By Frank Ulom
(CONVERSEER) – Rear Admiral Itunu Hotonu’s dream was to join the services of the Nigerian Army. But when she applied, she was told bluntly that the Army had no place for women in its engineering corps. She was heartbroken. Saddened by the unexpected turn of events, she spent the following days brooding until someone told her that the Navy would accept her, regardless of her gender.
She did, and today Rear Admiral Itunu Hotunu has been setting the pace in the force, and has gone ahead to become the first woman to attain the exalted rank of a Rear Admiral in the history of the Nigerian Navy.
The 52-year-old Admiral from Badagry, Lagos State, can be said to be first in everything she has done. Hotonu is the first child in a family of four girls, and has always taken the first position in class right from her primary school days till this day.
She was among the first set of architects to be enlisted into the Nigerian Navy, and it is on record that Hotonu was the first female military officer to serve as a Directing Staff (that is, an instructor) at the famous Armed Forces Command and Staff College (AFCSC), Jaji. She was also the first female military officer to attend the then National War College, now National Defence College, where she emerged the best overall graduating student and won the Commander-in-Chief’s prize as well as the Commandant’s prize for the best research.
Born on January 18, 1959, Hotunu studied Architecture from the University of Nigeria (UNN), Nsukka, and enlisted in the Nigerian Navy in 1985. She has served at various naval formations and in different capacities across the country. She was the director of projects, Naval Headquarters Commander, Lagos Logistics Depot, Command Logistics Officer, Headquarters Eastern Naval Command, Calabar. In 2008, she was appointed Managing Director of the Nigerian Navy Post Service Housing Scheme (NNPSHS), a position she held until her promotion to the rank of Rear Admiral in December 2010.
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Admiral Hotunu, who has been the Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Navy Holdings Limited since 2010, is a highly decorated senior officer who has the military prestigious awards of FSS, MSS, and DSS attached to her name. She etched her name in history when she was promoted to the first female Rear Admiral in the Nigerian Navy. In just 12 months after she was appointed the MD of the NNPSHS in Karshi, Nassarawa State, this Amazon built and completed 460 houses. As of today, Admiral Hotunu has built over 1,000 houses in the estate.
Popularly called mama by her staff, Admiral Itunu told the story of how she wanted to join the army after her university education, when she made up her mind to join the military but was turned back by the army authorities on the grounds that they didn’t take women in the engineering corps. Call her the stone rejected by the builders that suddenly became the chief cornerstone, and you won’t be wrong. Having been rejected by the army, she was accepted by the navy and, no doubt, became a pillar in that branch of the Armed Forces.
She made the Navy proud with her achievements at the post service housing scheme, where, apart from building those houses, she also built and completed the NOWA Educational Centre, comprising a creche, nursery school, primary school and a junior secondary boarding school, which is already in session. As if that was not enough, she went further to increase the water reserve capacity of the estate from 60,000 litres to 600,000 litres in 2009.
Recently, she was invited to the 54th anniversary celebration of the Liberian Armed Forces by the government and people of Liberia and to also help in mentoring female officers in that country’s armed forces. In this interview with Daily Sun, Admiral Hoyunu, who is a staunch believer in hard work, attributed the strength she displayed to the upbringing she had from her father, whom she credits with what she is today.
At a very tender age of eight, she said her father started drumming it into her ears as his first child that he was going to hand over his family to her when he was gone. And so at age 13, Hotonu said she had already assumed her responsibility of taking care of her younger ones and the management of their home. She took care of things like fixing sockets, tiles, and even drove her father around town while he sat at the owner’s corner.
