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Our commitment is to eradicate polio. Our promise was to the children of the world. It wasn't to the children of North America or children of Africa. We said to the children of the world. That was our promise. There is no Rotarian I have met anywhere who has not said to me that Rotary changed them in a way. Together we see a world where people unite to create lasting change across the globe in our communities. Lasting change. Rotarians know what that means.
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Welcome to the Rotary Voices podcast. I'm Sylvia Perez. July 1st marks the start of a new Rotary year. A time when clubs around the world begin their leadership transition. At Rotary International, that means a new president as well. This year, Rotten Ola Yinka H. Babalola from Nigeria, known to Rotarians simply as Yinka, begins his term as Rotary International President for 2026. 2027. Yinka's Rotary Journey began when he chartered a Rotaract club at his university. The experience inspired him to join the Rotary Club of Trans Amati in Nigeria in 1994. Over the years, he served in many leadership roles including the Rotary International Board of Directors and Rotary International Vice President. He Rotary's polio eradication efforts in Nigeria. Outside of Rotary, Yinka built a successful 25 year career with Shell plc, a multinational oil and gas corporation, before founding two companies of his own. His leadership has been shaped by both business and service and by the energy, resilience and optimism of his native Nigeria. Recently, Rotary General Secretary and CEO John Huko sat down with Yinka to talk about his personal Rotary journey, Africa's remarkable progress in the fight against polio and the opportunities he sees for growing Rotary's membership and impact around the world.
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Welcome so much, Yinka, to this Rotary podcast and I look forward to chatting with you today.
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Thank you very much, John. Thank you.
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Let's start with your background. You were born and raised in Nigeria. How did your early life and education shape your leadership journey?
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Thank you, John. I'm the first of six children from my parents and from my part of the world. When you are the first child that has some leadership responsibilities, you know, and if you happen to be a male, then it is even more so. My mother was a teacher and my father was an accountant. Of course. For my primary school education I was a prefect in the primary school. Prefects are officers they elected among students and I was what they call an attendance prefect. And my duty was to make sure that I get to school early enough to get the registers ready for all the teachers to take the attendance of students who come in. So the implication of that is that I had to be in school early. I couldn't afford to come late for the secondary school education. I was the senior prefect so I was like the number one prefect for the school. That wasn't just a decision of the school's management. There was some element of voting that goes into that. So you could see at every point in my journey there has been something with some leadership responsibilities involved. Even in the university it was my privilege to charter the ROTOR Art Club which was then another privilege to leadership. Yes. So along the line you can see that has been there.
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So based on that sort of early upbringing and values, you then went on to study and become an engineer. Tell us a bit about your professional career.
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Yes, I studied engineering from the University of Technology Bouchie as it was called. And I worked for Shell Oil for actually almost all of my career because I joined Shell very early. Of course. Shell Oil is a petroleum company, multinational international oil company. So I joined as an engineer. But like, you know, with many of these establishments or corporations, at certain points you need leadership and management. So at a point I stopped doing engineering and went into plan to safety to make sure that every single person that goes to work in Shell Nigeria is able to come back home safe. A big responsibility you will see here.
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And so you obviously had a very successful professional life, but you also had of course a very successful Rotary career and a Rotary journey. Tell us a bit about how did you hear about Rotary? How did you get involved?
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I actually got involved with Rotary at the age of 18. That was when I chartered the Rotary Club in the university. But how did Rotary find me or how did I find Rotary? I was simply watching tv. In my country, in your final year of secondary school you have this little bit longer period of vacation before you can get into the colleges or universities. So there I was at home. Nobody was controlling whether I can turn on the TV or not, which there would have been a restriction in those days. So I was just watching TV and then I saw this gentleman. I was attracted by the way he was saying what he was saying. So I wanted to hear him. And he was talking about Rotary and I knew nothing about Rotary and I took no cognizance of that after that until I got back to the university and a Rotarian from the Rotary Club of Bouchie who happened to be the public relations director for the university approached me. I still don't know why he did, but he asked me, will you help us start the Road Tract Club? We are trying to start one Here And I asked him Rotaract, Rotaract. So it sounded like Rotary. And I said does it have anything to do with one gentleman that normally wears white, speaks nice English? So yes, oh yes. And that happened to have been the past district governor. The district governor of rotary then district 91 1. I think he in Lagos at that time. So yes, that was how Rotary basically found me. So I was a member of the road rat club in the university. When I left the university and graduated and went to work in Port Harcourt, I joined the community based Rotorrat Club institution based just universities only then I joined the community based Rotrorat Club. When I started working and when I thought I was ready for Rotary, I moved into Rotary.
