Nigeria’s first female Nigerian Army Major General, Aderonke Kale, is dead.
She joined the Army in 1972, retired in 1997, and died in London, United Kingdom on November 8, 2023.
Kale, a Psychiatrist, who died at 84, was also the first to command the Nigerian Army Medical Corps.
She was born on July 31, 1939.
Her father was a pharmacist while her mother was a teacher.
She trained as a Medical Doctor at the University College, Ibadan, which later became the University of Ibadan.
She then specialised in psychiatry at the University of London.
Kale was inspired to pursue psychiatry by Thomas Lambo, Africa’s first professor of Psychiatry.
She worked briefly in Britain and returned to Nigeria in 1971.
READ ALSO:
I’m not under pressure to get married — Yemi Alade
Bayelsa, Imo, Kogi 2023: Plans by individuals to wear military uniform uncovered
Mummy Be Calming Down: Police confirm death of mum, arrest husband
A year later in 1972, she joined the Nigerian Army.
She was a Colonel and Deputy Commander of the Nigerian Army Medical Corps by 1990.
She was later promoted to the rank of Brigadier General, becoming the first female General in West Africa.
Kale was then promoted to Major General in 1994 and became the first Nigerian woman to achieve that rank.
She was also the first female Major General in West Africa.
Kale retired from the Army in 1997.
She was married to Professor Oladele Kale, a distinguished Professor of Preventive and Social Medicine, and was a mother of five sons.
One of her sons, Yemi Kale, became the Statistician-General of Nigeria.
In 2011, shortly after the introduction of females into the Nigerian Defence Academy programme, the female hall of residence was named after Kale.