Nigerian Single Mother In London Makes Nigeria Proud

in the last weeks of August 2008, seventeen UK newspapers and five television stations, including the great BBC TV and ITV, carried the news of one Mrs Julianah Balogun-Oke, a London resident, Nigerian single mother, whose quadruplets, 18-year old Tobi, Tosin, Tayo and Tolu had all achieved A and B grades in their A Level results at St Francis Xavier Sixth Form College in Clapham, South West London, and as a result, had all been admitted to various Ivy League universities in the UK – Manchester University, Goldsmiths College, St Mary’s University of London and Cambridge University.

Mrs Julianah Balogun-Oke (pix left): Certainly something to smile about.

Furthermore, these five television stations were all over themselves to interview Mrs Balogun-Oke for this achievement and were broadcast all over the country. And this remarkable woman, who lives on a council estate in one of the most deprived areas of London, if not the UK, said simply “It is not where you live, it is how you live”. What humility, what graciousness? She has had to cope with too many social and economic disadvantages over the years in raising up her quadruplets, who are just four of a total of seven children, all of who are doing well.

What is remarkable in this feat, is not so much that the lady had seven children in total, (the quadruplet are the last and the older ones are a Doctor, a Nurse and a Lawyer) that she raised alone, but the fact that she did this in a society currently embroiled in youth crimes and a culture of gangs

Her story proves that failure is sometimesa thing of the mind not a product of our circumstances