Renowned Human Rights Activist, Mrs. Ceessnambhilo Aken ‘Ova, now in her 50s started her career life as a Lecturer at the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, for 4 years before veering into the NDLEA as one of its top Executive in 1995, for another 4 years and later ended as Human Rights Activist where she openly stood behind the LGBTI group even as she claimed not to be an advocate of Same-sex marriage. Gbagyi, by tribe and Edo State by marriage, she claims, she is passionately spiritual and not religious. In this interview she advanced the reasons why she is the right choice to be Nigeria’s President in 2023. Excerpts…
QTN: Tell us about your background madam
ANS: Let us start with my mum, she is Mrs. Nuhu Lami Baraje. Her maiden name is Mairua and I think she did up to Primary 3 and after that she got married. She tried to develop herself along the way, joined the Civil Service while we were growing up and retired as Matron from Federal Government Girls’ College, Minna. My father Mr. Nuhu Baraje, was also Civil Servant and along with civil service, there was a lot of conscientization those days on injustice and so he took it upon himself to do some activist things and his own was mainly like the emancipation of the Gbagyi people because we were blocked together with the Hausa-Suleja Emirate.
Initially, it was North-western state, Sokoto and so we found ourselves always at a disadvantage especially when the Gbagyi person happens to be a Christian and so his activism was geared towards the emancipation of the Gbagyi people and of the Christian Community that was at that time and even up till now were not treated fairly in the State. He took part in politics and so it can be said that I grew up in politics. I have had that trajectory as part of my life.
QTN: Would they have supported your venture into politics now?
ANS: Unfortunately, my dad died some years back, he would have supported my foray into politics, he actually did so before he died. In fact, he did support my elder brother who was one time Deputy Governor in Niger State. I believe that my father would have supported me because every exploit that I have done in my life has received the support of my father. He believes in excellence and that people should put their best out there and in whatever space once it gets into human development, you have my father’s backing.
QTN: Why is it that an average politician doesn’t bring human rights issues to the front burner?
ANS: I think that has to do with people’s background because of where they are coming from, they have never been exposed to these issues, we can’t expect them in the middle of the way to articulate them. I articulate them because that has been my life. I have been an activist and I applied all the principles and standards to my lifestyle. It is not to do one thing and say another thing. That is why I’m different. Politicians are hardly leaders. I’m a leader and I mentor people in leadership skills and I have founded projects that build capacity for women, youths and persons with disabilities in leadership.
QTN: Have you held any political position before now, why are you taking the plunge?
ANS: No. I have never held a political position (laughter). People have actually said that to me in a way I’m not experienced, but I got this vision from the place of prayer because I know that Nigeria is a religious country. I’m beyond religion, I’m spiritual. I pray and intercede for Nigeria and this grew more serious in 2014, haven seen how the country was going and so I believe that I have been specially called and sent.
Now it is left for people to accept and believe who has been sent. So, I have struggled with that and so in the end for instance I don’t get to be president of Nigeria, does that mean that I wasn’t sent? I was called within my spirit and also with partners that I work with because I have trained people and these people came together and had a meeting in July 2021 and they agreed that 2023 should not pass us by as onlookers.
We have done a lot of theories and some measures by joining a political party and seeing how the structures and processes are and see where we can lend strength to make the things work better for Nigeria so that a credible leadership can emerge. And so it was these colleagues of mine who came together and had this meeting and agreed that we needed somebody to bear the flag and possibly be the president of Nigeria who is ideologically driven and who has proven over the years that he or she has a track record of credibility and that is the voice of the people and these are people that I have worked with and I believe in their capacity to undertake the analyses that they did and I believe in the checklist that they have that made them find me fit for this responsibility.
QTN: Between that time and now what has been your game plan?
ANS: On women participation, what we are saying is that we don’t just want women because of their biological definition. We want women who have the capacity and that is even more sophisticated reasoning than this that we are having, though they have done well because they have the capacity and I’m following suit.
