The Accidental Activist Episode

Ayo Obe (née Ogunsola), legal practitioner, trustee of Senegal’s Gorée Institute, trustee of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group and a massive member of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign is incredibly modest about her epoch defining role in the shaping of Democracy (with a capital ‘D’) and Human Rights movements in modern day Nigeria.

Intelligent, lazy (lazy?) and efficient – her words - Ayo Obe’s CV is one many would envy. She has been President of the CLO (Nigeria’s first indigenous human rights organisation), been chair of the TMG (an election-monitoring/democracy-building coalition of independent NGOs), on the Steering Committee of the World Movement for Democracy and Nigerian Civil Society’s panel on Police Reform, the list goes on.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The fight for democracy, the funding and evolution of the Civil Liberties Organisation and the heroes of the day – Olisa, Abdul Oroh, Chidi Odinkalu …;
• Bring Back Our Girls, End Sars, and no, Ayo doesn’t believe there was a massacre at toll gate;
• Salvation Army, feast to famine (and back again), Tufnell Park to Seascale, the parent as Deus ex Machina. In there lies the moving tale – Nope, Ayo suffers no angst, thank you very much;
• AWO, Gaza and famine as a weapon of war. Yes, heroes do sometimes have feet of clay;
• Peter Tosh – Equal Rights, Down Pressor Man – Ayo CAN hold a tune;

The back story, the present one, the continuing activism and, yes, the soft-spoken modesty; this episode is one for those of us with much to be modest about.

Links

Americanah – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Down Pressor Man, Equal Rights – Peter Tosh

Stagger Lee – Lloyd Price

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