Celebrating Malala At 21

Miss Malala Yousafzai is a young girl from a village in Northwest Pakistan who rose to fame by being a public advocate for Human Right. Malala started fighting as a human rights activist when she was nine years old. She advocated for the education and rights of the girl child in her home country. Her home meant something to her and she wanted to fight for its existence and survival.Malala publicised the activities of the Taliban group in her local community and openly fought for the right of her people, even though she was still young. Malala publicised the activities through a blog using a pseudo name. Malala continued to rise and at some stage she got featured in New York Times through her struggle.

Malala became a threat to the Taliban Group because she was bringing the attention of the world to them, thereby gaining their attention, hate, and contempt.

Taliban made an attempt to assassinate her, which failed. This led to the Prime Minister of Pakistan labelling her as the most prominent citizen of the Country. She was also tagged the most famous teenager in history by Deutsch Well.

Malala was given a Nobel Peace Prize in the Year 2014, making her the youngest awardee in history.

Malala rose to fame with different books and features publicly advocating for female child education.

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 female child education that started in her small village.

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.

Today we join the rest of the world to celebrate activism. We join the rest of the world to fight oppression. Today we join the rest of the world to advocate for girl child education. We join the rest of the world to celebrate Malala and her fight for human rights activism.

As we celebrate Malala and as a ONE.org Champion, 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 basic, free education is provided for at least 12 years. We have more Malalas waiting to happen, let us help them become. 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