QTN: What are your plans in this regard?
ANS: First and foremost is the plans for Nigeria. I think that we have really gone down the precipice and there has to be very strong and formidable leadership to pull Nigeria back on track from where we have descended to. And so, the strategists that I have is number one: inclusivity, because we need to get everybody involved. We need to look for people who have the capacity regardless of where they are coming from. This is not leadership as usual where we are looking for one Messiah to do the magic wand. We are going to look for that person/team that is credible and has the track record that is proven that can with their professional/expertise come together as a team with the leadership of course to deliver on the objectives and so participation and inclusiveness are very key. The other thing that is very important is intersectionality. Many times many people just take the issues in silos, they don’t think about how those issues interconnect and so most times in the process of getting a solution people create a problem and that is where I believe I’m bringing in a difference to the table because there is no single decision or intervention that will be done without considering how it interrelate or intersects with other issues so that as we are solving one problem it is in fact opening doors for other problems to be solved and then and we are also thinking of private sector partnership because that for a long time has also being ignored. Then and of course we are talking about human rights perspectives to kind of intervention that we are going to have and so our focus primarily is security because it is like an umbrella right now that will make it safe for all of us to do other things like create opportunities for employment and youths especially, it will open way for us to strengthen our agriculture so that we can go beyond feeding our nation to creating job opportunities and also if possible expanding for export and bringing market closer especially to women and limiting those third person exploitation that have between farmers and processors and the market. We would be doing things in education, because our education especially the public schools are suffering especially with regard to the ASSU strike and the rest.
We can redeem the situation and we will be looking at health. Of course there have been promises about people accessing Medicare in Nigeria, but that hasn’t happened. I have been in a situation where I needed care that is sophisticated and I have to seek it from some outside and it was astonishing to see how far a country like India has done. We can do just as well or even better because we have resources, the intellectual capacity to deliver on health. So, those are the key things that we shall be looking at but nothing will be done without considering how they interrelate with one another. For instance, if we are talking about agriculture there is infrastructural need and if we are talking about job opportunities how do we expand investment. And if we are talking about education and the health sectors, where do we get resources from because we will not continue to borrow and sell out our nation with the way we are borrowing. We have borrowed and borrowed until we have practically sold out our country. That has to stop, so those are the kind of intersectionality that we shall be looking at as we focus on the main issues that we intend to address.
QTN: Career paths after graduation After Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria!
ANS: I lectured in ABU for about 4 years and after I moved onto the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA). I also served there for 4 years. I was one of the very high-ranking female officers at that time. I then joined Human Rights activism. This has been since 1995 that I have been in this sector and it has been awesome. I have no desire to leave the development sector at all and so my coming into politics is directly borne from activism in the sense that we have focused on civic responsibility and political participation as areas of capacity building. So, if I have been mentoring in that area it is now time for me to come and do what my mouth has been saying.
QTN: Brief background on marriage and family.
ANS: I got married to Pastor George Aken’Ova. He hailed from Agenebode, Edo State, South-south Nigeria. I was born and bred in Zaria like his mother too and like our first son. So, mine is a mixture of generations of North and Southern Nigeria…laughter. He was called home to rest about 6 years ago just like my father. Before then, he was a lecturer at ABU and he loved God with passion and served with the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) till he was called home…interruption…by that estimation, it is safe to say that you are also a Pastor, because you are a Pastor’s wife?
ANS: Oh, yes in a way, I do a lot of evangelism work, but I have refused to be boxed-up in one space because of the kind calling that I have which is to set up a transformative discipleship like Holy Ghost schools around the place.
QTN: You are spiritual and not religious, what does that mean?
ANS: I’m very spiritual though not religious because religion is a more pharisaic kind of thing, where people want to show that they go to Church. Make noise and let everybody hear us, but deep down they don’t have that personal relationship with God and they don’t exhibit the attributes of God in our setting. Because a spiritual person will permanently exude God’s presence wherever the person is and they don’t even have to open their mouth to say this who am and it should be the impact that the person is having around that will cause the people to then say that this person is indeed a child of God, that is the difference.
