Rotary’s Babalola champions child health in Akwa Ibom, joining 50 state health officers trained to combat malaria, pneumonia and diarrhoea in children under five
Rotary International President-elect Olayinka Hakeem Babalola, a member of the Rotary Club of Trans Amadi in Port Harcourt, travelled to Akwa Ibom State in June 2025 to join a critical training session for state-level health officers under the Rotary Healthy Communities Challenge, a multi-partner programme aimed at slashing child mortality from Nigeria’s three most persistent killers, namely malaria, pneumonia, and diarrhoea.
The visit placed Babalola squarely at the frontline of a programme he had championed long before his emergence as the incoming president of one of the world’s largest humanitarian service organisations.
The Rotary Healthy Communities Challenge, implemented by global health organisation PATH, has so far trained 2,750 community health workers across Kebbi and Akwa Ibom states to deliver integrated community case management, an approach that equips workers to test and treat children for multiple illnesses simultaneously in their own communities rather than at traditional health facilities.
Fifty officers from the Akwa Ibom State Ministry of Health and local government health authorities attended the training of state-level trainers, which forms the backbone of the programme’s expansion strategy.
Babalola met with the trainees alongside representatives from the National Primary Health Care Development Agency and the National Malaria Elimination Programme, both of which made up the facilitation team. Two past district governors from Rotary District 9142 were also present.
Speaking to the assembled trainers, Babalola emphasised the transformative power of the intervention and the responsibility it places on those being equipped to carry it forward.
“These efforts are building a stronger and more sustainable system that will lead to healthier communities across Nigeria,” he told the group, commending the trainees for their commitment both to Akwa Ibom State and to their own communities.
He assured them of Rotary’s continued support throughout the deployment phase.
Babalola, a Rotary member for more than 30 years, is set to become the second African to lead Rotary International, following the late Jonathan B. Majiyagbe of the Rotary Club of Kano, Nigeria, who served in 2003 to 2004.
His ascent to the presidency followed the resignation of President-elect SangKoo Yun, who stepped down to focus on recovery from cancer treatment, prompting the Rotary International Board of Directors to convene a special session under its code of policies to select a successor.
Babalola began his Rotary journey in 1984 as a Rotaractor and joined the Rotary Club of Trans Amadi a decade later.
His leadership roles have included serving as district governor in 2011 to 2012, as Rotary International Vice President in 2019 to 2020, and as a member of the RI Board from 2018 to 2020.
He also served on the End Polio Now Countdown to History Campaign Committee from 2017 to 2023 and remains an adviser to the Nigeria National PolioPlus Committee, having joined the committee in 2013.
The Akwa Ibom visit was no ceremonial gesture.
The Rotary Healthy Communities Challenge carries funding from The Rotary Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and World Vision, and the programme’s goal is the prevention of preventable deaths among children under five years of age, a demographic that remains acutely vulnerable in rural and underserved communities across Nigeria’s south-south and north-west regions.
Rotarians in Nigeria invested more than 3,000 hours in the first year of the project, supporting the programme’s entry into Akwa Ibom and Kebbi States and providing on-the-ground leadership to sustain its momentum. That level of volunteer commitment speaks to the programme’s depth beyond its institutional funding.
The attentiveness and engagement Babalola displayed during the training session was noted by those present as consistent with the qualities he had demonstrated throughout his tenure as President-elect, qualities of a man who leads not from a distance but from within the work itself.
Introducing his 2026 to 2027 presidential message, Babalola had told Rotary members at the International Assembly in January 2026: “Change is only the beginning. Impact is what endures.”
The Akwa Ibom visit offered an early glimpse of what that message looks like in practice.
Babalola takes office on 1 July 2026, assuming the presidency of an organisation with 45,000 clubs worldwide and a mandate to lead Rotary’s top priority of ending polio globally, a goal Rotary and its Global Polio Eradication Initiative partners have pursued with such resolve that polio cases have been reduced by 99.9 per cent since the effort began.
His inauguration will mark a historic moment not only for Nigeria but for the African continent’s presence in global humanitarian leadership.
Ojelabi, the publisher of Freelanews, is an award winning and professionally trained mass communicator and a recipient of the D9112 Superstar Icon Award, who writes ruthlessly about pop culture, religion, politics and entertainment.
