africa, where things can be organized not at the tiny level of Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, Morocco, Senegal. So those are my visions of Africa, so this is the way we can measure up to other part of the world. It will not be Africa against Africa. Africa and Europe, Africa and Asia, China, India, and on that level where Africa and America working together with other small countries yea that is my vision for so many things not even about chess, among everything we should be getting everything where Africa works together, and negotiate with other people with unity and not in this our divided world.
CH: What kind of support do you need for Chess Heights Oyo Monthly?
OA: The first thing we need is acceptance and more involvement from people, We don’t want us to be dragging with ourselves the few people we have in chess circle but I want us to create a new circle of chess builders. I am happy that the location is out already but is a bit far from UI, which is the existing zone for chess in Ibadan, another major location is Ring Road where we are now, a popular side of ibadan and well populated. Students they come and go for their studies, I want a situation where we will grow large numbers of players within this area and if it means catching them young we would do that so that we would be able to grow our own participants, our audience, our players, our supporters, our parents, our sponsors and of course government establishment can also relate with them. We need to use Oyo state chess to groom our own people, and any state who can help us in that area. It is not only money and of course we need money, we need people who believe in the game of chess, and of course we need strategic thinkers and people who can bring out a vision, know where it will be in a few years time, not what it looks like now even if what it looks like now is not so much encouraging, so that they know that a little push can get it into a very notable and attractive level so we need people who can push the vision and that is what we are trying to do. We need more people that can see beyond now and know where we could possibly be in a couple of months and years, i want a situation where monthly chess tournaments should have partitcipants not less than one hundred. We should have a mininum of fifty to hundred players, and by the time we are organising very well that is if people come and they see the right thing done not like having thoughts like “the director in charge was lanky cranky, it is always their people that always win,” rather everybody see fairness in the winner, so those are the things that can promote chess as a tournament, as a game, and those are things that can put confidence on those that are promoting chess, and a lot of thing have been done for promoting chess, a lot of chess apps, a lot of chess engines that people use to train themselves, a lot of books, a lot of things have been done for chess so we really need to work on that and not cutting chess low, by organizing it the wrong way just to pretend that they did it, so that when you say that you are a winner in an Oyo state or Ibadan tournament, you know that you are a crucial player , not that because so so so was the director or so so was the organizer that was why you won. So you need to take on the game so that the game can grow naturally.
OA: Do you have any last words for our readers, like what would you like to end the interview with?
OA: My last words to the reader is to know that chess is like a sea which something as small as mosquito can gain from it. It is also a sea which something as mighty as an elephant can immerse itself in and have a good time. That mean that chess has little benefits and also have immense benefits. There is an endless opportunities in chess so these are the side of chess that i want people to see, and these benefits attached to it, is what i want people to embrace, especially we in Africa where we are not changing enough, chess is a very good opportunity for us to cultivate a rigorous habit of thinking, thinking i know is not easy, but is very good. If one can cultivate that habits of thinking, critically examining situations and arriving at ones own decisions and taking your decision. Not to latch on to popular saying or popular relays. Question whatever is there, bring it into your own orientation, and arrive at your own decisions and believe your own truth, because this is what some religious book would say find out the truth and hold onto it, so chess is an opportunity for us to checking out the truth and holding onto it, so i say chess is an opportunity to hold our character, because if a tricky person is being good to have a better character because most of the people that behave like that, they do not think before they act they think, but if we learn the habit of thiking because that is what we learn in chess if we look at what we have at the board, we think critically on it, we look for what are the possible options for us to take and we thinking is the best option at that moment and considering other options and of course we all know that as a chess player we use some element of psycology to play. If we are the other person what would i have done in this situation and it is in this situation that we would think about like let me do this to him, so this is the benefit of chess. Chess gives us that opportunity to think. It is called emotional intelligence, and outside of chess when we view our environment we are able to relate, so we know when to bring out our empathic nature, we know when to be jugdmental, we know when to stand our strong position that considering all factor all that you have just done is wrong that i could have done it this way not neccesary in chess also outside of real life. We are going to judge decisions based on premises presented on them, to be able to stand on decision my candid opinion by saying to oneself that this is my postion and am standing on it am not going to because am seeing your face am standing by because i believe that this is right based on the recent information in front of me or that i have, just like a jugde say that going by evidence presented, so these are some opportunities being a chess player. You take decisions based on facts in front of you, taking these desions and be able to stand by it and if you find out it is not the best we should be able to stand up to it. Like the position i took earlier i should have not done it, but i took it in my honour and i was not being partial, that is when a chess player can say that he took more of right decisions than anyone in that game that you are the best and make you stand out and did not try to cut corners, so these are the thing i would like to leave with the reader. Thank you so much.
CH: Alright, Thank you.