QTN: Work in a human rights organization!
ANS: I joined Women’s Health Organisation of Nigeria in 1995 and started work as their programme person specialising in work with adolescents, growing and development which we called sexuality. I also worked in that organization with volunteers’ health workers and traditional birth attendants. These were women in rural areas like 27 states in Nigeria. We did a lot of advocacies especially with WHO on how to package reproductive health interventions. In that organization, we did a lot of gender mainstreaming work because I joined just after the Cairo and Beijing Conferences and so there was a lot to do.
We needed to operationalise the outcome of that meeting and those included gender mainstreaming, reproductive sexual health, addressing gender-based violence and building capacity for youth, women and persons with disabilities to participate in intervention projects. From there I started consulting for several international organizations like the UNFPA, UNICEF, the Federal Ministry of Health and the National Population Commission. I did quite a lot of work in the area of gender and adolescence, a lot of advocacies preparing policies to ensure that the ministry is doing what is expected and required. But my advocacy also includes the United Nations Europe and the African Union where I went to advocate for countries to implement projects for young people, for women and for young persons.
I have worked in Eastern Africa. I have also done some work in South Africa with sexual minority especially when it comes to violence and HIV Aid vulnerability and rape because that is very common there and in West Africa Ghana and Sierre Leone. Teaching how to document human rights violations and worked with law enforcement agencies for justice to be obtained for those who were abused.
QTN: Your name Ceessnambhilo, sounds foreign?
ANS: I come from the town called Dikwo, it is familiar with travelers along Abuja-Kaduna express road. It is the junction community that connects that road to Mina, the Niger State capital.
I’m Gbagyi and people call us Kwari and the name is actually Gbagyi. People have actually asked questions about that name and it is unique because it is the only name that you will see on the political turf. In any case some Nigerians refer to us as a minority tribe even though we are the 5th majority in the country. Gbagyis are in Kaduna, FCT Abuja Nasarawa, Niger and some parts of Kogi also. I can speak and write my language, like my Master’s degree for example was a comparative analysis between a tense in French and how that is reflected in my language to see how we can teach French easily to Gbagyi speakers. And so, I have done that kind of work. We also have an online presence for Gbaygi, because I’m a Linguist because they write the things but they don’t know how to separate the pronoun from the tense.
QTN: How compact is Nigeria’s Human Rights Community to roll in their votes for you?
ANS: Human rights is no longer as compact as when we started and I know that it is deliberate because I know that the government has tried to weaken structures that can serve as a voice as critic to them even though we have coalesced and we were able to pass the FoI Act bill. You can imagine how that movement was and how strong it was to pass. This was a lot of work for many years and we did that and it was mainly online and today it is not the same because the structures have been weakened.
QTN: Some Nigerians will wonder why you resolutely opposed criminalization of Same Sex Marriages, Lesbianism/Gay and Bisexual Trans-intersex (LGBIs) etc etc.
ANS: Wisdom says, yes and I believe that whoever aligns with the most marginalized and most targeted for violence persons is capable of aligning with everyone and I have tried as much to model my life after Jesus Christ as much as I can. I don’t want to discriminate and I don’t want human rights violated. For instance, we have a law, do you need to beat them and strip them naked? I know girls who have been gang raped…interjection (but this is not gang raped), here we are talking about an Act passed by the National Assembly of act that says some persons are gay.
ANS: Let me say that I’m not an advocate of same-sex marriage. Nobody has ever come out that same sex marriage should be supported, but the law in itself has provisions that were very tricky, that was going to impact on people who are not even gay. We tried to make them understand that.
QTN: But how will the law impact them?
ANS: For instance, it says open or public display of amorous by same-sex loving people is criminal. Now what is the public display? Would you say two young men holding hands because in Africa we hold hands all the time. I hold hands with girls, it doesn’t mean that I’m having sex with them. In Africa, we do those things. That you see young boys walking around and holding hands are not gay people.
