About
I am a Strategist and Human Rights advocate with specific interest in LGBTIQ rights, conversations, and capacity development for emerging Sexual Health and Rights activists and organizations in West Africa. My work focuses on expanding public knowledge and discourse on LGBTIQ rights and issues through storytelling, public education, legal representation, inclusive policy advocacy, and movement building.
My pathway to LGBTIQ rights and advocacy started in 2005 as a founding member of The Initiative for Equal Rights—one of the leading LGBTIQ rights organizations in Nigeria with initiatives in Anglophone West Africa. That journey started with me as a volunteer through being the executive director from 2013 until 2018. It was a journey of learning, sharing, understanding, and doing some extraordinary work with the team to fast-track LGBTIQ rights dialogue, providing legal support and representation, HIV prevention education and treatment, and telling the stories of our communities.
My years of experience has taught me that social change is necessary to achieving legal and social inclusion. With this understanding and through my effort at TIERs, we created a series of programs including the annual Human Rights, Sexuality and The Law Symposium, web and television series, movies, and documentaries as a way of sharing the lived experiences of LGBTIQ persons, interrogating social and legal discrimination while expanding public knowledge and discourse.
My work over the years has provided me with the opportunities to share my knowledge on the impact of laws and policies that are discriminatory toward LGBTIQ persons and the cost of this to LGBTIQ persons, their families, and society at large.
With my years of experience and knowledge in advocacy, fundraising, donor engagement, organization, and project management, I am now journeying at Initiative Sankofa d’Afrique de l’Ouest (ISDAO), a regional activist-led fund dedicated to supporting and strengthening a West African movement working toward a just and inclusive society free from violence and injustice. I am leveraging my experience and contextualized knowledge to strengthen the financial and technical resources of LGBTIQ-led groups and organizations in West Africa.
I hope to continue to learn, share, and contribute to the tremendous work that many remarkable persons are doing for the rights of LGBTIQ persons and women in the world.