The police officer who is in charge of recruiting and training of outstanding golfers for the Nigeria Police Force, Mohammed Suleiman, has said that save for early marriages, lady golfers from the northern part of the country would have dominated the nation’s ladies golf scene infinitely.
Suleiman, an alert and sharp thinker, disclosed that after discovering Rachael Danjuma and Amina Wilfred, two police ladies who still rule the nation’s ladies golf for well over a decade now, he moved on to discover three better lady golfers. But unfortunately, the trio could not hit the limelight because they were given out in marriages at early ages.
‘’This is one problem beyond my control,” Suleiman who started playing golf in 1977 at age 11 said at the weekend. ‘’I particularly trained three police ladies, in their teens, and I became sure they were going to be better than Rachael and Amina. After their training was satisfactory, I worked their transfer to Abuja so they could hit the limelight there. And what happened? They got married and their husbands simply opposed their travelling for tournaments. That was the end of lofty dreams. It was like this with several other ladies I trained’’.
Interestingly, it was Suleiman who in 1992 introduced the first set of ladies to golfing at the Kano Golf Club. Before this time, only one lady, a Japanese, was playing golf in the whole of Kano.
‘’You know in the Force, we have ladies participating in all sports’’, Suleiman noted. ‘’And so when it became necessary to bring ladies to golf, I simply reached out for Rachael who was in handball and Amina who used to be hockey goalkeeper and put them into serious golf training. I am so happy they adapted very well. The result can even show this for both ladies have been dominating ladies golf in this country for over 10 years now,” he concluded.
