Dame Kelly Holmes - The Official Website

Damilola had written about his ambition and aspirations. A 10 year old boy with hopes and dreams and a vision of the future, he wrote “I will travel far and wide to choose my destiny to re-mould the world. I know it is my destiny to defend the world, and I will do so in my lifetime”. Damilola had indeed traveled from his birth place in Nigeria to settle here in South East London. His burning ambition was to study hard at school and attain a good enough level of education so that he could go on to University to gain a doctorate in medicine. His ambition was fuelled by his desire to help find a cure for the rare form of leprosy that his sister, Gbemi suffered from.

Unlike lots of little boys at ten years old, Damilola did not dream of scoring goals in a cup final, becoming a world champion racing driver or topping the pop charts, Damilola dreamed of becoming a Doctor.

So as we remember his short life let us also reflect on all those that we have lost in the years that have followed, some of whom due to the tragedy of the death toll we have suffered over the last few years we got to know far too little about. How many other aspiring Doctors, Footballers, pop stars or Olympic athletes have we lost?

On November 27th 2000 we lost an angelic little ten year old boy and today on the 8th anniversary of his death the nation has lost a young aspiring doctor it could ill afford to lose.