Citation (delivered by Ashok Gangadean,
Professor of Philosophy):
It seems for every generation, beautiful
spirits appear amongst us, whose courage, compassion, selfless
service to humanity, and joy of life inspires us all and reminds
us who we truly are, and of the heights we are all capable of
reaching against the greatest odds. Hafsat Abiola is a 28-year-old
human rights and democracy activist from Lagos, Nigeria. Her
work for the rights of women and children in Nigeria and in
other African countries has elicited recognition and praise
throughout the world.
Hafsat comes from a family of dedicated
Pan-Africanists and courageous advocates for freedom and justice.
Her father, M.K.O. Abiola, won the presidential election held
in Nigeria in 1993, but served out his term in solitary confinement,
incarcerated by the military dictatorship that nullified the
election. He died in prison on the eve of his release. Her mother,
Kudirat, no ordinary mother, was a vocal proponent for democracy
and fought tirelessly for the release of her husband through
the use of organized strikes and campaigns. She was assassinated
in the streets of Lagos in 1996 while Hafsat was a graduating
senior at Harvard.
Hafsat, no ordinary daughter, to
continue the legacy left by her parents, founded and directs
an organization called Kudirat Initiative for Democracy (KIND),
named for her mother, which seeks to strengthen civil society
and promote democracy in Nigeria. Military rule ended in Nigeria
in 1999, and KIND’s mission now is to empower and enable
the development of Africa by strengthening organizations and
initiatives dedicated to the advancement of women and youth.
KIND offers organizational support and training opportunities
to women and youth in an effort to strengthen Africa’s
civil society and build democracy for its citizens.
But Hafsat is also a global citizen,
involved in the global movement to empower youth and women on
a planetary scale in her passionate commitment to work for human
rights, freedom, justice, and democratic values around the globe.
She was a founding member of the State of the World’s
Emerging Leaders Program and Global Youth Connect. Currently,
she is a Fetzer Fellow and serves on the boards of Youth Employment
Summit, Educate Girls Globally, Women’s Learning Partnership,
and the Global Security Institute.
Hafsat holds a bachelor of arts degree
from Harvard, and has received many honors for her vital work.
These include the Youth, Peace, and Justice Award from the Cambridge
Peace Commission in 1997, the State of the World “Changemakers”
Award in 1998, the Association for Women in Developments “Women
to Watch For” Award in 1999, the World Economic Forum
Global Leaders for Tomorrow Award in 2000, and the Nuclear Age
Peace Foundation Global Award in 2001. Most of all, Hafsat is
a living reminder of the lineage of Ghandi, Martin Luther King,
Jr., Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, and Desmond Tutu of the
power of love to confront and overcome the forces of violence
and injustice.
Hafsat Abiola’s speech:
It was actually never my intention
to become an activist. I came from a very conservative, sheltered
family. So my goal really was just to sleep in the library at
Harvard and get a Ph. D. But when I was graduating—and
my mom had been killed in the senior year of my graduation—activism
and the military’s response to activism gave birth to
a new life for me.
I’d like to really just focus
my few minutes by talking and sharing a little bit with the
students about what I hope for your future. You’ve graduated
from a school that is incredibly beautiful, and full of trees
and the nurturing of your teachers, the nurturing of your parents
and your friends. And you’re going out into the world
now. If there’s anything that I need to tell you it is
simply this: There are two kinds of people we have in the world.
We have people that have reasons, and people that produce results.
The people that have reasons will have reasons why they could
not produce results - then the people that produce results simply
produce results. And I’d like you very much to be in the
latter category.
And so, maybe it’s presumptuous
of me but let me speak to what I noted when I first came to
the U.S. at the age of fifteen to go to Andover in Massachusetts.
And there I learned something about American people, which the
majority of you are, and even those that are not have been in
American culture for a while. And that’s that there is
often a questioning of themselves and their abilities, their
talent. There’s often a lack of self-esteem that doesn’t
make any sense, when you look at the quality of person that
they are. And for me it was really shocking because I grew up
in a society that, even as you are born, the name they give
you very clearly shows that they expect that you are going to
change the world. So my name, Hafsat, meant the treasured one,
but there were other names, like Olawalai - honor was born into
the family with the birth of this child. Every name that a child
is given in Nigeria clearly demonstrates the expectation that
that child will be great. Even if the child does nothing in
his life you can see that the parents already think that with
that child’s birth that the world and at least their community
will be different.
