The list of games include snail shell (Okoto), Pigcon Pea (Epa kuta), night plays (Aare Osupa such as Boju-Boju), etc. Others were wrestling, (ijakadi), ‘durukudu’, ‘wowo’ and konkoliri”‘.
Children took active part in the first group while adults and able young men engaged in the latter. Until recently, the Ramadan fasting period featured such popular games as Okoto and Epakuta among the young children.
It was believed that the games and other sports made Ramadan fasting livelier as they made young ones who took part to feel nothing of the pains of hunger and thirst that normally accompany fasting. Game sites were located where there were heaps of sand and in most cases very close to mosques where players and spectators converged to play or watch the games.
No financial inducement was attached to these games; the only accorded benefits were fame, prestige or pride. Wowo, Konkoliri and Durukudu were three other games among young and able-bodied men, which required not only physical strength but also ‘extra’ power for a player to excel in them. Wowoo was a yearly sporting event; it usually took place on the eleventh day after the celebration of Eid- Kabir (Ileya) festival.
The game was in most cases organized in the night where two groups of fighters emerged from different areas of the town, each holding a stick wrapped with dried grass. The stick was lighted in order to scare and forcc the opponents to retreat. Adifa, Oke-Ita and Ita Ogunbo were some of the areas where ‘wowo’ was fought.
Wowo was banned during the reign of Emir Abdulkadir (1919-1959) when people began to use it as a means to settle scores, which eventually resulted to maiming and, in some few cases, the death of opponents, and unwarranted house burning.