Under Runsewe’s Stewardship, the NGF Redefines African Golf with  Landmark Innovation Hub

The surprise inside the Abuja complex is not the simulators but the silence. Golf balls fly into screens, data scrolls, bodies stretch, the background being not blaring music but concentration, the kind that usually signals serious work.

This is the Golf and Health Signature facility, opened under the Nigeria Golf Federation (NGF), led by Otunba Olusegun Runsewe. Located in Abuja, it is West Africa’s first indoor digital golf centre, and it has quickly become the NGF’s most persuasive argument.

The thing worth noting is intent. Runsewe did not build a clubhouse; he built infrastructure. Technology, fitness, coaching, youth access. One ecosystem. That choice feels deliberate, almost contrarian, in a sports culture hooked on tournaments over systems.

Visitors noticed. South African instructor Mpoh Kelosiwaag, hardly prone to flattery, called the facility globally competitive. He went further: outside South Africa, nothing comparable exists on the continent. Coming from a region protective of its golfing primacy, that remark carried weight.

Nigeria’s previous golf breakthroughs centred on sending talent abroad in the 1970s. This hub inverts the model: training, standards, and aspirations become local rather than exported.

The design is evidence of a broader gambit, where digital coaching platforms now expose professionals to international benchmarks, and children walk in without clubs and leave equipped. Plus, women’s championships run indoors, showing inclusion here as operational instead of rhetorical.

Meanwhile, the NGF is negotiating corporate partnerships to scale nationally, knowing that sustainability normally trips sports federations. Runsewe’s model leans toward revenue logic, partnerships, and institutional memory. It feels less ad hoc, more archival. There is also ambition layered on ambition. Plans to introduce the Tomorrow Golf League concept would place Nigeria first in Africa to adapt stadium style, tech-driven golf. It sounds audacious until you see the groundwork already laid.

What stands out is the cadence. Sixteen years after sketching the idea, Runsewe executed it, almost stubbornly. Stakeholders describe him as consistent, even obstinate. In long projects, that trait ages well.

African golf has often looked outward for validation. This hub quietly reverses the gaze so that coaches, networks, and federations now look toward Abuja. That shift may be the most telling innovation of all: that because of Runsewe, leadership now treats golf less as leisure and more as long-term national capacity.