The trouble with that law is how do you define what people are exhibiting and then label it as a romantic thing and then they say people can’t share rooms. In Africa we share rooms and in fact traditionally the Gbagyi compound will have a room for all the girls and have a room for all the young men because traditionally people didn’t have single rooms and if your friend visits, they will use the same roomed with you just like when my friend visited, she shared my room with me.
But what we are now saying is that we need to put camera in the room to be sure that what is happening there is not amorous and so it infringes on people’s privacy and those were the issues that we have as human rights activists like people will have to peep into a room to be sure like do they have to put camera here to say this is an amorous meeting.
That is how ridiculous it was to us because it didn’t make sense. We already had laws, the sodomy laws are already there and nobody is even using them anyway and what I have understood is that once anal sex is consensual people will never hear about it. The one that we hear about is the one that is rape and many times it is an adult that molesting a child. I’m totally and absolutely against those practices, nobody should molest anybody. So, my concerns were human rights concerns.
The infringements that were going to happen. The fact that we are setting up a certain category of people that will be violated and people are beginning to say that if you see a woman with a tattoo or a baggy it means that she is a lesbian. Those were the kind of interpretations that were going on around the place. My interest in this whole matter is just to make sure that people’s rights were protected, because when such law is passed, people who are perceived may not be necessary gay and those who are actually gay will be hunted down. We don’t want a jungle-kind atmosphere.
QTN: In what ways have you been able to help this community of people?
ANS: Yes, I have help several of them (people with different sexual orientation/who are really lesbians or gay). For example, this young lawyer is gay and whatever happened in the community, there was a fight. And the young people felt that this one that is HOMO, e get mouth sef. But people were encroaching on his space in his mother’s land and so they started hunting for him and one day and he is a lawyer and they wanted to kill him and for a long time, he was in hiding and eventually we had to pick him and this young man was totally traumatized and we placed him even on treatment so that he can regain his senses. Now, he is no longer in Nigeria and is practicing his law and contributing to another community.
QTN: How about this guy (Bobrisky) who flaunts his present orientation?
I don’t know about Bobrisky, I have never sat down to engage with him. One time he is this, another time he is a cross-dresser, etc etc. It is difficult to know who Bob-risky is as he is a very controversial character.
QTN: Any interface with some of these guys?
ANS: Yes. Some of them come for counselling, I have had people who come for counselling and some of them discovered that they were not gay and then they opted for an alternative life style. But the trouble within that acronym LGBTI is also the inter-sex that most people don’t even talk about, intersex means that people used to call them amorphrodite, it means that they are born with that characteristic that cannot really be said that they are male or female.
So, a child is brought up looking like a girl and at 13 years the person starts to develop hairs and male characteristics and the family becomes traumatized and the child is traumatized and everybody is shocked because he doesn’t know where he belongs. And then they don’t know the excuse to give the Church or the Hospital or the School, how come this is happening and again some people give spiritual connotation to it and they say how come this is happening they are devil incarnate. Whereas, this is just a conjunatal accident that happens because some cells did not divide well and so this person just got mixed up and we have about 2.5% of our population in that category. We did a study in 1985 and 1986 concerning this.
QTN: Is there any association on this?
ANS: Yes, they have. I have in fact done training for them recently and people are also doing some training and of course they hate themselves and bodies because everybody hates them and heats on them, especially because they all known within the LGBTI. And, so it’s very confusing that when people see them, they don’t even understand that this is about characteristics and so they are condemned and judged and they and their family are traumatized and they themselves are traumatized. They need to have some sense of love so that they can have some self-worth so that they can at least live a life that is worthy.
QTN: Where are you expecting to get your campaign war chest running?
