Modele Sarafa-Yusuf Biography: Africa’s First Female Sportscaster and the Woman Who Wants to Govern Ogun State

When Modele Sarafa-Yusuf walked into the Nigerian Television Authority’s sports desk in 1987, she was not just a new reporter. She was the first woman in Africa to occupy that particular space — the sportscaster’s chair at a national television network. In a world where sports broadcasting was entirely male territory, she did not just enter the room. She changed what the room looked like.

More than three decades later, she is still making firsts. In 2022 and again in 2026, she became the most prominent woman publicly chasing the governorship of Ogun State — a political terrain that has produced presidents, vice presidents, and some of the most consequential figures in Nigerian history. Where others might have chosen a quieter retirement from public life, Modele Sarafa-Yusuf has consistently chosen the harder, more visible path.

Her story is not a straight line. It is the kind of career that only becomes legible in full when you look at the whole arc: from a television studio in Ibadan to the boardrooms of Globacom, from Arise News to government advisory, and now to the campaign trail for executive office. What holds it together, across every transition, is the same quality that was noted about her in her very first year of professional life: a quiet, unassuming confidence that consistently produces outsized results.

Early Life and Background

Born Omodele Bolatito Sarat Osinaike on 7th May, 1966, in Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria, she came from the family of Alhaji Buhari Osinaike — a public servant in the old Western Region and Ogun State — and Alhaja Sifawu Osinaike, a textile merchant.

The combination of those two parental backgrounds — one rooted in public administration and governance, the other in commerce and entrepreneurship — planted two seeds that would flower distinctly in her adult life. Her father’s world of public service would eventually draw her into government communication and politics. Her mother’s business instincts would manifest in her marketing and sponsorship career. Children often become, in some fashion, a blend of their parents. In Modele’s case, that blend has been unusually productive.

She is from Iperu-Remo in Ogun State, a community in the Remo Division of the state that has produced a disproportionate number of Nigeria’s educated and influential citizens. Her cultural and political roots in Ogun State are not simply biographical footnotes — they are the foundation of her later political ambitions and her genuine emotional investment in the state’s future.

She had her primary and post-primary education in Ibadan before the next chapter opened at one of Nigeria’s most distinguished universities. Growing up in Ibadan — a city with a proud intellectual tradition, home to the University of Ibadan and a culture that has always valued education and eloquence — gave her a particular kind of formation. It is a city where conversation is taken seriously and where the ability to communicate with precision is respected.

She has at least one sister — Hajia Shareefah Biola Andu — described as a business mogul and philanthropist, suggesting a family pattern of ambitious, accomplished women who operate in different spheres but share a common drive.

Education

Modele proceeded to the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) where she obtained a Bachelor of Education degree in English in 1986. The choice of English at OAU — the same institution where Adesuwa Onyenokwe would study Drama and be tutored by Wole Soyinka — was well-suited to someone whose career would be built entirely on the precision, weight, and delivery of language. A degree in English at OAU is not merely a language qualification. It is a training in how words work: their rhythm, their power, their capacity to persuade, inform, or mislead

She later obtained a Master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of Lagos in 2002. That second degree, completed fifteen years after her first and in the middle of a flourishing media career, reveals a deliberate intellectual upgrade. Public Administration is the study of how government and institutions function — how policy is made, how organisations are managed, how public resources are allocated. It is not a casual academic choice. For someone who would go on to manage government communications and then seek elected office, it was precisely the right graduate discipline

Career Journey: Five Decades of Firsts

The NYSC Posting That Changed Everything

In 1987, Modele was deployed to Oyo State for her National Youth Service, and for her primary assignment, she was posted to the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) Ibadan, where she quickly mastered the art of television news gathering, processing and presentation — and became the first woman sportscaster in Africa

Pause on that for a moment. The sports desk of any television station in the late 1980s was an exclusively male environment — not by policy, necessarily, but by convention, assumption, and the accumulated inertia of a media culture that had not seriously considered putting a woman in front of a football match. Modele did not just break that convention. She did it so effectively that the NTA retained her after her service year — the highest professional compliment an NYSC posting can produce.

In a citation written by the NTA and read at the NYSC Award ceremony, Modele was described as “a responsible, respectful and respectable woman who stamped her unassuming personality on NTA.” That phrasing — “unassuming personality” — recurs in descriptions of her across different decades of her career. It is not false modesty. It is the confidence of someone who does not need to be loud because the work speaks first.

