The Obafemi Awolowo Foundation has announced its intention to inaugurate a HID Awolowo Foundation to celebrate and commemorate the outstanding contributions of Yeye Oodua HID Awolowo to family values, entrepreneurship and perseverance in the face of adversity.
The matriarch of the Awolowo family died last Saturday at the age of 99. Her husband, Chief Obafemi Awowolo, died in 1987.
The announcement was contained in a statement in which Dr. O. Awolowo Dosumu, Executive Director of the Obafemi Awolowo Foundation, formally announced the passing of her mother, the “Chairperson and moving spirit” of the foundation, who was widely-known as “Mama”.
“Although the details and fine points of this initiative are being worked out, it takes no great insight to appreciate the synergy between the values that Mama stood for and exemplified and the legacy of the sage, from which the Foundation has derived its core mandate and competencies,” she said.
She recalled Mama’s fortitude and exemplary forte in keeping the faith both at a time when her husband was unjustly persecuted by political authorities and in the years since the sage passed on.
“It ought to be remarked that her business acumen, organizational intelligence and hard work stood her in good stead throughout her remarkable life,” Dr. Awolowo-Dosunmu said. “It is in recognition of these virtues and the need to underline the careers of role models and visionaries in a morally adrift generation that the HID Awolowo Foundation is being instituted under the aegis of the Obafemi Awolowo Foundation.”