Rtn. Olayinka H. Babalola
Rotary Club of Trans Amadi
Rivers State, Nigeria
Born in the city of Ibadan, Nigeria, Olayinka H. Babalola received his engineering degree in 1988. He worked for 25 years in the oil and gas industry, holding senior positions at Shell PLC. He is the founder of two companies: an oil and gas infrastructure delivery company and an executive coaching and organizational performance advisory group.
Babalola’s professional affiliations include the Institute of Directors, the Nigerian Society of Engineers, the Institute of Safety Professionals of Nigeria, and the Association of Change Management Professionals. He is a member of Jericho Businessmen Club, an organization in Ibadan that governments on economic and social policy.
His first experience of Rotary was through a decade of service in Rotaract. Babalola was the charter president of his university Rotaract club and participated in cultural exchanges and twinning with clubs in Japan and Côte d’Ivoire. During his Rotaract days, he also organized extramural classes for disabled children at a Cheshire Home supported by local clubs.
Babalola joined the Rotary Club of Trans Amadi in 1994. He went on to serve on committees including the End Polio Now: Countdown to History Campaign Committee and the Nigeria PolioPlus Committee prior to joining the RI Board as a director and later as vice president.
In the early 2000s, Babalola helped launch the Safe Blood Africa project to improve the availability of safe blood in hospitals in Nigeria and across Africa. The initiative has installed blood banks and donated bloodmobiles that are still operating today.
Babalola provided local Rotary leadership for polio eradication in Nigeria’s conflict-affected northeast. Through unannounced site visits with local officials that ensured accountability in vaccine distribution, Babalola made his own contribution to helping eradicate polio in Nigeria, and by extension in Africa, in 2020.
An adult literacy project led by his club profoundly changed Babalola’s perspective. When people his own age appeared for classes, he was shocked to learn that they couldn’t read or write. At graduation, a mother shared how she could now read pharmacy labels for her children’s medicine. “That grounded me,” Babalola says. “It took my feet and properly planted me in my community.”
As RI president, Babalola wants to help restore members’ emotional connection to the organization and their sense of belonging.
“We do things for others, but Rotary is also our own,” he says. “When something is your own, you want to fight for it. ‘It is my duty to help it thrive.’ When you see how Rotary has made a lasting impact on your life, then you can tell that story.”
Babalola enjoys golf, swimming, forest walking, and photographing cloud formations. He hopes to someday exhibit his photos or publish them in a book.
He has received the Africa Centennial Heroes Award, the Regional Service Award for a Polio-Free World, the RI Service Above Self Award, and The Rotary Foundation Citation for Meritorious Service.
Babalola and his wife, Precy, a Rotary member, live in Port Harcourt. They support The Rotary Foundation through a named endowment and as Arch Klumph Society members.
