CVL honours: Yet another feather in Awolowo Dosumu’s cap

In recognition of her diplomatic service and decades of engagement with sociopolitical issues, women and youth advocacy, the Centre for Values in Leadership (CVL), one of Nigeria’s leading think tanks, will, today, honour the Executive Director, Obafemi Awolowo Foundation, Ambassador (Dr.) Olatokunbo Awolowo Dosumu, at the 61st edition of the CVL LWT Leadership Tribute Colloquium scheduled to be held at the CVL building in Victoria Island. A not-for-profit organization set up in 2004. CVL came with a vision to be a global centre for leadership development and with an avowed mission “to bridge the gap between knowledge and results in society by empowering young people with leadership skills and values to enable them make lasting contributions in society in the areas of entrepreneurship, business, civil society, family, community development and public life.” The CVL, supported by the MacArthur Foundation, has as the theme of this year’s event, “Women in Diplomacy.” Apart from Ambassador Awolowo Dosumu, also on the roll call for honour is Ambassador Hadiza Mustapha, former High Commissioner of Nigeria to Cameroon and Ambassador Adenike Ukonga, former High Commissioner of Nigeria to Jamaica.

To observers of developments in the polity, the decision to honour Awolowo Dosumu, the Chairman of the African Newspapers of Nigeria Plc (Publishers of the Tribune titles), will not have come as a surprise. Only recently, during the opening ceremony of the International Conference  2023, the Faculty of Social Sciences, Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile -Ife, recognised her contributions towards the realization of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 1 and 4 in Nigeria with an award. She was also recently appointed Chairman of the Odu’a Investments Foundation, a non-profit charity organization newly established by Odu’a Investments Limited, leading  six other eminent Nigerians  as members of the Advisory Council.

At various times Vice Chairman of the Yoruba Unity Forum, Chairperson of the University of Lagos Teaching Hospital Management Board; member, 1988/89 Constituent Assembly;  and member of the International Committee of the Council on Foundations, an umbrella body based in Washington DC, Awolowo Dosumu has come a long way on the international turf. She was Nigeria’s representative to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and served as member, UNIFEM Advisory Board, Nigeria. In 2014, she was a South-West delegate at the National Conference where she served on the Committee on Political Restructuring and Forms of Government. She is also a member of the Global Advisory Board of the Institute for Governance and Economic Transformation (IGET), a leading Africa-focused public policy think tank.

If at the heart of the CVL mission is the elevation of the dignity of the human person, beginning from Nigeria, it is not hard to decipher why Dr Awolowo Dosumu, Nigeria’s first female Ambassador to the Netherlands, is being honoured today. At various fora and for decades, she has engaged with the issues that make for national peace and progress. As she noted in a 2016 interview, the sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, was not happy with the state of Nigeria after Independence but always was hopeful. This is apparently a key attitude behind the work of the Obafemi Awolowo Foundation which, in her own words, aims “to begin to bring all opinions around the same table and try to work out the way forward for Nigeria.”

A crucial part of this engagement is the issue she drew attention to on May 10, 1988 during the church service marking the first anniversary of the transition of the sage. On that occasion, she vowed to pursue a better deal for rural women in the Constituent Assembly. A Federal Government nominee to the assembly, Awolowo Dosumu noted that the problem of rural women was a key issue in the nation’s underdevelopment, adding that the lack of education was the bane of rural women. Her words: “The average rural woman does not even expect to be treated any better.  She thinks it is her lot in life to be an underdog. With education, the rural woman will know her rights.”

When democracy came 11 years later, she was one of the distinguished Nigerians tasked by the Federal Government with the arduous job of burnishing Nigeria’s badly battered image and reigniting international conversation and cooperation in the bid to address the country’s socioeconomic challenges. In January 2000 when she presented her letter of credence to Queen Beatrix at Noordeinde palace, being the first female ambassador to be appointed to head Nigeria’s diplomatic mission in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, she called on the Netherlands government to resume assistance to Nigeria in its efforts to solve some of its socioeconomic problems. In May of that year, she reiterated Nigeria’s commitment to the pursuit of global peace, even as the country got elected into the executive council of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Noting the progress being made towards achieving universality as the number of countries that ratified the convention stood at 135, she urged the organisation not to neglect the second component of the convention, namely development.

Part of the successes Nigeria recorded through her stewardship came to light at a forum organised by the Nigerian Embassy in the Netherlands to mark Nigeria’s 40th independence anniversary in October 2000. On that occasion, she noted that the Netherlands government and its people had joined the rest of the world in according Nigeria its due respect following the return of democracy. The recognition, she averred, came after many years of neglect and diplomatic isolation. Indeed, on that occasion, an impressed Netherland’s Minister of Foreign Trade and State Secretary for Economic Affairs, Mr Territ Ybema,  announced that he would soon lead a trade mission of Dutch government officials and private businessmen to Nigeria on an investment drive. Dr Awolowo Dosumu organished trade missions, leading, among other successes, to LNG, a major investment by Royal Dutch Shell, exporting liquid gas from Bonny, Rivers State.

Understandably, the completion of her mission in the Netherlands only gave her time to devote attention to local and international issues. For instance, at the first Pan-Yoruba National Conference and Commissioning of the Yoruba Youth Council of Nigeria held in Okota, Lagos on May 26, 2012,  she noted that as global attention remained on youth protests in African countries and elsewhere, with the global economy worsening unemployment conditions for the youth, “it is important to put effective, practical measures in place to prevent adverse reactions from the young and jobless.” She added that even though the African Union was correct in accelerating its goal to reduce youth unemployment to avoid the negative consequences of the youth bulge, AU member countries should also be held accountable at the national level to better leverage the dividends a large youth labour force could provide. But there was a caveat: “The youth themselves need to consciously and voluntarily divest themselves of the habits and attitudes, wherever they exist, that led to their current sorry situation. There is too much at stake for them to consider doing anything else or doing nothing.”

Speaking on another occasion on July 7, 2013 in Ikenne, Ogun State, during the visit of the Director General/CEO of the Awolowo Centre for Philosophy, Ideology and Good Governance, Dr Awolowo Dosumu posited that Awo’s ideals and development philosophy had been justified by the UN and the World Bank, adding that this justification could be seen in the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals and the Human Development Paradigm of the world bodies. As she noted, “the Awolowo Foundation was founded in 1992 and the founding philosophy and mission statement encompass Papa’s democratic and development-oriented ideals. And you and I know that when you distill his philosophy right down, you find out that he was all about development and the belief that the individual is the building block for development.”

That, indeed, is the kernel of her diplomatic and other engagements. Expectedly, speakers at today’s CVL Colloquium will also examine key issues as they relate to the individual, particularly women, as building blocks for societal development through diplomacy.

 

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