Folayegbe Akintunde was born in 1923, She was a Women activist and senior civil servant of the old Western region, she was the oldest daughter of a leading Christian family in Okeigbo, descendant of the old Oyo war-time settler at Ife, and Ogbomoso settler at Ibadan, who both camped in Okeigbo from the mid-19th century. With the support of her CMS School headmaster she was able to convince her father, a cocoa farmer. At the age of fifteen, Folayegbe gained a scholarship to study at Queen’s College in Lagos.
She enrolled in a year-long teacher training course at the United Missionary College in Ibadan after passing the Cambridge Senior Certificate Examination in 1941. After the training, Folayegbe began teaching at the Methodist High School in Lagos. In 1949, obtained a teacher's training certificate at the Institute of Education in London. While in London, she also completed a degree course in economics, working during the daytime and vacations while taking classes at night. She took part in campus politics, rising to the position of the Vice President in the West African Student Union. In 1954, she obtained an advanced degree for which she prepared for a career in the Nigerian Civil Service. Same year, she got married to a two-year older accountant, Aghedo Ighodalo and had her first child.
From 1964 when she became an undersecretary, she had gotten invitation to speak at local and international conferences and seminars on topics bordering on women. She will reach the zenith or so to speak, of her career in the Western region civil service in 1968 when she was appointed Permanent Secretary of Home Affairs and Information. This makes her the first woman to be so elevated, though only at the regional level. After her retirement in 1976, She took to poultry farming and wrote extensively on many subjects concerning women. She died in 2005. #greatyorubapeople #omoyoruba #YorubaBlog
Yorubas build Yorubaland.
#OduduwaNation
No comments:
Post a Comment