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You started with watching a Rotarian speak on TV and Rotaract Rotary. You then went through district governor, club president, the whole chain. And now you're going to be the second person from Africa who lead Rotary as president. Jonathan Maabi of course also from Nigeria was the first. What would you like to tell Rotarians about Rotary in Africa and what might they be surprised to hear?
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Well, I suspect if I say Rotary is growing in Africa, that would not be a surprise. They probably get that all the time. But one of the other things I think many people don't know is that Rotary in Africa supports our Rotary foundation at a very good level. And the message I like to pass to my African Rotarians is that yes, there is a lot of work in our areas of focus we needed to do in Africa and we do need our friends around the world to help us do that. But we must put in our bit. In essence, while Africa may be considered poor, African Rotarians are not any poorer than Rotarians anywhere else. So if people are giving the African Rotarians need to bring their own share and put it on the table. And I'm glad they are responding to that. When you look at the top 30 countries contributing to the Rotary foundation, there are two African countries in that list and they are not at the bottom of the top 30. They are usually at the middle. I'm hoping not that they also can see a president they can touch. I normally use that to joke. Maybe a third country from Africa will go into that list also.
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Well, of course the African returns, as you said, played a very significant role in many countries and particularly in the eradication of polio in the African continent. And Nigeria was the last country where we were able to cross the finish line and stop the transmission of the wild polio virus. Obviously in the northeast sections in Borno Province and Others, there was a Borno state that has a lot of issues. Talk a bit about your role in polio eradication and the role that African Rotarians played in getting Africa to be polio free.
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For many of us from the African continent, from Nigeria in particular, polio wasn't something people tell us stories about. It's something you could see. And I've been involved with the polio education effort for as long as I could remember because we have polio right with us. We do a little bit more, we also participate. So we advocate to our various governments and I do that a lot in Nigeria with our Nigerian Rotarians. We do a lot of awareness creation. You will have seen a lot of that. If you check the social media, you'll probably be seeing what Rotarians are doing to create awareness. Of course, we also donate to polio. I mean, almost all our districts. I persuade all our districts to make sure they do their 20% DDF to polio. Of course, organizationally, have been an advisor to the Nigerian National Polio Plus Committee for a while. Have been a member also since I left as district governor. And I think leadership visibility is important. And I recall that there was a time there were parts of Nigeria where you don't have access, where you have insurgency security issues and things like that. And we said every single past district governor should adopt one of these areas. And people were adopting and nobody agreed to adopt the areas where we had the terrorism. As fate would have it, high schooled, my university education was in that part of the country. So I volunteered to go there. People thought I was stupid, but I went. One of the things Rotarians do when they go to the field is help do what we call to resolve non compliances or to resolve rejection. So the vaccinators go around doing their work. They will get to some houses and the parents will say, no, you can't do this. So they come and tell us when we are in the field to say we've encountered rejection there. And because the community trusts us, they trust Rotary, we go there and we have a conversation with the household. And a lot of times nine out of 10 cases, those things are resolved. If they are not resolved, we escalate. And the community leadership, religious leadership will take care of that. So when we are in the field, we make the work of demonizers easier. And that is a direct role Rotarians play.
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And that's one of our great strengths as an organization. Right? We're everywhere. We have deep community roots and our Rotarians are respected in the communities and as you described in the polio effort in Nigeria. I think the times I've traveled to Africa, I've been extremely impressed with the passion that the African Rotarians have shown toward polio eradication as an example for all the rest of us. I think as Rotarians, we need to realize we're not done until we're done. And we need to build on the example that you have set in Africa and continue to both fundraise, advocate and immunize and make sure that the world eventually is rid of this terrible disease.
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And, John, it is important that we remind Rotarians, and this is for me, for the Africans in particular, that and for those who have not seen polio for a while, our commitment is to eradicate polio. Our promise was to the children of the world. It wasn't to the children of North America or children of Africa. We said to the children of the world. That was our promise. So if we still have polio in Pakistan, we have it in Afghanistan. If we have polio anywhere, we have not delivered on that promise. And that's a promise we must deliver on.
