Aisha Yesufu: Nigeria’s Tawakkol Karman

The year 2010 is still fresh in the minds of many people around the world. That year marked the beginning of a new era in the political history of a number of Arab and other countries like Nigeria. In that year, a wave of revolutionary protests in most Arab countries ushered in what became known as the Arab Spring. It was a period that defined the direction of an emerging socio-political movement for many Arab nations. But in Nigeria, the wind of regime change that blew across Arab nations took a different turn.

Nigeria is the most densely populated country in Africa, numbering about 200 million people. Southern Nigeria is predominantly Christian. North is mainly Muslim. But despite the fact that the north is principally Muslim, the wave of protests that gripped the Nation of Islam by 2010 did not have much effect on the country. While the revolutions that brought about regime changes in most Arab countries lasted, Nigerians had been preoccupied with coping with their own internal crises.

It was around this time that the Boko Haram insurgency came about, following the death of the founder, Mohammed Yusuf, in 2009, while in police detention. The Nigerian authorities had grossly underestimated the strength and determination of the insurgents. And so, they were hugely flabbergasted when they saw that the insurgents had started killing people and destroying properties in villages in the northeast of the country. In other words, while Nigerians had their own internal problems to sort out, the problems did not bear the same identity as that of the Arab World. The troubles did not call for a demonstration. They did not call for regime change. If there was any demand by the people, it was to fortify the government so that it could deal a sustained blow on the insurgency that was rearing its ugly head.

But elsewhere in the Arab World, Saturday 18 December 2010 was the day all the trouble started. The day before, on 17 December, a 26 year-old Tunisian street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, had protested against his humiliation and the seizure of his wares by a municipal council official and her aides. The government officials had accused the young man of making sales without due licence. The governor refused to listen to his pleading to return his cart and the wares he was selling. Out of frustration, the young man sat down in front of the State Office, poured fuel over his head and set himself ablaze. He died 18 days later on Wednesday, 5 January 2011.

Spontaneously, Bouazizi’s self-immolation ignited public anger and violence in Tunisia and subsequently became the wake-up call, not only for the people of Tunisia but also for the wider Nation of Islam. From the moment Bouazizi set himself on fire at the front of the state office, the stage was set. From North Africa to the Middle East and beyond, protest after protest followed in quick succession across the entire Arab World. The success of the Tunisian protest stoked the fire of rebellion among discontented citizens of several Arab countries. The wave of unrest sparked by the Tunisian street vendor hit Algeria, Jordan, Egypt and Yemen, and quickly spread to other countries, including non-Arab nations.

Tawakkol Karman & Aisha Yesufu: two of a kind

In Yemen, Tawakkol Karman was the most notable activist opposed to Saleh’s continued presidency. The32 year-old mother of three continued to organize protest after protest by the front gate of Sana’a University every week. She was the chairperson of “Women Journalists without Chains”, an organisation that defended human rights and, especially, the freedom to protest.

Karman was fiercely protective of Yemen’s youths. She continuously condemned Saleh’s leadership which she said had robbed her generation of not only a meaningful future, but also its honour and dignity. Addressing journalists, she said: “We are suffering from a ruler who tries to control the country with constitutional amendments that will change Yemen into a monarchy. Yemen, like Tunisia and Egypt, needs an end to a dictatorship in the guise of a presidency.” Indeed, Ali Abdullah Saleh had been in power since 1978. That was for more than 33 years.

“The combination of dictatorship, corruption, poverty and unemployment created this revolution,” Karman said. “It’s like a volcano. Sadly, injustice and corruption are exploding, while opportunities for a good life are coming to an end.”

By 2011, more than 5 million Yemenis were living in poverty, and nearly half were illiterate. Oil was scarce. Water reserves were declining. Considering the rate of water consumption at the time, it was often touted that Yemen would be the first country in the world to run out of water, sometime in 2025. Yet the government seemed unable or unwilling to address the fundamental problems of the people, lamented Karman.

On Thursday, 3 February, Karman called for a “Day of Rage.” But on the fifth straight day of protests, supporters of the Saleh-led government, armed with sticks and knives, attacked pro-democracy demonstrators who were calling for Saleh’s ouster.

Karman said she did not believe in matching force with force. On her office wall, she hung portraits of Martin Luther King Jr, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. “We refuse violence,” she asserted. “We know that violence has already caused our country countless problems. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has its base in Yemen. So does Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born extremist preacher suspected of inspiring a host of would-be jihadists, including Nigerian-born underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

Karman protested every Tuesday from 2007. She said that watching the dictators in Tunisia and Egypt fall gave her and the protest movement renewed energy. “The goal is to change the regime by the slogan we learned from the Tunisian revolution, ‘The people want the regime to fall’. We are using the same methods and the same words from the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. They taught us how to become organized.”

