By Adeyinka Adeniran
A humanitarian cum philanthropist, Dr Olamide Junaid, has bagged the Nelson Mandela Leadership Award of Excellence and Integrity of the West Africa Youth Council.
This is as she was also decorated as the council’s West Africa Youth Ambassador in recognition of her great advocacy for youth development and empowerment, passion and selflessness for humanity.
The award, according to the Council was in recognition and commendation of Dr Junaid’s efforts and support for the less privileged and the downtrodden in the society through her Ibadan based O.J Foundation.
The award was presented to Junaid in Ibadan, on behalf of the Council by the Nigeria’s Representative of the West Africa Youth Council, Olaleru Folorunso at a brief event held at Bon Hotel, Ibadan.
Speaking before the presentation, Olaleru said the council took note of Junaid’s efforts to reduce the number of poor people on the continent and positive mindedness towards her immediate and outer society.
He added that the honor bestowed on her is to further encourage her to spread her humanitarian efforts to some other parts of the West African States.
Folorunsho said “We have been following her antecedents and her contribution towards the upliftment of the downtrodden and also through the OJ foundation. She has been doing tremendously and we believe that working alongside her in terms of partnership will make our relationship to go much more further.
“The reason why we are giving her this appointment is that we don’t want her to focus mainly on a Nigeria’s context. We want her to look beyond Nigeria, whereby she can extend our heart of goodwill to other individuals and personalities across the West African countries.”
Reacting after being honoured, Junaid said her drive to support the less privileged was because she was raised in Lagos slum hence has a firsthand knowledge of what it means to live daily on crumbs.
Noting that her care for humanity dates back to her teen years, she said she remained irresolute to touching lives positively, raising people, helping people realize their dreams in life.
As a matter of urgency, Junaid said government must give seriously to address the fact that there are many Nigerians who are hungry and struggling to make a living.
While promising to collaborate with other non governmental organizations to help humanity, she called on more Nigerians to support government in uplifting the downtrodden and less privileged in the society, assuring that the honor will spur her to do more.
She said before the honor, her effort has stretched beyond the shores of Nigeria and hopes to take it farther.
Dr Junaid said “My scope is beyond Nigeria. I was actually thinking of approaching Scotland government because they have underprivileged people there, too. So I was actually looking at going to them and actually having a collaboration with them. I was in Uganda last month, actually reached out to the gheto kids in Uganda through my foundation. So I’m actually not looking at Nigeria alone. I’m actually looking to expand, too.
“The award is actually a call to do more. It’s actually a challenge for me. Like, okay, you can do more. We see your work. We appreciate your work. We want to encourage you to do more. So I’m actually honored to have the award, and it’s a call to do more for me.”
Making a call on the government, the philanthropist said “I think currently government needs to focus on the feeding aspect, people are actually going hungry. The food aspect, government needs to work on that because you can go on the street, people eat one square meal. They can’t even afford the three square meal again. So government should provide food, good hospitals, and they should focus on education too.”
