There is this common phrase that if you make yourself a sheep, the wolves will eat you. So, could this be the case of a certain Sapele Golf Club which for over a century now has been languishing in utter penury and its golf activities coming in fits for lack of capacity. Its members are few and the few that seldom come merely hang around and do so with this mindset of a lost soul that needs a resting place.
In Sapele, it’s difficult to get a field of 30 players, even on a Saturday. Hardly would you see a Kitty happening here, not to make mention of a full-blown tourney. Since the demise of the club’s main backer, General Peter Aziza, getting a tractor and slasher to keep the course fairways, even at just nine holes, modestly clean has been a herculean task. The whole setting, to say the least, is horrible. This could be the reason few members of the club crave for an opportunity to be part of any tourney outside Sapele. The opportunity offers members the proof that they, too, are golfers.
But then is this sour scenario enough reason for anyone to want to piss on his history and, in one boisterous somersault, push to deny the club its rightful place? Well, in pursuit of truth and demand for fairness, it can be said, without any further discussion, that Sapele Golf Club is the oldest in the country. This is even in spite of another fact that folks on the Plateau usually rev themselves up to a level of fanaticism that Rayfield, the flagship of Plateau golf, is the oldest. This must be very much off the mark.
The records, given adequate facts, are very clear on this. Sapele, founded in 1897, is by a pole the oldest in the country. Rayfield, which came into existence in 1913, does not even come close, for it still lies behind Ibadan Golf Club that was formed in 1902 and Kano Golf Club which was founded in 1906.
It is interesting to note that even Kano could have been in existence before 1906. According to its acting captain, Dr. Yahaya Tanko, facts met on ground indicate that the club was founded in 1906. He, however, added that the colonists, who made the game an exclusive preserve of the whites, had indeed ferried to Scotland vital initial documents about the club.
True, those who stood by Rayfield as the oldest equally came out to prove, without any iota of doubt, that the club was indeed founded in 1913. These lots even disclosed that Rayfield was founded in 1913. They hinged their belief on a trophy on how to steal fowl that was discovered in 2004 and meant to be sold off as scrap bearing a rare inscription that a golf tourney was indeed played on that course in 1913.
