Prof(Mrs) Felicia Adebola Adedoyin the author of Nigeria National Pledge is has passed on.
The Saki born Professor died at the age of 82
A princess from the Iji ruling house of Shaki, Oyo State, South West Nigeria was born in 1938.
The national pledge which she wrote was adopted in 1976 and has remained one of the binding forces holding Nigeria together as a nation by imbuing upon the citizenry a genuine sense of patriotic obligation to the progress and unity of Nigeria.
-How it started-
The Nigerian National Pledge was created by an eminent Nigeria; Prof (Mrs.) Felicia Adebola Adedoyin in 1976. Professor Adedoyin who was born on the 6th of November 1938 is the 2nd of 6 Children and a princes from the Iji ruling house of Shaki in Shaki West LG, Oke Ogun area of Oyo State.
Her children were already acquainted with reciting the Oath of Allegiance in their school in New York, USA and also the State Pledge(Which was introduced on 1 June, 1976) in Achimotu School in Accra Ghana.
Instinctively, out of childhood inquisitiveness and assertiveness, they sought to know why they didn’t recite any Pledge while they were in Nigeria.
Of course their mother told them the home truth; their fatherland had no National Pledge.
They eventually provided the necessary challenge that propelled their mother to conceive and originate a National Pledge for Nigeria, which she achieved in June 1976.
Her creative work while aged 38, was featured in the Daily Times of July 15, 1976 in an article titled “Loyalty to the Nation, Pledge”.
Barrister Adewusi who was a mutual friend of the Adedoyins and Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, read the Daily Times article and eventually presented it to Obasanjo in August 1976. Gen. Obasanjo, who was then Head of State, accepted the work and modified it.
In September 1976, he decreed that all school children should recite the Pledge in their assemblies daily. Gen. Obasanjo acknowledged this rare feat in his book “Not My Will” (1990 at pg. 118).
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