Clearly, the Nigerian Open golf championship, over the years, has remained a glamorous event and such a sweet haven for world-class professional golfers. You can now count at the tip of your fingers – Gordon Brand, Nick Faldo, Ian Woosnam, Colin Montegomery and Vijay Singh – all featured at the Nigerian Open.
Even at a point, the Open was regarded as the pride of the Safari Tour, that is, the African Tour excluding South Africa which at the time was in the hole because of its apartheid regime. This might amaze you but the Nigerian Open was even listed on the calendar of the European Tour where points were earned to enhance a positive move to the US Tour.
Since English man, Marshall Douglas, won the very first Nigerian Open in 1969 through 1995, the tourney recorded a swell period. But in 1996, it hit a snag when the tourney was put off for lack fund. It would take the bold intervention of the military dictator, Sani Abacha, who put on table a total $1.5 million to stage the tourney at the IBB Golf Club through 1997, 1998 and 1999 at $500,000 per event. But alas, as John Scot of Sweden won the 1999 event and picked up a star cash prize of $45,000, the Nigerian Open which was won only once by a Nigerian, Lateef Lasisi in 1995, went into total coma. For 23 years now, this event has not woken from its deep slumber.
Quite a lot of bucks were passed for the collapse of the Nigerian Open. Interestingly, every blame put up clearly stayed in the corridor of fraud. Brazen among those blames had to do with smart officials of the Federal Ministry of Sports who preferred to trade with the $500,000 prize money before passing same to the winners. This particularly led to blackmail when most of the players, mostly Europeans, petitioned St Andrews, Scotland, demanding to know why their winnings were always held back at the Nigerian Open.
Even Nigeria’s biggest golf sponsor ever, Otunba Olusola Adekanola, who was chairman of the committee that was to host the year 2000 event, had to pull out just days to the event when it was clear men at the sports ministry were not prepared to hand the prize monies to Adekanola’s Committee before the event could tee off. Adekanola, aware of the petition forwarded to St. Andrews, had insisted that he would want to pay players immediately after the game. The blow of the cancelled 2000 event was most felt since the phenomenon, Tiger Woods, in an earlier chat with Adekanola, had indicated interest to be part of that year’s event.
It, however, read like magic when the new president of the Nigeria Golf Federation, Otunba Olusegun Runsewe, in a packed hall of club captains and chairman of golf course owners, His Royal Majesty, Muhammed Sanusi, the Emir of Dutse, disclosed that he and the sports minister, Sunday Dare, were set to bring back the Nigerian Open.
In good climes, this should read like a piece of cake. But on hearing Runsewe and given the hell of the past, the main thing that would come to any sane mind has to do with two things: Is this mere braggadocio from Runsewe or can the mission to put the Open back in play now fixed, determined and inviolable?
However, one sure thing is that there can never be an easy answer to the above question. Truth is the Open, over the past 23 years it has been in the cooler, has been violated, battered and so much ill-treated that nobody, not even Runsewe and the sports minister put together, could be trusted to bring back the Open.
Reason? The sheer greed that initially kicked the Open from the fairway to the rough now makes the tourney a perennial loser no one will want to touch with a mile long pole. Besides, the Open had long been shoved off the European Tour and so to guarantee any participation of quality players like in past events could as well read like a pipe dream. In fact, this is why it sounded so funny and awkward when Runsewe freely pronounced that the Open was back.
Sure, some people have more guts than brains. It is, however, clear that Runsewe has both. Yet Runsewe is an intensely go-lucky man who believes he can achieve anything. But how he intends to skip the frying pan and go straight into the fire remains a bone of contention here.
For instance, would the federal government part with at least $1 million needed to get a decent entry into the event? This appears unlikely given the manner the same government held tightly in its spat with ASUU.
Or would Runsewe go cap in hand to corporate bodies when it was clear most corporate bodies had sworn off sponsorships after discovering that a chunk of the money they put on the table as sponsorship fees usually got drowned in pockets of members of phantom ‘organising committees’ of tournaments.
You can now raise a searchlight and ask why Globacom, which once started a Pro Tour running into at least a billion naira, suddenly backed out after the first leg of the Tour played out at St. Mark’s course in Otukpo, Benue State. Or why another mega communication outfit in MTN backed out from golf sponsorships in Nigeria when it is clear the same company is putting up with its golf sponsorship commitment in other African countries, especially South Africa.
Given this scenario, Otunba Runsewe should ask again if he has a Plan B to achieve his lofty dream. But if his hope hinges on the sports minister who offered just a million Naira when past NGF President Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola hosted an international youth event that gulped close to N20 million, then all that is visible are mere pipe dreams.