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Well, you know, and of course, another key initiative that Rotary has, polio is our number one corporate initiative. But, you know, membership growth is a very important part of Rotary's action plan going forward. And as we know, in certain parts of the world, Rotary is growing. Africa being one of them, Southeast Asia. And we have parts of the world, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the uk, Argentina, where we're seeing some fairly significant membership declines. Your area, as I said, is growing. What's the secret sauce? What lesson can be learned from membership growth in Africa? And what is your sort of overall vision of how we as an organization can continue to grow our organization everywhere, including in those countries I mentioned, where we may be seeing membership declines?
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You know, John, and this may sound very simplistic, I have a feeling in my interactions in some parts of the world where Rotary is not growing that the sense of urgency is not there yet. I think leadership may not have succeeded in building a case for change. For example. Yes, if you just talk about numbers. Okay, yes, numbers. I'll tell you a story. I was at a Zone Institute in Poland and these conversations came up and it's like, look, the population in Poland is going down. They can't expect growth. I know the end of the day, the factories that were there are shutting down. That is true. But the point is that there are new businesses that are happening. There are younger people that they are not in the traditional businesses. The old tools we have look for businesses. But there are many businesses today that don't have signages that happens from people's bedrooms. Young people just share an office and they have three, four businesses. How do we find those people? True, we are still looking for business, professional and community leaders. But how do we find those generation of people who are not in the tragedy, traditional vocations or classifications that we used to know? So first for me is we need to create a case for change that everybody can relate with, you know, a sense of urgency where this is happening. See, if it's just numbers, numbers mean nothing. But you see, imagine you are a rotator and you've been a rotator for 40 years and your Rotary disappears. What do you have to lose? And I think that brings the issue of what are you grateful for by virtue of your Rotary membership? What will you lose if your Rotary Club dies? I think many people don't think about it and they wait, they watch, they know what we call the boiled frog phenomenon. Things get by. But suddenly it is too late to do something which is very sad. We must make ourselves more welcoming to the young generation. So first we need to be able to find them, those that are in the businesses. Those tools are there in terms of technology on how to find them. We need to leverage new tools to find them. When we find them, we need to understand what is important to. I know, John. I talk about visible leadership commitment all the time. How do we tell these people, welcome you?
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Well, I think you've touched on this issue of change. We need to be ready to change. We have to recognize the world Today is not 1905 when Paul Harris set up the first club in Chicago. And you're absolutely right, it's not. I guess the challenge then is when you're dealing with the type of people we'd like to attract our organization. What's the value proposition? I suspect there's different value propositions for different people. And I do think we're very diverse and do offer particularly if we start expanding our membership through the creation of new and innovative clubs. We can offer different value propositions to different people. But what's the core Rotary value proposition? If you're trying to sell me on joining the organization and then what's the elevator speech? You've got 30 seconds in an elevator to tell somebody about Rotary. What's your value proposition and what's your elevator speech?
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And John, you see the word elevator speech. I've heard of that many times and it will be part of my messaging to the Rotary world. As I take on my presidency, there is no Rotarian I have met anywhere, I mean any part of our world who has not said to me that Rotary changed them. In a way, anybody who has been Rotary 5, 10 years, they will tell you together we see a world where people unite to create lasting change across the globe in our communities. Lasting change. Rotarians know what that means. But when you ask them in ourselves, the room normally goes quiet. And I think that is where the so called elevator speech needs to be rejected. How has Rotary helped you make a lasting change in yourself? We all have our stories, no matter the age, no matter the part of the world you come from. And our stories are different. And what I tell people is that moment when somebody is asking you about Rotary, this thing you commit your life to, you spend so much time on, what is it? Tell them about your own story. How has Rotary changed you? And there are stories from everybody. And because it is your own story, it is authentic. We need to do that more. And I will be encouraging Rotarians as we go on. Think about it. Create a journal, some kind of gratitude journal. What is it you are grateful for? For being a member of this organization. And feel free to share that. I am conscious of the fact that many of these stories are personal and so people sometimes feel vulnerable sharing them. But that is what we need to do at this moment. That exactly is a value proposition. The reason you are there may be the reason somebody else will come. And because your story is local and the person talking to you most likely is local to you, the person can relate with it. You talked about value proposition. You see, there's something else I have seen because I've had the privilege of many parts of the world. I'm meeting Rotarians at different points in their various communities. Rotarians are happy people. You go into a community and you tell yourself, please give me all the happy people you have in this space. And they put them in one room and they call them Rotarians. Rotarians are happy people. And you see that behavior every single way you go, whether it is local, like you said at a club level, at a district event. You see it at institutes, you see it at the International Assembly. Have you seen those? Our cultural events? They're all very happy people. You know, there is something that gives us happiness in Rotary and we need to talk about it. Well, and I think one of the
