Every December, something familiar begins to happen across Nigeria.
A song starts appearing again.
It comes from church gatherings, family homes, roadside shops and old recordings. Its Yoruba words immediately signal that another year is coming to an end. For many Nigerians, particularly in Yoruba speaking communities, hearing Odun Nlo Sopin is almost like hearing a calendar turn.
Yet the woman whose voice became inseparable from that song did not write it.
Deborah Adebola Fasoyin has repeatedly said so herself.
The song was already being sung in Christ Apostolic Church circles before her choir recorded it in 1979. Fasoyin and the Good Women Choir added two verses to the existing chorus, helping transform a church song of uncertain authorship into one of Nigeria’s most recognisable end of year recordings.
That detail is only the beginning of her story.
Before the fame, before the choir, before the records and before millions of Nigerians associated her with December, Fasoyin was a girl from Oyo whose father initially saw little reason to educate her.
Her brothers disagreed.
Their decision would eventually lead her through several Nigerian towns, into a long career with Kingsway Stores and, almost by accident, into the history of Nigerian gospel music.
The Girl Her Father Did Not Think Needed School
Deborah Fasoyin was born on 1 March 1940 in Oyo town, the youngest of six children and the only daughter of Mr and Mrs Afolabi.
Her childhood education did not follow the straightforward path that her later reputation might suggest.
She began her elementary education in Oyo, but her father, whom she described as illiterate, believed there was little reason to educate a girl because she would eventually end up in the kitchen.
Her five brothers thought differently.
They moved her from one place to another so that she could continue going to school. She spent periods in Jos, Ogbomoso and Lagos before eventually completing her primary education in Lalupon, near Ibadan.
In effect, her brothers became the people who kept her education alive.
She later attended a girls’ modern school in Ibadan, but financial difficulties eventually brought that education to an end. She spent a year teaching in a village in Oyo before moving to Lagos in search of work.
It was an early lesson in persistence.
Fasoyin had already learned that circumstances could close one door without necessarily ending the journey.
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Before the Choir, There Was a Working Woman
Fasoyin’s name is now closely associated with church music, but music was not her first profession.
She joined Kingsway Stores, a major retail company that was a division of the United Africa Company, and worked there for 29 years.
The official biography of the Christ Apostolic Church Good Women Choir records that she worked with Kingsway Stores from 1960 until 1987, eventually becoming a manager before resigning in June 1987. Fasoyin herself also recalled spending 29 years with the company.
This part of her life is important because it places her story within the experience of a generation of Nigerian women who combined employment, marriage, motherhood and religious responsibilities.
She was not someone who abandoned ordinary working life to become a musician.
She built a working life first.
Music remained something she carried alongside it.
The Anglican Choir That Came First
Fasoyin’s relationship with music actually began before she joined the Christ Apostolic Church.
As a young woman in Oyo, she was already a chorister at St Michael’s Anglican Church.
She later married Elder Olusola Fasoyin in 1961. Her marriage brought her into the Christ Apostolic Church, where she continued her musical activities.
The move from Anglican worship into CAC did not erase what she had already learned.
She had already experienced the discipline of choral singing, the importance of congregational music and the power of voices working together.
Those experiences would become useful when an unexpected opportunity arrived in Ibadan.
A Choir Was Created Because Women Were Tired of Waiting
The Good Women Choir did not begin as a commercial music project.
It grew from the Good Women Association of the Christ Apostolic Church.
The women travelled to conventions in different parts of Nigeria. According to Fasoyin, they sometimes encountered a simple problem. When the women arrived at a convention, there was not always a choir available to sing during breaks and other moments when the association wanted music.
After returning from a convention in 1975, the women decided they needed their own choir.
Branches of the church were asked to send women who were educated and interested in music. More than 100 women eventually gathered to form the central choir.
What began as a practical solution became something much larger.
The women began rehearsing, preparing songs and performing at conventions.
They were not initially chasing celebrity.
They were building a choir for their own religious community.
Then something happened that Fasoyin herself considered almost miraculous.
She Discovered She Was the Leader
The choir needed a leader.
Fasoyin did not put herself forward.
In fact, she did not even know she had been selected.
During preparations for an anniversary programme, she received a copy of the programme pamphlet. When she looked at it, she discovered that her name had already been printed as the leader of the Good Women Choir.
Nobody had called her to tell her.
She was stunned.
She later recalled that she nearly fainted because she believed other women in the group could sing better than she could.
She could not sleep that night.
Yet the decision had been made.
