nigeria Awaiting Port Harcourt’s Third Golf Course

     Sometime this year, perhaps this spring, construction is expected to begin on a gated, Western-style golf community in the capital of Nigeria’s Rivers State.
     RivTaf Golf Estate will occupy 95 acres of government-owned land in Port Harcourt, the center of Nigeria’s thriving oil industry. The nation’s increasing wealth has sparked robust demand for upscale goods and services, not to mention comfortable, modern housing, and Port Harcourt has “only one or two gated living communities that can be truly described as classy,” according to a Nigerian news report.
     As a result, Taf Nigeria Homes, Ltd. is under some political pressure to get started on RivTaf. The governor of Rivers State, Chibuike Amaechi, has implored the company to break ground immediately and to build the community quickly.
     “You don’t need to be worried about uptake,” Amaechi reportedly said, “because many people are waiting to buy.”
     To speed the development, Rivers State has agreed to install the community’s infrastructure and to buy any houses that Taf Nigeria can’t sell.
     RivTaf, which promises an “upscale lifestyle at affordable rates,” will offer attractions that most of us take for granted, such as garbage collection and around-the-clock water and electrical service. At build-out, the community will consist of 31 four- and five-bedroom villas, 32 townhouses, and more than 600 apartments plus a shopping area, a recreation center, and a nine-hole golf course.
     Taf Nigeria is an affiliate of Taf Holding Company, which has been involved in real estate activities in several African nations for more than two decades. The affiliate’s chairman, Basil Omiyi, is a former managing director of Shell Petroleum Development Company, which built houses for many of Nigeria’s oil-industry employees.
     Assuming it’s built, RivTaf’s golf course will be the third in Port Harcourt. All told, Nigeria has eight golf courses, according to online sources.

     The original version of this post first appeared in the January 2013 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.