Tunisia and Egypt also taught the Yemenis the power of social media. Facebook and Twitter posts called thousands more to the streets. Flyers were rolled out from Sana’a University and distributed to garner and consolidate public conscience. Positive coverage from satellite channels like AlJazeera and Al Hurra also encouraged Yemenis to protest, by exposing them to the support of the outside world.

About the protests, Karman said: “Yemen is not different from any other country. The future is unknown. What is known is that Yemen is part of a community of nations that is finally starting to shake off a plague of dictators. The spark started in Tunisia. What stabilized this revolution was Egypt. It gave light and hope and strength to people everywhere. Now there’s a race between Yemen and Algeria to see who will be next. And if we succeed here, and I believe we will, revolutionary movements in every Arab country will grow stronger.”

In Nigeria, there is a similar character like Karman. Widely known across the country, her name is Aisha Somtochukwu Yesufu. Aisha is a Nigerian activist and businesswoman. She was co-founder of the #BringBackOurGirls movement, which brought global attention to the abduction of 276 girls by Boko Haram from Government Girls’ Secondary School Chibok, Borno State, on 14 April 2014.

After the terrorists abducted the schoolgirls, Yesufu and Oby Ezekwesili co-founded the #BringBackOurGirls movement to push for the rescue of the girls. Yesufu was among the women protestors who marched to the premises of the Nigerian National Assembly, in the nation's capital, Abuja, on 30 April 2014. Aisha joined a group of like minds to advocate for a speedy and effective search and rescue of all the 276 abducted school girls and for a rapid containment and quelling of insurgency in Nigeria.

#BringBackOurGirls trended across multiple platforms worldwide and sparked off physical protests in various countries.

Out of the 276 girls, 107 were rescued, and 169 were still in the captivity of the terrorists. The school girls were between the ages of 15 and 18 in 2014 when they were abducted from school. The #BringBackOurGirls campaign attracted global attention from dignitaries like Barrack and Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Aisha and Tawakkol: freedom is the word

Yesufu was a prominent member of the End SARS movement which began in 2017 and also drew global attention to police brutality in Nigeria. The organization derived its name from the amorphous unit in Nigeria Police Force called the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). A photograph of her wearing hijab at an End SARS protest became an iconic symbol of the movement. Yesufu said of the End SARS protests, "I will not be an irresponsible parent and leave this fight for my children. I am ready to sacrifice my life for my children to live. I brought them into this world, and I need to fix the world I put them in."

About Aisha, Charles Aniagolu of the Arise TV had this to say: “If the recent history of Nigeria and indeed the world tells us anything, it is that we have the power to stand up and demand for change. And one of the most important voices in that support for change would have to be the activist and campaigner, Aisha Yesufu. Her work shines through for all to see. Whether through protests, social activism or online campaign, she has always been at the forefront of trying to make real change happen. Aisha Yesufu would have to be one of Nigeria’s best known civil rights activists in recent years. She is famous across the country for her inner steely, unquenchable desire for good governance, her stubborn fight for good governance and her great strength in never giving up.

Aisha Somtochukwu Yesufu was born on 12 December 1973 and raised in Kano State but she hails from Agbede in Edo State. About her childhood, she said she experienced the difficulties of growing up as a girl in a heavily patriarchic environment. By the time she was 11 years old, she didn't have any female friends because they had all been married off or had died during childbirth. By the time she married at 24, most of her friends were already grandmothers.

Her love of books was what helped her during childhood. Reading made her realize there was a world beyond the ghetto that she was growing up in, and she wanted that life. She applied to the Nigerian Defence Academy in 1991, but was rejected because she was a woman. In 1992, she was admitted into Usman Danfodiyo University. But after the school was shut down, she enrolled in Ahmadu Bello University to study Medicine. Yesufu left Ahmadu Bello University after the school was also shut down as a result of the killing of a professor in 1994. She completed her education at Bayero University Kano, from where she graduated in Microbiology, in a second-class upper division. She eventually took up a Master’s degree programme in Pharmaceutical Microbiology at the Ahmadu Bello University Zaria.

Njideka Agbo
In 2019, Njideka Agbo of The Guardian wrote about Aisha: "Often maligned for her stance on national issues in Nigeria by pro-government voices, she is not a run-of-the-mill activist. Her penchant for naming names earned her truckloads of enemies, and perhaps, admirers". Yesufu was among BBC's 100 Influential Women in 2020. She was included in a list of the Top 100 Most Influential Africans by New African magazine in 2020. Yesufu married her husband, Aliu Osigwe Yesufu, a chartered accountant in 1998 and they have two children, Amir and Aliyyah Yesufu.

