‘From Protests to policy reforms, advancing gender equality in a complex, multi-ethnic and multi-religious Nigeria’
Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi, LLM, PhD, founding Director of Women Advocates Research and Documentation Center and executive board member of the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding and the Nigerian Women’s Trust Fund
Dr. Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi is an African Activist and a feminist scholar; a human rights attorney and has been campaigning for the respect for women’s human rights in Africa for about three decades. She was a former students’ union leader, during which she led numerous students’ civil actions nationwide to challenge oppressive military rule and was active in the movement to promote democracy in Nigeria. She is highly regarded for her ability to build consensus among diverse constituencies and was successful at mobilising voices around critical gender issues, including the rights of women to abortion and their bodily integrity, the rights of sex workers, the rights of students against sexual harassment, and the rights to protection of women in religious and cultural spaces. She has worked in over 100 rural and hard-to-reach communities in Nigeria and has successfully facilitated the passage of gender equality laws in cultural and religious-sensitive Nigeria. Abiola has been threatened both physically and legally, but has remained undaunted in her commitment to Nigerian women for about thirty years and is not prepared to back down even a millimetre.
In the year 2000, she founded the Women Advocates Research and Documentation Center (WARDC), a leading women and girls’ rights advocacy group in Nigeria, responding to women’s voice, participation, and providing services for women and girls who suffer from violence. She has taken up cases in Nigerian and regional courts on behalf of political prisoners, pro-democracy activists, and an uncountable number of women and other vulnerable groups whose rights are violated. (see https://africanlii.org/
Abiola believes in the power of collective voices of women, and for decades dedicated her work to building and working with the women’s movement in Nigeria and Africa as a whole. Through the movement, she has led transformative change in a highly patriarchal Nigeria, challenging religious fundamentalism, and traditional and cultural barriers that threaten the enjoyment of women’s human rights. She is a well-known public commentator whose opinion has been captured by local and international press challenging inequality in a pluralistic legal system.
Abiola also works as a senior lecturer at the University of Lagos, mentoring students and in particular young women through her gender and the law class, human rights, and civil liberties and was one of the pioneer coordinators of the Human Rights Clinic. Her work in tertiary institutions has led to the adoption of Anti Sexual Harassment Policies and student launches of the Red Card Clubs across institutions. She also supported the prosecution of lecturers found sexually harassing female students, which led to the first conviction in a popular ‘sex for grades’ case in Nigeria. (see https://www.cnn.
She has led several coalitions and remains a strong voice in the movement to ‘Bring Back Our Girls’ abducted by the Boko Haram Insurgency, she is also a convener of the prestigious Gender& Constitutional Reform Network as well as the Feminist Womanifesto, the largest feminist grouping in Nigeria. (see https://
Abiola’s lecture at CEW+ will bring into focus her contribution to building the women’s movement in Nigeria, common barriers, emerging challenges identified, success factors, approaches, methods, and practices in the demand for accountability from formal and informal structures. She will also highlight the role of the movement in dismantling patriarchal structures, breaking legal, religious, and traditional barriers to ensure that women and girls are free from lifelong discrimination and marginalization
Abiola is a recipient of several prestigious awards in recognition of her commitment, activism, and scholarship on the rights of women. She serves as a consultant for local and international institutions.