At the time of her death, which sadly occurred on Saturday, May 1, 2021, Felicia Adebola Adeyoyin was seeing out her retirement from a long career as an academician and education consultant. The former professor died after a brief illness, but she will be remembered as the woman who composed the National Pledge, a short but powerful piece that has been echoed for generations at school assembly grounds and military training camps across Nigeria.

Whenever you hear “I pledge to Nigeria my country/to be faithful, loyal and honest/to serve Nigeria with all my strength/to defend her unity”, keep in mind that those words were put together by a woman who experienced a life that was fulfilling and fairly long.

Her Early Life

Adeyoyin was born at Shaki in the Oke Ogun area of Oyo State on November 6, 1938. She was the second of six children, and a princess from the Iji Latubi ruling house of Shaki. She had her secondary school education at Baptist Girls’ School, Idi-Aba, Abeokuta.

In 1965, she got married to Solomon Adedeji Adeyoyin, an indigene of Ire in Osun State, who would go on to work with petroleum giants Mobil for 26 years. The marriage produced four children: Adebola Ogunremi, Adedeji Adeyoyin, Adedayo Adeyoyin, and Oluseyi Korede.

Education And Career

Adeyoyin graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English from the Birkbeck University of London in 1968, and received a diploma in Education from the same institution in 1976. She obtained a PhD in Education from the University of Lagos in 1981, after publishing a thesis titled “The Dynamics Of Teaching Social Studies At The Grade Two Teachers’ College Level In Lagos State.”

She worked as a lecturer at the Faculty of Education, University of Lagos, between 1978 and 1994. After leaving the University of Lagos, Adeyoyin was appointed as a consultant at the United Nations, serving as the United Nations Regional Adviser on Education from 1994 to 2008.

Adeyoyin’s career as an educationist went under the radar. Photo: Opera News. 

Composing The National Pledge

Adeyoyin was inspired to write the national pledge in 1976, following questions from her children, who at the time were schooling outside the country. One schooled in New York, and the other schooled at Accra, Ghana. They told her about their respective school traditions of reciting the U.S Oath of Allegiance and the State Pledge in Ghana, then asked her why they never sang any pledge during all their years of schooling in Nigeria. She explained that Nigeria had no national pledge, but their questions had clearly struck a nerve.

In July 1976, her piece, “Loyalty to the Nation, Pledge”, was published in the Daily Times. The late Emmanuel Adewusi, a lawyer and mutual friend of the author and (then) Head of State Olusegun Obasanjo, read the publication and brought it to the military ruler’s attention.

Adedoyin’s writing was well-received by Obasanjo, who decided to adopt her piece as Nigeria’s official pledge in September 1976 during the formal launch of the Universal Primary Education (UPE) scheme, and decreed that all school children were mandated to recite the national pledge at daily assembly gatherings.

Late Recognition, Retirement Years and Death

In December 2005, Adeyoyin was conferred with the national honour, Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON) by (then) president, Olusegun Obsanjo, who had coincidentally adopted her writing as the national pledge twenty-nine years earlier.

In September 2019, Nigerian rapper Ruggedman organised a concert to celebrate the achievements of media personalities and public figures who had made their mark in the history of Nigeria.

The event, tagged “The Foundation Concert”, included an award segment where national heroes and elder statesmen were honoured. Adeyoyin was one of the recipients of the award. The Foundation Concert also extended the gesture to Pa Michael Taiwo Akinkunmi (who designed Nigeria’s national flag) and issued a posthumous award to the late Benedict Odiase, one of the co-composers of Nigeria’s national anthem.

In her later years, Adeyoyin was rarely seen in public. She granted very few interviews, one of which included an interview with Nigerian broadcaster Olajumoke Alawode-James in 2019. She dedicated the final years of her life to religious service at Yaba Baptist Church, where she rose to the position of Deaconess.

In her later years, Adeyoyin kept away from the public eye and rarely granted interviews. Photo: Foundation for Investigative Journalism.

In 2020, she lost her husband of 55 years, Solomon Adedeji Adeyoyin. One year and a few months later, in the late hours of Saturday, May 1, 2021, she joined the man she had loved for nearly two-thirds of her life. According to reports by the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ), she was in the care of her children when she passed on. She was 82.

Final Respects

Tobi Ayodele, writer and gender rights advocate, expressed surprise on learning that the composer of Nigeria’s national pledge was a woman.

“I didn’t even know the author of Nigeria’s pledge was a woman”, Ayodele tweeted. “May her soul rest well.”

In an interview with Neusroom, the administrative officer at Yaba Baptist Church, Idowu Adesina, revealed that the late Adeyoyin was generous to a fault.

“She had a way of encouraging youths”, said Adesina. “She was the kind of woman who would support you financially once she noticed that you had a talent. She once instructed her child to give money to a young boy who was trying to launch his album. Every year, during the Christmas holidays, she would give a lot of money to us (the) church staff to share among ourselves.”

Oshi Johnson, the head of the church’s logistics department, noted that Adeyoyin was regarded as a role model by a huge chunk of the congregation.

“She was the kind of woman who always wanted to know how you were doing, out of genuine concern and not mere curiosity”, said Johnson, in an interview with Neusroom. “She was diligent and dedicated to service, always ready to work when called upon, in spite of her old age. She showed up for (church) programmes on Sundays, and even within the week. She was someone that people looked up to; she wrote the national pledge many years ago, and it takes someone who has focus to have done that. Another thing about her was that she didn’t discriminate: she treated her driver in the same way she treated her own children.”

While it can be argued that Adeyoyin deserved more flowers while she was here, what is indisputable is that she has etched her name into Nigerian history forever. Thanks to the inquisitiveness of her children, Nigeria got blessed with an emotive and profound seven-line verse which suggests patriotism, dedication, and a huge sense of nationhood. In Adeyoyin’s life and career trajectory, it is easy to see a woman who had a clear vision for the Nigeria she wanted, and worked hard to create an impact in her own little corner. She deserves to be remembered, and honoured at every available opportunity.