ABIOLA AKIYODE-AFOLABI – FOUNDING DIRECTOR, WOMEN ADVOCATES RESEARCH AND DOCUMENTATION CENTER
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 Womenβs 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 womenβs human rights in Africa for about three decades. She was a former studentsβ union leader, during which she led numerous studentsβ 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 mobilizing 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 millimeter.
In the year 2000, she founded the Women Advocates Research and Documentation Center (WARDC), a leading women and girlsβ rights advocacy group in Nigeria, responding to womenβs 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.
Abiola believes in the power of collective voices of women, and for decades dedicated her work to building and working with the womenβs 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 womenβs 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 βsex for gradesβ case in Nigeria.
She has led several coalitions and remains a strong voice in the movement to βBring Back Our Girlsβ 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.
In 2022 March, she led over 3,000 womenβs protests to the national assembly in Nigeria to demand for a gender-sensitive Nigerian constitution to address agelong challenges of identity and dignity. (Thousands of women to occupy NASS until gender bills are reconsidered).
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.