To a large extent, no historical documentation of the tortuous road to true democracy and the attainment of genuine nationhood that Nigerians have come through without the mention of Aisha Yesufu would be deemed complete. She is to Nigeria today, exactly what Tawakkol Karman was to Yemen in the days of the Arab Awakening.

Aisha Yesufu has been defined as a change-driven and impact-led Nigerian socio-political reformer, a civic and community development crusader, a public speaker and an educator who consistently demands for good governance. Her consistent fight for justice, fairness and equity has earned her a place in the history of Nigeria’s democratic evolution. Always willing to lend her voice in support of women safety and empowerment, she is highly regarded by those who want Nigeria to attain true democracy in our lifetime. She is a business woman who teaches financial literacy to empower people to be financially independent and also have a voice in the demand for good governance.

Aisha’s outspokenness and impulsion to stand up against injustice is inborn, and can be traced back to her childhood days in Northern Nigeria where speaking up as a female was taboo. When she was as young as 4 years old, Aisha Yesufu was already standing up against injustice. Her father tells the story of how she came to him while in nursery school to demand that he should be the one to take her to school as the neighbour who helped take her to school was being hostile.

After INEC chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu released the results of the presidential election days after the 25 February event, many Nigerians were not convinced the result was authentic. The fact that the electoral umpire could not upload them to the INEC server did not help matters. In the midst of the controversy that beclouded the result, Professor Yakubu told the country and the world that the APC flagbearer, Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu had won the election with PDP’s Atiku Abubakar coming second and Labour Party’s Peter Obi trailing a distant third. But many Nigerians who were desirous to see change happen in their country rejected the results.

Aisha and her husband
Soon after, both Atiku and Obi went to court. They wanted the court to grant them permission to inspect all the BVAS and other materials INEC utilized in conducting the elections so they could verify if there were any discrepancies. Many Nigerians saw that there were manipulations, voter-intimidation, vote rigging, vote buying, ballot box snatching and other malpractices that bedeviled the election. About the presidential election, Aisha said: “No matter what they do, we will not be provoked. We will stay on the issue. This is not a time to get angry. There were times they would have looked at or examined our anger but that is not now. This is the time to be cool and calculative. This is the time to sit down and say ‘yes’, bring it on. Bring it on in terms of creativity, in terms of intelligence, in terms of technology, in terms of social media. This project belongs to you, the Nigerian youths. This is the time to put all the evidences together, the polling unit results. They will try to make you angry but don’t give in because if you do, we will all then leave the main issue which is that our votes must count and look another way. We must work within the ambits of the law and we must ensure that the mandate of the people is not stolen. The massive number of people who came out to vote, their interest must be protected. We must ensure that political opportunists do succeed in rigging the election results as they are planning to do. “

Upon completion of the compulsory National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) program in 2000, Aisha ventured into the world of business where she remains active. She founded Citizens Hub (www.thecitizenshub.org), a not-for-profit organization seeking to build a financially independent, active and responsible citizenry through a solutions-driven and dynamic approach. The organization has successfully hosted a good number of attendees across Nigeria. Citizens Hub’s vision to empower is built on core focus areas of educating citizens on financial literacy, personal and social development.

As a Public Speaker, Aisha has travelled widely visiting the United States, South Africa, Ghana, United Kingdom, Argentina and other countries to provide engaging keynote speeches and to ignite discussions on socio political issues. Of particular note is that she was invited to speak at Edinburgh University CAS Seminar on “The Many Meanings of #EndSARS in Nigeria”. She also spoke on “The Role of Non-Violent Protests in Influencing Change and Delivery” at the Chatham House Africa Programme organized by UNDP Governance in Africa. Again, she was invited to speak at the Strategy Session organized by the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) students on the #EndSARS peaceful protest.

Aisha is the Convener of #NigeriansMarchAgainstCorruption – a peaceful demonstration against corruption within the Nigerian public sector. She has continued to remain a vocal critic of dubious government policies and frequently advocates for good governance, accountability and transparency. She is an avid reader and writer. And like Tawakkol Karman of Yemen, her sister-in-arm against bad governance, her life and works have been chronicled in print and broadcast media around the world.

When Aisha Yesufu turned 40 on 12 December 2013, she decided it was time to devote her life fully to Nigeria. She said: “’the first 40 years of my life I devoted to myself to be financially independent and be able to help others. It is said you can’t help the poor by being poor yourself. The next 40 years, God willing, I am going to devote to Nigeria. I am going to be an active citizen. My silence makes me part of the problems of Nigeria.

By Emeka Asinugo, KSC