ANS: In the mentorship that I have carried out with youths all along, we have a session called Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) and in that Course unit, we try to see how we can maximize the little resources that we have to leverage on the existing opportunities to launch into what we are doing. So, this is how it is going to work, there are existing opportunities that we can ride on, for instance, there are women’s movements and networks and association to say I’m coming out and that I need their support. I have written letters to them and if they have events, I simply go there and address them. I leverage that and that is what I also do with other networks and professional groups and that is what the course has taught us to do and we have also been taught how to use social media. We have our website, Instagram, Facebook and twitter pages and are already there and functioning as much as and we can push them right now but there is no doubt that we make public and let it go viral and so what we are doing is trusting that we are doing a whole lot of the work with radio houses and TV channels that are open to us that people will from there be curious to say, let us check the website. Certainly, we are going to set up a forum that is interactive and if is 2 times in a month that we can do 3 hours, people can come on that space and we can have a conversation like we are having now and so people will have to clear very many things concerning the structures, the processes and the candidates.
QTN: Where have you launched out?
Well right now we are targeting primaries and not the general elections, and as you know the strategies are different and I know people who are wealthy enough and they can do the two but for people who don’t have the financial strength to combined the two, the best thing is to focus on the party and that is what we are doing and so Sokoto, Kebbi, Kano Kaduna we were wait for the people. Right, we are meeting the people who are the delegates meeting with the structures and the people it looks good
QTN: Your perception from the delegates in the Social Democratic Party (SDP)?
ANS: It looks good and I think that people understand that Nigeria is at a point where people know that there has to be a different package. The people, that is Nigerians are tired of recycled faces and so they want something fresh and also, they are saying that we think that a woman should be given a chance.
So, it is the same passion that I have seen within the party (SDP) and then that is further encouraged by my CV, because they have seen the CV and they know that this not just an ordinary person, she is somebody who actually has the capacity to deliver and it is a CV that they can deliver anywhere so that is also helpful. They have been really wonderful. They understand that I’m not a business person that has that money to throw around and neither have I been unfit anywhere. Nigerians still have their morale intact and when they come across a woman like they say you mean that with this kind of background you have the gut to come out. So, everybody is looking for the guts and like I always tell people it is not my gut because personally I wouldn’t have guts to venture into something like this at all.
QTN: Are Nigerians ready for a woman President?
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ANS: She took a deep breath, saying, I’m really convinced because the way we started, we have been having this conversation in my circle which is the intersectionality connecting the dots projects and we have been having this conversation early last year and at that time nobody was talking about 2023 the way we are talking now and so when people started saying that we want a woman, like Nasarawa Emir was the one that first came out in the papers to say that women should be given the chance in a lecture series he delivered. And my people said: look at, this thing that we have been working on, somebody prominent is also saying it. Imagine, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, the Governor of Kaduna State, who recently said don’t be surprised if the next Governor in the State is a woman. These were not statements that we were hearing before now. And we have held the National Assembly to account very recently because of the Gender Bill that they threw out. Nigeria is not the same that it used to be. I believe that we have reached that stage and the answer for me is yes, that we have reached that stage.
QTN: You have actually done a lot in the face of foreigners in human rights processes. Are you expecting any support from that community?
ANS: Oh, yes, I think that assistance will come from them. And, there should have been already, but for the Ukrainian-Russian war that has diverted attention, but we plan to have conversation with some of the allies that we have, so that we can see the best they can come in. It is however a very delicate thing because nobody wants to invest in putting a person in place in another country and so on. But, in terms of where there is sympathy it is obvious that if all these years these is what I have done and the countries that I have been and interacted with and even if they will not bring money because it will amount to interference, they will be willing in the end to make sure that the promises that I make to Nigerians are supported.