NTA Lagos: Building the National Profile

Modele was later posted to the NTA headquarters in Lagos, where her presentation became synonymous with confidence and excellence. At NTA Lagos — the flagship station of Nigeria’s national broadcaster — she was no longer simply a local face. She was presenting to a national audience during the height of NTA’s dominance in Nigerian broadcasting, before satellite television fragmented the viewership

During sixteen years at NTA, she was not only a sports broadcaster — she was also a columnist for magazines, a guest writer for newspapers, a scriptwriter for television shows, and a producer of documentaries and programmes for radio and television in fields as diverse as business, culinary, current affairs, crime, and education

That breadth is significant. Sports broadcasting could have been a comfortable niche in which to stay indefinitely. Instead, she used the platform to develop a far wider range of media skills — a strategic diversification that would pay dividends across every subsequent career phase.

She won the Nigerian Media Merit Award in 1996 and the National Association of Women Journalists Award in 1999 before retiring from the NTA in 2003. By the time she left, she had accumulated not just a career but a reputation — and two decades of skills that the private sector was about to discover it needed.

Globacom: From Journalism to Corporate Strategy

Modele joined telecommunications company Globacom in January 2004 as Senior Manager Sponsorships. The move from NTA to Globacom at its inception was, in retrospect, an inspired one. Globacom was Nigeria’s brash, ambitious new telco — a company that would bet heavily on sports and entertainment sponsorships to build brand loyalty and subscriber numbers. And Modele had spent seventeen years becoming, quite literally, the most recognisable female sports broadcaster in Africa.

As Globacom’s Head of Sponsorships for West Africa, her team sponsored and raised the standards of many national and international sports events, including the Nigerian Professional Football League in Nigeria and Ghana, the Federations Cup, and the CAF Awards, which with its glitz and glamour became a benchmark for sports awards in Africa.

She was also the project manager and coordinator of the Glo-Lagos International Half Marathon, which at the time was the second richest Half Marathon in the world. Managing the second richest half marathon in the world is not a minor operational achievement. It required logistics, diplomacy with international sporting bodies, media management, and the kind of detailed event coordination that brings together government, corporate sponsors, international athletes, and a watching global audience.

Between 2012 and 2013, she served as Director of Marketing at the American University of Nigeria — another lateral move that expanded her institutional footprint into the education sector.

Arise News and the Return to Broadcast Journalism

After the corporate chapter, Modele returned to what she has always described as her first love. As Head of Lagos Operations at Arise News, she helped transition the former London-based world news channel to an Afrocentric channel with a Nigerian DNA, helped recruit on-air and back-end personnel, and worked with anchors, reporters, and producers on making the newscast more appealing. She also coached anchors on vocal delivery, ad-lib skills, posture, and pacing.

That coaching role is particularly telling. Having been the first woman sportscaster in Africa, she had accumulated a specific expertise in on-screen communication — how to command a camera, how to hold an audience’s attention, how to project authority without aggression. She was now using those skills not just for herself, but to build the next generation.

Government Advisory and Political Entry

In 2018, Sarafa-Yusuf was invited to join the campaign team of then Ogun State Governorship candidate Dapo Abiodun as Director of Media and Publicity, overseeing the entirety of the campaign’s messaging, media relations, and communications staff. The campaign’s success brought her into government: she later served as Special Adviser on Information to Governor Dapo Abiodun, playing a key role in managing public communication for the Ogun State Government.

That experience inside government — seeing how policy decisions are communicated, how public trust is built or eroded, how the machinery of state actually works from the inside — only deepened the conviction that she could do more. She contested for the Ogun State governorship ticket in 2023 but was not successful. In February 2026, she publicly declared her intention to run again for Governor of Ogun State in the 2027 election under the APC.

Influence and Contributions

In 2011, Modele was appointed a member of the Women in Sports Commission by the Nigerian Olympic Committee. In December 2012, the Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports appointed her to the League Management Committee, which birthed the now successful Nigerian Premier League.

The Nigerian Premier League is now one of Africa’s more watched football leagues. The committee that created its modern structure included Modele Sarafa-Yusuf. That contribution — structural, behind-the-scenes, unglamorous — is the kind that rarely appears in headlines but shapes the industry for decades.

Her advocacy extends beyond sports administration. Her stated vision for Ogun State governance is built on principles of integrity, transparency, sustainable community development, championing equal representation, empowering women in policymaking, and expanding access to digital literacy and vocational programmes for youth. These are not vague campaign slogans. They reflect the priorities of someone who has actually worked across media, corporate, and government sectors and understands which structural interventions produce lasting change.