The woman who had not asked to lead the choir suddenly found herself at the front of a group of more than 100 women.
That accidental beginning would last for decades.
Their First Record Was Not Odun Nlo Sopin
The Good Women Choir eventually moved from live church performances into recording.
Their first album was Hallelujah, released in 1977 through Ibukun Orisun Iye Records.
The recording demonstrated that the choir could move beyond church conventions and preserve its music in recorded form.
But the group’s defining moment came two years later.
In December 1979, the choir recorded Odun Nlo Sopin.
The recording became enormously popular.
But the history of the song is more complicated than the popular version suggests.
Deborah Fasoyin Did Not Write Nigeria’s December Anthem
For years, many listeners naturally assumed that Fasoyin had composed Odun Nlo Sopin.
She did not.
And she has repeatedly corrected the record.
In a 2025 interview, Fasoyin explained that the choir had encountered the song before recording it. She said the chorus was already being sung during revival programmes in Christ Apostolic Church congregations in Ibadan toward the end of the year.
According to her account, the original composer remains unknown.
The Good Women Choir added two verses and recorded its own version.
That distinction matters.
The song was not born inside a recording studio in 1979. Its history goes back further, into the religious communities where people were already singing it.
Fasoyin described it as a CAC composition dating back to the early 1940s, although no known composer has been definitively established.
Her account therefore leaves us with an unusual piece of musical history.
The song became famous because of a particular choir, but its beginning belongs to a much older communal tradition whose original creator has been lost to history.
How an Anonymous Chorus Became a National Tradition
The title itself explains much of the song’s staying power.
Odun Nlo Sopin means that the year is coming to an end.
It is not difficult to understand why such a song would become deeply attached to December.
The end of a year naturally creates a moment for reflection. People remember what happened, give thanks for survival, pray about the coming year and think about what lies ahead.
The song therefore does something that many ordinary popular songs cannot do.
It returns every year with a built in reason to be heard.
A song released in 1979 could have disappeared as musical tastes changed.
Instead, Odun Nlo Sopin became part of the annual rhythm of life.
For many listeners, the first notes do more than announce a song.
They announce a season.
The Women Were Building Something Bigger Than a Hit
The success of the choir was not based only on Fasoyin.
The Good Women Choir was a collective.
Its early membership exceeded 100 women, but that number changed as time passed. The creation of additional states in Nigeria in 1976 contributed to the dispersal of members as women moved with their husbands. Others eventually died, while a factional split also reduced the original membership.
The choir nevertheless continued.
Its survival was remarkable because it was never simply a group of professional entertainers.
Fasoyin explained that the women viewed their music primarily as gospel ministry. The choir’s members also had families and other responsibilities, while many of them supported the work personally.
The women were therefore creating music while simultaneously maintaining homes, careers and religious commitments.
That helps explain why the choir’s history is also a history of Nigerian women’s organisation.
When the Choir Nearly Stopped Recording
Success did not mean the group was always active.
By 1995, the choir had released its 25th album. Around that period, Fasoyin became ill and was advised by her doctor to reduce her activities.
The choir subsequently stayed away from the studio for about ten years.
Then, in 2005, her children encouraged her to return to recording.
They booked a studio for her.
When she sang, those present were reportedly surprised by what they heard.
She eventually recorded Ogo Ikehin and Ibere Otun as her first solo releases.
The return also produced an unexpected reunion.
Former choir members who heard the recording contacted her, saying they were still able to sing and wanted to return.
Instead of immediately producing new material, the group decided to revisit its existing recordings. This led to video releases of songs including Odun Nlo Sopin and Odun Yi Atura.
The old music had found another life.
The Song That Refused to Stay in One Language
For decades, Odun Nlo Sopin was particularly familiar among Yoruba speaking Christians.
But Fasoyin eventually wanted its message to reach Nigerians who did not speak Yoruba.
In 2020, the song was released in Igbo and Hausa versions under the Wazobia concept.
Fasoyin explained that people from other parts of Nigeria already listened to the Yoruba version, but language could prevent them from fully understanding its message.
The translation was therefore not simply a musical experiment.
It was an attempt to make an old Yoruba gospel tradition accessible across Nigeria’s linguistic boundaries.
The song had travelled a long way from the church gatherings where its original chorus was heard.
Now it was being deliberately adapted for a multilingual country.
The Sound of a Changing Nigeria
The Good Women Choir’s music also reflected a broader transformation in Nigerian gospel music.
The group maintained an indigenous musical character built around group vocals, African rhythms and call and response patterns.