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things I hear from many Rotarians, that gives them happiness is the great work we do. How many Rotarians say, yes, I give a lot, but I get a lot. But A lot of getting is making a difference in someone's lives. And a big part of that is impact in our organization. And so let's talk a bit about. We obviously do great works at the regional, local, international level within Rotary. We have since 2013, really shifted the focus to sustainability, to greater impact. Talk a bit about your view on that. And what would be your recommendation? Rotarians, as we do projects, as we try to make a difference in the world and talk about the importance of sustainability and impact in the work that
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we do, I think that is very important. I'm not sure how, how that message has penetrated. Like in my club, for example, we'll do a project during the maternal and child health, for example, I will go to a health center, I will do a few things, I will leave and I challenge my own club. I said, guys, what if we go to this health center? I will take a benchmark to say, look, how many women come here to deliver babies? How many of them deliver safely? And we say this is what we want to impact. So that when we say we are giving prenatal kids to women, we can tie that to the number of women who actually carry their pregnancy to term and deliver safely. We can even follow a group to say, we see this women, we want to support these women from this beginning of their pregnancy to term. And we can say because Rotary intervened, these people, 100% of them, 90% of them, whatever that comes out to be, this was the outcome. This is the impact on our community that is very, very important. I told a story of impact with respect to polio. My club used to visit a home every Christmas just to support them for Christmas, make them happy. There were a lot of crippled children which were from polio. But you see, as Nigeria started becoming polio free, the number of children in that home started reducing. It got to a point there were none. But people didn't immediately relate it to the fact that that was the impact of our polio eradication work. In fact, the home, which was run by some Christian missionaries, had to be repurposed for other children. That is impact, right?
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Well, of course, a big part of impact is partnering. You talk about polio, we couldn't have gotten to where we are without the great partnership we have with who, cdc, unicef, gavi, the Gates foundation, the gpi. It's all about one. Plus one is three. So talk a bit about your experience and your thoughts about the importance of Rotarians, Rotary clubs, all of us, in our work to be partnering with other organizations to even further increase our Impact
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partnerships are very, very critical. And a lot of it happen, even locally. Again, my own club just four days ago finished a free eye care project in a community. We don't have 15 ophthalmologists. We don't even have any optometrist in my Rotary class membership. But we have a partnership with the Optometric Soc Society of Nigeria. And they agreed that every year they would do this with us. They bring their equipment, they bring their people. We provide the medications. We do the advocacy, awareness, creation, select the community and make the people available. And that is how it works. We couldn't have done that on our own. And I suspect even the Optometric Society on their own may not have been able to do the kind of things we did bringing the people out. People may not trust them, but they trust us. So partnerships are important. There are things we know as our strengths as Rotarians. We are international, but we are very local. That is our strength. But those areas where we don't have the strength, we must leverage other people, other organizations to make that happen. I'm not sure Rotarians are particularly conscious that this is what it should be. We need to encourage more of that, actually. One other thing about partnership is the internal one, you may not call that partnership, John, is to say, look, you have two clubs in Evanston. Each of them are doing something small. Perhaps if you partner as Rotary clubs also, you can do something bigger. And then you can even get external partnership better because they are dealing with a single group of people, not talking to three people at the same time.
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And I also think you were talking earlier about the leadership skills that you pick up. And I don't think we talk about that enough in Rotary because many people say, I like the networking aspect of it. I love giving back to my community. Rotary opens me up to a broad international community so I can make a regional impact and a global impact and all the youth exchange that we do and bringing people together. But I think something we don't talk about enough is the leadership skills, the one develops by joining a Rotary Club. And so tell us a bit about how that affected you, how you became a better leader. And what was it in Rotary that allowed you to eventually become the president of Rotary International?