And I was also brought up in a family
that was very clear about that. So I was sharing yesterday that
with my mother who was incredibly beautiful, people would say,
“Oh your mom is so beautiful,” and I’d go
and meet my mom and say, “Mom, you know my friends say
you are so beautiful,” and one day my mom just looked
at me and said, “Hafsat, are you just realizing that I
am beautiful?” You know she was just thinking, “Of
course I’m beautiful.” And that’s very different
from what I experienced here where students and my colleagues
in class would come and meet me and say, “Oh, Hafsat,
I’m too fat,” even when they are just shapely and
when they are very slim, “Oh, Hafsat I am too skinny,”
or “I’m not athletic enough.” There was always,
“I’m not enough” of something. And then even
in my father’s case, my father used to tell me, “Hafsat,
people call me Numero uno non secunda.” That’s
Latin meaning “number one, second to none.” Now
I don’t know if anybody really called my father that,
my father had assumed that that was really his nickname in the
world, and to prove that he was really Numero uno non secunda.
By the time he was elected president
in Nigeria, he was one of the wealthiest businessmen, but he
didn’t start out that way. He was born into one of the
poorest families. The first sixteen children born into his polygamist
home died before the age of five and he, the seventeenth child,
it was a surprise that he lived. He was telling me this story
about his general greatness and he said, “When I married
your mom, I really wasn’t that wealthy, I mean I was a
musician and a boxer. But she was so beautiful, I wanted to
impress her so I took her to Ghana the neighboring country for
a boxing match. So that way, after the match I’ll take
her around the country. And you know at the match I got into
the ring, I punched my opponent, he fell on the floor, then
I took your mom around.” So I wanted to hear the story
again, and I said to my mom one day when my father wasn’t
around, “So tell me how that honeymoon was, Mommy,”
she said, “What did your father tell you?” And I
said, “Well you tell me.” So she told me: “Your
father came to me and we went to Ghana and he was a boxer and
a musician and he got into the ring, then the opponent came
in, and Hafsat, you know your father is big, but this man was
bigger, and your father is tall but this man was taller and
your father is dark but this man was really black, and when
your father saw him he started to shake and then he looks across
the rings side and he sees me patiently waiting and he seemed
to puff up. Then the referee hits both their gloves and steps
aside and the man punches your father once, your father falls
and doesn’t wake up until we get back to Nigeria.”
But in this instance when he had a major disappointment, my
father just re-wrote the script, just so that he could have
enough confidence to carry on.
So it’s amazing to me
how Americans with all their amazing achievements, and you with
all the amazing achievements that you have, will probably in
this time as you’re graduating, be wondering, what am
I going to do with my life and how am I going to make a difference?
And really believe that it is questionable whether you can.
And I want you to know that you can and you will, everything
you need to have to make a difference in your life you already
have within you. You have to be fully confident about your own
talents, about your own possibilities if you are going to realize
them. Even if it’s true that maybe you need a Ph. D. to
finally crack the cure for AIDS or something, start with what
you can do now and start to make that difference now, in whatever
little way you can do it. But enough of this second-guessing,
enough of this self-doubt, especially when it paralyzes you.
Because I know that it was the American Amnesty students who
came to me when my family was incarcerated in Nigeria and were
struggling and they said to me, “Could you please sign
a petition for Amnesty? There’s an elected president in
jail in Nigeria and we are trying to get him released.”
That really was what woke up my activism because before then
I was thinking, nobody cares, who is going to help? And when
it gave birth to my activism, I could make the difference for
my country. So imagine what you can do in your own little way.
If you just trust in yourself and do something small in a little
way, it can really change the world. So I want to say thank
you because I’ve been a little bit sad and feeling inadequate
in my life that I don’t have a doctorate degree at this
point when really that was the goal, and now I can say that
I have a doctorate degree. And I wish you the very best of luck
in your life, I know you are going to make a difference.
