UBA Foundation CEO urges female students to learn history

Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the UBA Foundation, Bola Atta, has urged Nigerian girls to imbibe culture of learning history, insisting “it is critical to defining who they are and where they are going.”
Atta spoke at Queen’s College, Lagos, during the school tour of HerStory of Nigeria, a project by Asiri Magazine aimed at documenting and archiving the history of Nigerian women.

To her, “it is urgent that we bring history back so we don’t have a generation that’s lost. Your generation is rapidly moving into adulthood and if we don’t do something now, it will be lost in your generation.”

Citing the great philosopher, George Santayana, she added, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

She said history was not simply a collection of dates, events and names, but memory, identity and a compass.
Atta pointed to women in Nigeria’s history who had led, resisted and built, from Queen Amina of Zazzau, who she said led with courage and strength, to Funmilayo Ransom-Kuti, who stood for justice, as evidence that women had always been central to the country’s story.

She said initiatives like HerStory of Nigeria existed to remind every girl that she belonged in the story of the nation, not as a footnote but as a central voice.

Atta added the UBA Foundation’s commitment remained clear: to ensure that every African girl had the opportunity, the tools and the confidence to rise.

On his part, publisher of Asiri Magazine, Oludamola Adebowale said HerStory of Nigeria is dedicated to properly documenting the history of Nigerian women, archiving them and building a unified digital repository that would serve researchers, teachers and lecturers across generations.

He noted, “this is a legacy project and our goal is to take it across the country, telling these stories in diverse languages and multiple perspectives.’

President of the Queen’s College Old Girls Association, Temitayo Okunoren-Makindipe, recalled the school produced the first Nigerian woman to have a published work in English, the first female doctor to graduate from a Nigerian university, the first female Nigerian newspaper editor, the first female Nigerian judge, the first female permanent secretary in Nigeria, the first female vice-chancellor of any university in Nigeria and Africa’s first female doctor of English literature, among many others.

She also announced that the Queen’s College Old Girls Association had re-instituted the Lady Elizabeth Clifford Scholarship Award for the best-performing students in Junior Secondary School 1 (JSS1), with the scholarship covering all fees, books, Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) levy and house dues for JSS2.

The association also established the Lady Oyinkan Abayomi Prize for Excellence for the student with the best all-round performance in character, behaviour and academics.

On his part, the Deputy Head of Missions at the British High Commission, Simon Field, said, “when we learn history, we are not looking backwards. We are looking forward with understanding.”

The event also served as launch of the magazine.