MISSION STATEMENT
Promoting preservation of culture, languages, monuments, fern and fauna.
VISION
A world where culture, heritage including fern and fauna are preserved.
MOTTO
Our Heritage, Our Future.
About Our Company
Save Our Heritage Initiative (SOHI) was registered with Corporate Affairs Commission, of Nigeria on the Nineteenth day of June 2012 as a Non-Governmental Organization to address the issues of our vanishing cultures, fern and fauna. While older persons are the custodians of our culture, it is the responsibility of all tiers of government to ensure the protection and preservation of our fern and fauna.
In order to preserve culture and language, SOHI partners with willing communities, working with the older persons in the community to document folktales, music, customs and artefacts of the people, among others.
In the process of collecting and collating information about a community, SOHI lectures the people about preservation of their language rather than giving way to the dominant language in the area to overwhelm theirs.
Save Our Heritage Initiative (SOHI) was registered with Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), of Nigeria on the 19th of June 2012 as an NGO
In 2018, SOHI established the Kubwa district of the organisation
In 2018, we established Save Our Heritage Initiative (SOHI) in Jabi district
The primary areas being addressed by SOHI are those that build the morality of the ethnic group and are threatened by extinction if they remain undocumented while the older persons in those communities are dying off. For this reason, SOHI’s primary focus is documentation of folk tales, proverbs and idioms.
To this end SOHI is looking for volunteers, from various parts of the country, with passion to collect, protect and document endangered cultures before it is too late.
The Team
Dame May Ikokwu
CEO / OWNERMay Azuka Ikokwu is the founder of Save Our Heritage Initiative (SOHI), a non-governmental organization (NGO) on mandate to preserve our vanishing culture of indigenous people.
May is a native of Oba, Anambra State in South-Eastern Nigeria, born on 25 May 1948 in Port Harcourt and the 8th child of Chief Godfrey Chibeze Ikokwu (Onowu) and Chief (Mrs) Margaret Nwanyidinma Ikokwu (Anuenyi).
She was educated at Archdeacon Crowther Memorial Girls School, Elelenwa, Port Harcourt; University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN); BSc in Chemistry from Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts and MSc Plastics
Engineering from University of Lowell, Mass., USA.
She retired as a management staff of Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation
(NNPC) in 2003 after 25 years of service.
Prior to NNPC, she worked with Monsanto Petrochemicals in the United States before relocating to Nigeria.
After her retirement from the NNPC, she focused on Climate Change, and established a consultancy offering professional services until 2010.
Out of fear for the apparent dying language and culture of her Igbo race, she established and registered the NGO Save Our Heritage Initiative (SOHI) in 2012.
She is a member of the Board of Trustees of Coalition of Societies for the Rights of Older Persons in Nigeria (COSROPIN);
trustee of Senior Citizens and Elders
Forum of Nigeria (SCEFON); life member of the Chemical Society of Nigeria; foundation member of the Polymer Institute of Nigeria (PIN), 2nd President
and a Fellow of PIN. In 2020, she became a certified Humanitarian Fellow from
the Institute of Humanitarian Studies and Social Development (IHSD).
Dame May Ikokwu is Knight of St Christopher (KSC) and Jerusalem Pilgrim. She is a known chorister in Anglican churches, and the patron of several choirs and
church societies in Nigeria and a golfer.
She has a happy family life as a mother and grandmother.
Ndubuisi Ibeagha - Provost SOHI JABI DISTRICT
CEO / OWNER
Evang, Edwin Chinedu
CEO / OWNER