Nigeria’s boardroom matriarch and woman of many firsts, Chief (Mrs) Olutoyin Olusola Olakunrin, is dead.

The veteran corporate Amazon died at 11:30am today, Sunday, 3 June, 2018, in Lagos. She was aged 80.

Sources disclosed that the Gbagura, Abeokuta, Ogunbanjo State, born corporate titan slumped this morning, while attending a service at her church, St Paul Anglican Church, Breadfruit, Lagos. She was rushed to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead on arrival.

It will be recalled that Mama Olakunrin celebrated her 80th birthday last November, with family and friends at a high-profile thanksgiving at St. Paul Anglican Church, Breadfruit, Lagos.

Olakunrin was the mother of Derin Agbaje, the wife of Segun Agbaje, the Managing Director of GTBank.

A woman of many firsts, Olakunrin was one of Nigeria’s most celebrated standard icons. She was Africa’s first female chartered accountant. Her intellectual capacity stood her out among her contemporaries – both male and female. She also served as the chairman of Education Trust Fund; and was a past president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN).

Olakunrin was the former president of the Society of Women Accountants in Nigeria (SWAN) She was involved in auditing account of major’s organisations.

In 1978, Olakunri was the Chief Promoter of the Society of Women Accountants in Nigeria [SWAN], which she served as Chairman for over a decade. Among other initiatives, SWAN has supported women to realise their potentials in the fields of accountancy, mathematics and other numeracies. In 1997, in Paris, it launched the World Body for Women Accountants; and has been supporting women of other professions to set up similar organizations at the national, regional and global levels.

Olakunri had worked with Casselton Elliot & Co. as a Chartered Accountant and the then Nigerian Industrial Development Bank [NIDB], among others. She subsequently took a courageous leap into entrepreneurship and corporate management — owning and managing industrial outfits and venturing into stock broking.

The first female President of the Institute of Directors [Nigeria], former member of the National Revenue Mobilization Allocation & Fiscal Policy Commission, Vision 20:2020 Committee, & Council of the Nigerian Stock Exchange, Olakunri was also a nominated member of the Constituent Assembly that generated the 1979 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Similarly, she was on the Finance Committee of Nigeria Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), and for 8 years on the Board of Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Limited. (Abuja Reporters)

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