Today marks the 60th anniversary of #InternationalLiteracyDay, observed by @UNESCO under the theme Literacy for People, the Planet and Prosperity. At least 739 million youth and adults still lack basic literacy skills, and four in ten children are not reaching minimum reading proficiency. Nigeria carries 18.3 million out-of-school children, the highest number in the world, with adult literacy at roughly 62 per cent and the deepest deficits among girls and women in the north.

At the @WellbeingAfrica Foundation we read these figures as health data. The Lancet has established that gains in women’s education accounted for a substantial share of the fall in child mortality over four decades, and analysis of Nigeria’s own survey data shows that mothers with secondary education see measurably lower under-five mortality and higher uptake of antenatal and skilled delivery care. A mother who can read a prescription, a growth chart or a danger sign is a mother better able to protect her child. Literacy and wellbeing are one agenda.

We call on governments and partners to keep every girl in school through secondary level, to invest in adult and maternal literacy, and to fund reading as the public health intervention it is. Literacy is a determinant of survival.

#ILD2026 #LiteracyForAll
#DigitalLearningWeek
#WellbeingForAll ...

Yesterday marked the International Day of Clean Air for blue skies, a timely reminder that clean air is fundamental to healthy populations, resilient economies and a stable climate, and that addressing air pollution and climate change together is essential to sustainable development.

This year, the new @UNEP and @CCACoalition report, Hidden Assets: The Economic and Health Case for Climate and Clean Air Action, reinforces the economic and public health case for integrated action, identifying 25 proven measures and policy reforms that can deliver cleaner air, healthier lives and shared prosperity.

Clean cooking remains fundamental to protecting health, empowering women and reducing environmental harm. I have long advocated for action on the disproportionate impact of household air pollution from firewood and inefficient cookstoves on women and children in Nigeria, alongside my husband @BukolaSaraki, through his service on the Leadership Council of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.

More recently, at the inaugural Terra Carta Summit convened by @SustainableMarketsInitiative, I called for sustainable and climate-resilient health systems, including partnerships with cities to improve air quality, greener health infrastructure, renewable energy, preventive healthcare and reduced carbon-intensive transport. Through Resilient Cities, Reimagining Health, this work has further advanced the principle that climate action is health action, while at Healthy Indoor Air: A Global Call to Action during UNGA High-Level Week, I joined the call to elevate indoor air quality as a global health priority.

As a Member of the @BayerOfficial Sustainability Council, I continue to advocate for solutions that recognise that human, planetary and economic health are inseparable.

From cleaner kitchens to healthier cities, clean air is a health imperative, an economic investment and a shared responsibility. Let us accelerate action for clean air for all.

#CleanAirDay #CleanAirForBlueSkies #CleanCooking #WellbeingForAll ...

A beautiful celebration of family, love and legacy. ✨

Heartfelt congratulations to my dear friend and sister, Onikepo Animashaun, and my dear brother, Bankole Animashaun, on the naming of your precious grandson, Awwal Rereoluwa.

Congratulations to his parents, Nasr and Roseline, on this cherished blessing.

May little Awwal Rereoluwa grow in grace, wisdom and favour, and may his life be a source of everlasting joy and honour to the entire family.

Welcome, precious grandson. May your path be long, noble and abundantly blessed. 💙🙏🏾 ...

Happy birthday to my dear friend and sister @Bola_Atta, a woman of rare grace, style and conviction.

Bola has devoted her career to African women and young people, to the images, the language and the platforms through which they might recognise their own brilliance. Those of us fortunate enough to call her a friend know that the generosity she brings to her work is precisely the generosity she brings to the people she loves.

May this new year bring you abundant health, laughter in good company, and every blessing you have so freely given to others. I celebrate you today, darling Bola.

#HappyBirthday ...

August carries a particular tenderness in our family.

My beloved Uncle Bade, Prince Ajibade Mustapha Ojora, would have turned 83 on the 28th, and his daughter, our dearest Abimbola “Bimbo” Ojora Babalola, 55 on the 22nd. Father and daughter, born within days of one another, both taken from us long before we were ready.

We think of them this month with great fondness. May Almighty God grant them eternal rest. 🤍 ...

I welcome the opening of World Water Week 2026, convened by the Stockholm International Water Institute @SIWI_Water in Stockholm and online from 23 to 27 August under the theme Water for People and Progress, with water and gender placed at the centre of this year’s conversation. I recall Stockholm in August 2019, when I joined @FHI360’s Ron Clemmer, Associate Director of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Programs, and #GlobalWater2020’s John Oldfield, on the World Water Week stage to make the case that water, sanitation and hygiene are where safe childbirth begins.

The timing of this gathering is instructive, coming as the World Health Organization and @UNICEF publish their fullest global assessment yet of water and sanitation in health facilities, showing that only 40% meet the basic standard for sanitation, that around 1 in 10 have no water service at all, and that only about half have accessible toilets or facilities for menstrual hygiene, figures which describe the conditions in which women give birth and health workers practise, and which explain why so much of what we call quality care begins with a running tap and a clean, dignified toilet.