This was important at a time when Nigerian musicians were constantly negotiating the relationship between local musical traditions and foreign influences.
The choir did not need to abandon its Nigerian identity to make Christian music.
Its music demonstrated that Yoruba language, African rhythmic structures and Christian worship could exist comfortably together.
That helped give the recordings an identity that remained recognisable long after the musical environment around them had changed.
The choir’s official history records 25 albums and describes its continuing musical approach as a combination of gospel themes and indigenous African musical expression.
A Song, a Choir and a Woman Who Became Part of Christmas in Nigeria
By the time Fasoyin became an elderly woman, her voice had already travelled through several generations.
The girl whose education nearly ended in Oyo had become a professional worker, wife, mother, choir leader and gospel recording artist.
Yet the most fascinating part of her story may be the thing she did not claim.
She did not claim to be the composer of Odun Nlo Sopin.
Instead, she consistently acknowledged that the song existed before her recording.
That honesty has become part of the song’s history.
The recording made by Fasoyin and the Good Women Choir in 1979 did not create the tradition from nothing.
It preserved, expanded and carried an existing tradition into a new era of Nigerian music.
Even Death Rumours Could Not Erase Her Presence
In March 2026, social media reports falsely claimed that Deborah Fasoyin had died.
The reports spread widely enough that her son, Korede Fasoyin, had to publicly confirm that his mother was alive and that the reports were false.
The episode revealed something about the unusual place Fasoyin occupies in Nigerian cultural memory.
Her name is not simply attached to an old record.
It is attached to a ritual that millions of people recognise.
When Odun Nlo Sopin returns toward the end of the year, it carries with it memories of church, family, prayer, childhood and another year survived.
That is why the woman behind the recording remains significant.
The Legacy of Deborah Fasoyin
Deborah Fasoyin’s story is not simply about becoming a famous gospel singer.
It is about a woman who was almost denied an education, but whose brothers kept moving her from town to town so she could remain in school.
It is about a young chorister who carried music from an Anglican church in Oyo into the Christ Apostolic Church.
It is about a working woman who spent nearly three decades at Kingsway Stores before eventually devoting more of her time to the choir.
It is about more than 100 women who came together because they wanted their own choir at church conventions.
It is about a leader who discovered her appointment by reading her name on a programme pamphlet.
And it is about a song whose original composer remains unknown, yet which became one of the most recognisable sounds of the Nigerian year.
Fasoyin did not create the December tradition alone.
She helped preserve it.
And perhaps that is the most lasting lesson from her story.
History does not always belong only to the person who first creates something. Sometimes it belongs to the people who carry it, protect it, record it and pass it to another generation.
Every December, when Odun Nlo Sopin begins to play again, Nigerians are hearing more than an old gospel song.
They are hearing the work of generations of churchgoers, singers and women who refused to let their music disappear.
And somewhere within that sound is the remarkable journey of Deborah Fasoyin, the girl from Oyo who was once told that educating a girl was unnecessary, but who eventually became one of the enduring voices of Nigerian gospel music.
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Author’s Note
Deborah Fasoyin’s life is a story of perseverance, service and cultural continuity, from a childhood in Oyo where her education was nearly stopped, through her long working life and unexpected leadership of the Christ Apostolic Church Good Women Choir, to the recording that made Odun Nlo Sopin an enduring end of year tradition; her greatest legacy is not simply the fame of one song, but the generations of people who continue to hear, sing and remember it.
References
Christ Apostolic Church Good Women Choir Ibadan, official biography of Deborah Adebola Fasoyin and history of the Good Women Choir.
Punch Newspapers, “I nearly fainted when I was chosen to lead Good Women Choir, Fasoyin”, 29 January 2017.
Punch Newspapers, “My siblings took me away from my parents so they wouldn’t spoil me, Fasoyin, Good Women Choir leader”, 9 March 2019.
Punch Newspapers, “It’s great being 80, Deborah Fasoyin”, 29 February 2020.
Punch Newspapers, “Our husbands were our backbone, Good Women Choir”, 15 March 2020.
Punch Newspapers, “Why we made Odun Nlo Sopin in Igbo, Hausa, Deborah Fasoyin”, 4 October 2020.
The Guardian Nigeria, “I didn’t compose Odun Nlo Sopin, Deborah Fasoyin”, 1 January 2025.
Punch Newspapers, “I didn’t compose Odun Nlo Sopin, Deborah Fasoyin”, 3 January 2025.
Punch Newspapers, “Odun N lo Sopin singer Fasoyin alive, son dismisses death rumour”, 16 March 2026.
