By Abdullahi O Haruna Haruspice
In a country where help often comes too late — if at all — and empathy is rationed as if in short supply, one man is keeping a quiet promise to those too easily overlooked. Seyi Tinubu, through the Seeds of New Dawn Foundation, is writing a different story for Nigeria’s vulnerable — not with headlines or handshakes, but with hands-on action and an inexorable sense of duty.
Across Nigeria, mothers and infants are dying in numbers that should shame any society with a conscience. One in 22 Nigerian women will not survive pregnancy or childbirth. One in five maternal deaths globally happens here. Newborns, too, face frightening odds: 54.74 deaths per 1,000 live births. Behind each number is a name, a family, a future abruptly cut short.
This is the crisis Seyi Tinubu has chosen to confront. Through a monthly revolving health scheme, Seeds of New Dawn provides free drugs and delivery materials to 10,000 indigent patients. The programme is already underway in 60 tertiary hospitals — centres that, year after year, absorb the weight of Nigeria’s healthcare failures with too little support. Now, they are being armed with the essentials to save lives.
But Seyi’s covenant doesn’t stop at the maternity ward.
In dusty villages and forgotten suburbs where school remains a distant dream, the Foundation is rolling out solar-powered mobile classrooms — not just buses filled with books, but lifelines carrying digital learning, numeracy, and trained teachers to children who’ve never known a structured lesson. Girls, so often excluded, are finally being seen. And families are beginning to believe again — not just in education, but in the possibility of a future.
And then there are the moments that never make it into official reports — the deeply human acts that define a man’s mission more than any strategy document.
Not long ago, the author of this piece took to social media in anguish. A young man had died, and his body was being held hostage in a hospital over unpaid medical bills. The family, already broken by grief, couldn’t bury their son. In a society where bureaucracy often feels colder than death itself, this was another wound layered on heartbreak.
But someone was listening. Mr Seyi saw the post. No announcements. No delay. He quietly reached out and cleared the outstanding bill. The body was released. The family found closure. It was a small act, maybe — but in a place where dignity is so often the first casualty of poverty, it meant everything.
This is Seyi Tinubu’s covenant. It is not written in law, nor etched on plaques. It is lived out in hospital corridors, in village classrooms, and sometimes, in the final gift of letting a grieving mother say goodbye to her child.
In a country weary of broken promises, Seeds of New Dawn is reminding us what keeping a promise looks like. Not perfection — but presence. Not noise — but impact. And most of all, not pity — but partnership with those who have waited too long to be seen.
That is what real service looks like. That is what leadership feels like.
Impressively musing