TheCable

Lakowe Lakes Golf and Country Club, Nigeria’s premium golf facility, has launched a junior golf programme.

The programme, which was unveiled on Sunday, is targeted at school kids from public schools within the Lakowe community in Lagos state.

Femi Olagbenro, manager of the golf club, said the project which was launched at the 60th birthday of Deji Alli, founder of ARM who is also the CEO of Mixtafrica, the parent company of Lakowe Lakes Golf and Country Estate, aimed to introduce school kids to the rudiments of golf as a global sport.

“Golf has the capacity to complement the academic development of the youth. So in our own way of contributing to the community we have made the youth in public schools at the Lakowe community the center of our junior golf programme,” Olagbenro said.

“We have built a system where we would work with public school administrators to help maintain a balance for the students that we eventually recruit into the programe and make sure they are not distracted either ways.”

First set of 12 players have been recruited and paraded during the ARM boss’ birthday event in what Olagbenro described as the golf club’s goal to nurture the junior players into future golfers that would leverage on the sport for their future endeavours.

“This programme is not a one-off as it is carefully thought out to make it a veritable channel for the company at large to invest in our immediate community while providing opportunity for the youth to maximise their talent,” he said.

Lakowe Lakes Golf Course has some of the best junior golf facilitators in Nigeria, including Basiru Bakare, former national teenage champion; Muazu Safiyanu, junior golf expert and an alumni of Golf Academy of America (GAA): and Friday Adache, former Nigeria’s order of merit leader.

Aside the course located within a housing development, it also features a couple of signature holes that put it as one of the most challenging courses in sub-sahara Africa.