Nigeria has lost one of its heroines: Professor Felicia Adebola Adedoyin, who authored the National Pledge.
She composed the pledge in 1976 and it has remained a national asset although many Nigerians might not have been practising its tenets.
‘Oyo Insight’ reports that died after a brief illness, on Ma1, 2021.
She was lectured at the University of Lagos and a consultant with the United Nations
She was inspired to write the pledge following questions by her children who had been used to reciting the Oath of Allegiance while in school in New York, and the State Pledge in Achimota School, Ghana.
Adedoyin published the Pledge in the ‘Daily Times’ in July 15, 1976, in an article titled “Loyalty to the Nation, Pledge’”. It was shown to the then Head of State, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, who modified it and introduced it to the country during the formal launch of the Universal Free Primary Education (UPE) and decreed that all school children recite the National Pledge during assembly.
In 2005, Prof Adedoyin was given a national award, the Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON).
She was in the care of her children when she passed away, and surrounded by loved ones.
