BEACON OF HOPE!

• New dawn for motherless children as 50-year personal loss turns to national lifeline

By Seye Ojo

Diamonds are often looked at as symbols of luxury. But their true brilliance comes from surviving unimaginable pressure in the deepest depths of the earth.

For 50 years, one personal loss has undergone that exact transformation. It has ensured the crushing weight of grief to emerge as a beacon of hope. Now, a half-century of private mourning is stepping into the light to become a national lifeline through the launch of “Diamonds in the Rough.”

It is all about the Olufunke Olayinka Akinyele, daughter of Chief James Ladejo Ogunsola, the Late Otun Balogun of Ibadanland. She breathed her last when her daughter, Dr. Funmi Akinyele, a development expert, was just 20 months old. She is now the brain behind the initiative, which focuses on charity for motherless children, aged seven to 19 years, thereby turning a heartbreak into a promise that no child has to walk through the dark alone.

Daughter’s search for mother she never knew

Olufunke Olayinka Akinyele died on June 25, 1976, at the age of 28. A French graduate of the University of Ibadan, taught at CAC Grammar School, Ibadan. and Mrs. Marian Adunola Ogunsola.

She left behind a husband, two small children, and friends who, 50 years later, say they can still smell her perfume.

Funke’s daughter, Funmi, has no memory of her mother’s voice, her laugh, or her face. What she has is this: a question that took 50 years to answer, and a determination to ask it of everyone who might know.

“I spent the last several months seeking every person, who had ever known her.

Funke’s classmates from Queens School, Ede. Her friends from the University of Ibadan. The woman who shared an apartment with her in Besançon, France, during their year abroad. Her sisters-in-law. I asked: tell me who she was?”

What came back was 27 testimonies, from classmates, childhood neighbours, church friends, family members, and the woman whom Funke herself chose as her school daughter at Queens School, Ede, who said of her: “Funke was royalty both at home and in school. A queen all the way.”

Commemorative magazine that found her

Those testimonies, alongside a newly written life history, the full text of the oriki by which her family called her, and a visual life timeline spanning 1947 to 1976, form the content of Funke at 50, a commemorative magazine launching today, June 25, 2026, on the 50th anniversary of her death.

Funke’s school daughter: “This magazine is not just a book. It is 50 years of love, gathered. It is her name, spoken again.”

The life she lived

Funke attended Queens School, Ede, from 1960 to 1964 — the coal train from Dugbe station, Palm House, the morning prayer she spoke every day for four years. She was among the top students in her set. “She had a way of laughing that used to get us in trouble with some of our seniors,” remembers a classmate.

In 1967, Funke entered the University of Ibadan to read French. She spent 1968 to 1969 in Besançon, France, as part of a year-abroad programme, among the first cohort of UI French students to go to France itself rather than Senegal. Funke returned transformed.

She married Professor Isaac Olaolu Akinyele at Christ Church, Mapo, in July 1971. They moved to the United States in 1972. She became an Admissions Officer and maintained a 5.0 GPA in her Masters in Early Childhood Education. On June 24, 1976, she celebrated her son Wale’s birthday with him in the hospital. She died the following morning.

Five days later, her husband wrote in the Daily Illini, the University of Illinois newspaper: “She was the finest human being that I was privileged to have known… those dreams and plans we made together for the children will be fulfilled.”

Akinyele kept his word. He raised Wale and Funmi in Ibadan, within the extended family. He rose to become a Professor of Human Nutrition at the University of Ibadan, Dean of the Faculty of Public Health, and founder of the Food Basket Foundation International (FBFI) — the first indigenous nutrition-based NGO in Nigeria, established on March 10, 1989. He died in Abuja on February 27, 2014, aged 67.

Two living legacies

The 50th anniversary commemoration carries two legacy projects, both in Funke’s name.

In 2025, three of Funke’s sisters, Olufemi, Ibiyemi and Kofoworola, instituted the Ogunsola Award at Queens School, Ibadan, in memory of Olufunke and her sister Omobonike. The award supports a student of Queens School annually, placing Funke’s name in the school where she became herself.

Today, simultaneously with the launch of the magazine, her daughter Funmi is founding Diamonds in the Rough (DIR), a new programme for children from zero to 19 who have lost their mothers. “I was 20 months old when she died,” Funmi says. “I have been asking, for 50 years, what you do for a child who loses their mother. DIR is the beginning of an answer.”

Funke’s 50th memorial service serves as the launchpad for DIR. It is, Funmi says, a beginning not a launch. “We do not have a building yet or a staff. What we have is a conviction.”

The gathering

The service marking the anniversary — a hybrid gathering with guests in Ibadan and participants joining from Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and across Nigeria, includes a reading of the oriki by which Funke was called, a full order of service with hymns and tributes from her classmates, the formal launch of, the commemorative magazine, Funke at 50, and the vision casting for DIR.

Wrote her friend: “There was nothing negative about her. She was a wholesome, good person.”

Fifty years after her death, that is still the first thing her friends reach for. Not her academic record or her languages or her grace. Wholesome. A word simple enough to belong in a children’s prayer, and rare enough, in a person, to be the thing everyone who knew her still says first.

Funke at 50 is available to order today. The Ogunsola Award is administered through Queens School, Ibadan.