Celebrating a heroine at 21

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Today, I join the rest of the world to celebrate a heroine and an education activist, Miss Malala Yousafzai. Malala hail from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a town in Northwest Pakistan. She rose to limelight through her activism for female education, which she started when she was barely nine-year old.

Malala advocated for the rights and education of the girl child in her hometown, where the local Taliban had banned girls from attending schools. To Malala, her hometown meant a lot to her and this spurred her to for its existence and survival.

The young Malala publicized the activities of the Taliban group in her local community and openly fought for the rights of her people – this she did through writing a blog using a pseudo name for the BBC Urdu. She continued this until she got featured by New York Times.

Consequently, Malala become a threat to the Taliban Group, as she was drawing the attention of the world to the activities of the terrorist group in her hometown. To this end, the group decided to take her life and on October 9, 2012, while on a bus, a Taliban gunman shot at Malala and two other girls. Malala was hit in the head with a bullet, but luckily for her, she survived the assassination attempt.

Following this incident, Malala become prominent and was labeled by the Prime Minister of Pakistan as the most prominent citizen of the country. She was subsequently tagged the most famous teenager in history by Deutsch Well. Malala was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in the Year 2014, making her the youngest awardee in history.

She published features in which she publicly advocated for female child education and also wrote books, including ‘I am Malala’ that became an international best seller.

In 2012, the then Secretary-General of the United Nation, Ban Ki-moon, announced July 12, being Malala’s Birthday as Malala Day. This is in honor of her fight and struggle towards the promotion of female child education that she started in her small village in Pakistan.

In 2017, Malala was awarded an honorary citizenship of Canada. She also became the youngest person to address the House of Commons of Canada when she did in 2017, at the age of 20. She was also featured in Times magazine’s most influential person globally.

Miss Malala Yousafzai got all her honor and prestige by advocating for the right of the female child, a dream which started in a small town in NorthWest Pakistan. Malala saw a problem in her community, challenged and questioned the groups causing this problem which brought the attention of the world to the problem.

As Malala celebrates her birthday today, I join the rest of the world to celebrate activism and to fight oppression. Today, I join the rest of the world to advocate for girl child education. I join the rest of the world to celebrate Malala and her fight for human rights activism.

As a ONE.org Champion and as we continue to celebrate Malala, I would like to remind us that about 130,000,000 girls of school age are out of school in Africa. This is the reality of our situation. As a Champion, I would like to key into amendment of UBE act to appeal to the Nigerian National Assembly, the Minister of Education, and the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, to see that free basic education is provided for at least 12 years. We have more Malalas waiting to happen, let us help them achieve their potential. The future is now. And the future is in the education of the young.

#OneChampion

#12YearsOfEducation

#AmendUBEAct

Olasupo Abideen Opeyemi is a ONE Champion (one.org) and a fellow of the Young Africa Leadership Initiative (Regional Leadership Centre). He is the executive director of the award-winning Brain Builders International; a United Nations recognised and certified SDGs group. He is also the CEO Brain Builders IT Firm, OPAB Global Consult, OPAB Gas Station, Soup For Me, FAST RIDE and OPAB Farms. He hails from Osun State. He can be reached on [email protected] or 2347068775529. He tweets at @opegoogle