At @WellbeingAfrica, water, sanitation and hygiene has always been the foundation of our maternal, child and adolescent health work, carried by our #MamaCare360 midwives who deliver hygiene and handwashing education alongside antenatal and postnatal care in Nigerian communities, extended through our WBFA @DettolNigeria Hygiene Quest programming and curricula, delivered with the support of our social impact partners @ThisIsReckitt and carrying behaviour change into schools, households, communities and facilities, and sustained through our climate and health #PSHE #WASH advocacy alongside the @WHO for water and sanitation in every facility where a Nigerian woman gives birth.

My hope for this week is that ambition is met with financing, as we call for enforceable national standards for primary health-care facilities and for regular monitoring and reporting that measures dignity as closely as it measures infrastructure.

#WorldWaterWeek2026 ...

Happy birthday, Arc. Ade Laoye! Today @BukolaSaraki and I join family, colleagues and well-wishers in celebrating a treasured family friend, whose three decades of practice at @ECADArchitects have shaped skylines and shaped lives with the same care, building with vision and serving with an open hand. May the year ahead bring you good health, abundant joy and continued success in all you do, with warmest wishes from all of us.

#HappyBirthday
#ECADArchitects ...

As Global Honorary Patron of LifeLine International, I receive with profound hope the news that the Federal Executive Council, under the leadership of His Excellency President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, has approved a proposed amendment to the National Mental Health Act, to be transmitted to the National Assembly as an executive bill, with the aim of ending the colonial-era provisions that treat attempted suicide as a criminal offence.

A law that arrests a person for surviving their darkest hour has never protected anyone, and it has kept too many Nigerians from the help they need. This decision signals that Nigeria is ready to treat mental health as health, and to meet distress with dignity, care and clinical support rather than prosecution.

I commend the President @officialasiwajubat, the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare Professor Muhammad Ali Pate @fmoh_nigeria, the Attorney-General of the Federation, and the many Nigerian advocates, clinicians and legislators, including Senator Asuquo Ekpenyong and the Suicide Prevention Advocacy Working Group, whose patient work has brought this moment within reach.

We look forward to reading the full text once published and to supporting the National Assembly as it completes this work, so that every Nigerian in crisis knows that reaching out will be met with the same compassion we extend to any other illness.

Read our statement via the link in bio.

@wellbeingafrica
#LifeLineInternational
#DecriminaliseSuicideWorldwide 
#MentalHealthIsHealth ...

On World Humanitarian Day today, the @UnitedNations calls upon us to make protecting each other our greatest achievement, as the @WHO marks the day by honouring fallen humanitarians and asking for greater protection of health care, calls I join without reservation.

Across the world, health and humanitarian workers place their duty of care above their own safety, and too often above their own lives, so that mothers, newborns and entire communities may survive conflict and displacement, and today we are reminded that when lives are at risk, the people who come to help should never be targets, most of them being national staff serving the very communities in which they live.

That truth has shaped the work of the @WellbeingAfrica Foundation alongside @Refugees and @UNHCR_Nigeria, as our #MamaCare360 midwives deliver antenatal and postnatal education, respectful maternity care and birth preparedness to refugee women, their host communities and Internally Displaced Persons camps across Nigeria, including the Ogoja Refugee Settlement, where every mother reached a safe delivery in 2024.

Protecting health care therefore means protecting lives, ensuring access to essential services and preserving health systems at the very moment they are needed most, which is why all parties to conflict must respect and protect health workers, patients, health facilities and medical transport, in accordance with international humanitarian law.

To the humanitarians we have lost and to the families who carry their memory forward, we remember you, and to the midwives, nurses, doctors and community health workers still serving, we stand with you today and every day.

#ActForHumanity
#WorldHumanitarianDay
#WithRefugees
#WellbeingForAll ...

With profound respect, I congratulate His Royal Majesty, Oba Rilwan Babatunde Osuolale Aremu Akiolu I, Eleko of Eko, on the twenty-third anniversary of his coronation as Oba of Lagos.

Since the crown was placed upon his head on 9 August 2003, Kabiyesi has held the ancient throne of Iga Idunganran with a constancy that has kept the customs of Eko intact through a period of rapid transformation in the life of the city, presiding over the traditional institution of Lagos with wise counsel to successive administrations, distinguished leadership to the Lagos State Council of Obas and Chiefs as its Chairman, and a settled moral authority to one of the most vibrant and cosmopolitan cities in the world.

That stewardship is drawn from a long life of public service, thirty-two years of it given to the Nigeria Police Force, and it is the same regard for integrity, for the peace and good order of a great city, and for the dignity of its people, that has distinguished twenty-three illustrious years upon the throne of his forebears.

My prayers are for Kabiyesi’s continued good health, for wisdom, and for many more years of a long, prosperous and peaceful reign over Eko and all who make their home within her. ...