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I worked for a multinational, like I said, Shell Oil. So dealing with diverse groups has been part of my career. But you see, I think somewhere in my statements I said it that Rotary made me a diplomat. How so? You were district governor. Okay, so that may still be local. And then you become director and a director of the kind of zones spared zones had to deal with 48 Rotary countries in Africa. Just think of that diversity. Then you have another 30 something stretching from Israel, Austria up till Ukraine. That is what you are dealing with. It's one of the biggest diversities, 78 or 83 of Rotary's 200 countries. And then you have to navigate through what I call the national interests of those countries and balance that with what we call the Rotary interest. And sometimes having to physically intervene and making sure that Rotarians still remember that they are Rotarians, despite their differences in terms of the national policies of their various countries, that takes a lot of skill. And I think it's one of those things that if I wasn't a Rotarian, if I didn't have the opportunity of serving at that level internationally, I will have no idea what it means. My view of the world is completely different.
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And I think that if you talk to many Rotarians, they'll say Rotary opened the opportunity. I never would have imagined doing. Let's say I'm living in a small town in Mexico and now I'm doing a water project in Nigeria. And then of course, all the fellowships that we have of Rotarians that get together around different common interests or the Rotary action groups, it's all about bringing people together. And so many Rotarians I talk to echo what you just said. Being a Rotarian stepping into leadership position and getting involved in the various Rotary structures has really opened the world up to me. In fact, I would urge every Rotarian who's listening, who's not had a chance to go to a convention to come. I mean, you really do see the world in action. Well, we're getting toward the end of our podcast here, but let me just end by two questions, if you could provide two quick answers. Big part of Impact also is fundraising. We need the money. It's partnership, it's enthusiasm, it's engagement, but it's also money. Elrordy foundation last year broke all records and raised over $500 million. With that money, we're able to. You have tremendous impact in the world. You've walked the walk. You're an Arch Column Society member, meaning that you're part of a select group who has contributed, and very generous contributed more than $250,000 to the Rotary Foundation. Talk a bit about the importance of giving to our foundation. Question one and two. Let's close on. I remember you and I very early on, after you had been chosen as President elect, we're meeting and I asked you after you finish your presidency, what's the one thing you'd like to be remembered for, what's the one legacy item you'd like to leave? So, so let's talk about the importance of the foundation and then perhaps we can close on at the end of your presidential year, what would you like to be remembered for?
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So for the foundation, for example, if you believe in something, you want to invest in it. I think that is critical. So Rotary has changed me in many ways. So I'm happy to trust Rotary with my funds to do good in the world. And you know, the funding opportunities or the gift opportunities you have in the Rotary foundation allows you flexibility to do many things, support the endowment mostly. And you know why? The endowment allows you to continue to do good even when you are gone. Isn't that interesting that even when you are gone, you are still doing good. I don't know what that means for those world, for people. Lastly on that is, you see, for those of us from the, maybe you can say the developing world, you put a dollar into something and you get like $5 back. That's a good business. So where else should you put your money? You want to put it where it is well used, where it is well kept and where it is delivering you a lot of returns. The Rotary foundation is doing that. And I think the Charity Navigator is showing that as an external independent organization, almost 14, 15 years now, we've had the top rating from Charity Navigator. That is good news. Legacy. I will wish by the time I'm done that Rotary actually grew, that this thing we call our number one internal priority, that we have stopped just talking about it, that Rotarians everywhere, that I have succeeded in persuading Rotarians everywhere to do something about it. And that because they listened to me and they did something about it in their various parts of the world, Rotary is growing. And that growth will reflect in the numbers. It will reflect in our giving to the foundation. It will reflect in the impact we make in our various communities. Where our communities are currently not feeling us well, they will feel us better. That is the kind of thing I would like to see.
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Well, thank you so much, Yinko. It's great to have chatted. Best of luck again. Thank you to our audience for listening to our podcast. Stay tuned for future ones. But in the meantime, again, it's great to have a conversation with Inka Babalola, the Rotary national president for 2026, 2027 from Nigeria. Thank you again, Inka.
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Thank you, John. It's my pleasure. This episode of the Rotary Voices Podcast was produced by JP Swenson and edited by Wen Huang, production by Yusu Kim. If you enjoyed the show, please rate a US five stars on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and share it with your friends. The Rotary Voices podcast is a production of Rotary Magazine, the official monthly publication of Rotary International. Thanks for listening.