She is a Fellow of the Institute of Management Consultants — a formal recognition of her standing as a senior professional in management and organisational leadership, not just in media.

Personal Life: Family, Faith, and Roots

Modele Sarafa-Yusuf is a Muslim — a faith visible in her title “Hajia” and in the way her family life, including her son’s wedding, was organised around Islamic tradition and ceremony. Her faith is not a public performance but a quiet, consistent thread in her personal identity.

She was born into the family of Alhaji Buhari Osinaike, a public servant in the old Western Region and Ogun State, and Alhaja Sifawu Osinaike, a textile merchant. Her father passed away in 2017, having lived to see his daughter become one of Nigeria’s most decorated media professionals and a serious political figure in their home state.

Her son Abdulhamid Ayomide is an IT Systems Administrator with an Investment Bank and holds a Master’s degree from Royal Holloway, University of London. His marriage in February 2020 to Aishat Nkechinyere, from the prestigious Akinsemoyin Royal Family of Lagos, was one of the more prominently covered society weddings of that period — attended by politicians, royalty, media personalities, and business leaders. At the wedding, D’Banj played harmonica and performed Sweet Mother for Abdulhamid and his mother in an emotional moment that those present still speak about.

She describes herself simply as “Mother, Grandmother, Marketing Communications Professional, Pioneer Woman Sportscaster, and Ogun State Governorship aspirant.” That self-description — putting mother and grandmother before every professional credential — is not accidental. It reflects what she genuinely appears to prioritise.

Net Worth

Modele Sarafa-Yusuf’s net worth has not been publicly confirmed or independently verified by any credible source. Her income has been derived from a wide range of professional engagements across a long career: over sixteen years at NTA, senior roles at Globacom including Head of Sponsorships for West Africa, directorial positions at the American University of Nigeria and Arise News, government advisory work for the Ogun State Government, consulting engagements as a Fellow of the Institute of Management Consultants, and her ongoing political and public speaking activities. For a career of this breadth, scope, and duration, her financial standing is likely reflective of senior professional achievement. Specific estimates circulating online have not been verified and should be treated with appropriate scepticism.

Conclusion

Modele Sarafa-Yusuf has been playing the long game since 1987, when she sat down in front of a camera to present sports on a national television network for the first time — as a woman, on an African continent where no woman had done it before. Since then, she has held roles that most people would consider separate careers: broadcaster, corporate strategist, sports administrator, government adviser, and now gubernatorial aspirant.

What unites all of it is a consistent forward motion — not the restless kind that chases novelty for its own sake, but the purposeful kind that builds towards something. In Modele’s case, that something increasingly looks like the governorship of Ogun State: a role that would require every skill she has accumulated across four decades of work in media, communications, government, and sports administration.

Whether that ambition is realised in 2027 or beyond, the career that has brought her to this point already represents one of the more remarkable trajectories in Nigerian public life. Africa’s first female sportscaster is still in the room, still making moves. And she is still, characteristically, unassuming about all of it.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is Modele Sarafa-Yusuf best known for? She is best known as Africa’s first female sportscaster — having made history at the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) Ibadan in 1987, during her NYSC posting. She is also recognised as the founder of the View from the Top programme, former Special Adviser on Information to Ogun State Governor Dapo Abiodun, and a two-time Ogun State governorship aspirant.

2. How old is Modele Sarafa-Yusuf? She was born on May 7, 1966, making her 58 years old as of 2025. She was born in Ibadan, Oyo State, though her home state is Ogun State, where she is from the town of Iperu-Remo.

3. Who are Modele Sarafa-Yusuf’s parents? Her father was the late Alhaji Buhari Osinaike, who served as a public servant in the old Western Region and Ogun State. He passed away in 2017. Her mother is Alhaja Sifawu Osinaike, a textile merchant, born in 1932.

4. Does Modele Sarafa-Yusuf have children? Yes. She has at least one son, Abdulhamid Ayomide, who holds a Master’s degree from Royal Holloway, University of London, and works as an IT Systems Administrator at an investment bank. He married in February 2020. Modele is also a grandmother.

5. What is Modele Sarafa-Yusuf’s religion? Modele Sarafa-Yusuf is a Muslim. Her faith is reflected in her title “Hajia” and in the Islamic traditions observed at family events, including her son’s wedding in 2020