QTN: Madam, what highpoints of your life makes you a different and unique person
ANS: She took another deep breath…You see when I look at people who would have been stoned to death, whose career would have been crippled by mere perception and if they are and to me mere perception is horrible. Like, I just looked at where people who have different sexual orientation are before and where they are right now, I mean people that have passed through the capacity building that we conducted, it is really humbly. Some people have come to the organization and I told myself, God, I can’t deal with this. But somehow, the cases that I thought will take 5 years to solve get sorted. Imagine someone who has been kicked out of the family, the parents don’t even want to mention that name in the house again. The first thing that I do is to restore their confidence. Because sometimes they are even thinking of suicide by the time they come and so the confidence has to be restored in them. Some of them, I introduce to the Holy Ghost school who are willing. However, not everybody takes the spiritual solution but I prescribe it because what I have done is to always sow a seed of resources and materials of the Holy Ghost schools in their lives and then I hand them over. But before then I have to deal with the physical thing. However, there are some who still gay and I still relate with them.
QTN…Looking at the size of LGBTI community can they support you openly irrespective of the consequences?
ANS: She shrugged! Hmmmm, I don’t think so, because the gay and lesbian communities are not the only ones that I have supported in my life. There are women who are battered that I have picked from the streets. It is the same love and compassion and it is the same humanity in me that has stood for these women that is standing for them. That time when people were not sitting with people living with HIV/AIDS, I was talking about human rights of people living with AIDS. As far as I can remember, I presented the first paper on human rights of people living with HIV living in Nigeria and that happened in 1997 and it was an event hosted by SERAP in Lagos. Journalists were there and their language was very discriminatory and at a point we had stand up to say that we are HIV positive and that was when I knew the strength in activism when you align completely with the community that you are working with. Till now people still see me as HIV positive and it’s fine because I’m not saying that I’m not because if I work in any community, I become a member of that community. So, I wonder why is it that people don’t hold me to work on that groundbreaking work that I did for people affected by HIV. The way they do this other sexuality matters. So, when my parents were having issues I told them, I said it is the same injustice against which I’m protecting A that I’m protecting B.
QTN: If you become President in 2023, would mobilize for the repeal of Same-sex marriage Act?
ANS: I think that will be beyond my decision as an individual and I think my activism is not the same as politics. I believe that it will certainly provide a platform for human rights activists to have conversations that they have not been able to have and to be listened to on platforms that have not happened before. My administration will provide that but whether it has outlets for creation of repeal and some others is what we leave until then and because I’m not an independent candidate and because I’m contesting under a party that has manifestoes and it has its own obligation to the nation. However, it is my desire that justices and righteousness flow on the streets of Nigeria. And will occupy the real reasons that is keeping us as a nation because I don’t whether somebody having sex can impact on whether a cancer patient can have paidscan in Nigeria or not. It does not make me understand how same-sex relationship and understand why we don’t have state of the art education in the public sector and all that. All these monies that we have been borrowing and selling the country is it up to gay sex, the answer is no.
I believe that some people are playing gimmicks and putting something that we are passionate about so that we are busy fighting that. Why don’t we focus on the things that really matter to us as a country, instead of dissipating energy and resources on those things that don’t count. Look at the National Assembly, very quickly they have passed same sex marriage prohibition Act, we are saying pass the 35% Affirmative Action to which you have been a signatory since 1995, they have not done that.
Where is righteousness and justice here, I’m not seeing it and that is where my passion and energy is to push things and focus on things that matters to us as a nation, rather than people are having things to do with their privacy that has nothing to do with whether naira changes to dollar or whether we are having subsidies on our fuel or not. Look at the state of insecurity for goodness’ sake and so those are the kind of things that preoccupy my passion for this race.
QTN: While growing have you ever been discriminated upon or sexually harassed?
ANS: Even right now, people still harassed me sexually. I have to report a staff member of the Nigerian Fire Service recently because he came on Facebook. I opened a campaign recently because of my son who was born with Down-Syndrome, a health challenge so that people can come in and support and the political issue came again and so I have been accepting friends even though I check profile before I accept so that I don’t get hackers. So, this person looks like a normal person from Niger State, Minna and so I accepted him on Facebook. And suddenly he has started hitting on me and you know I told him I’m on business on Facebook and not in a love affair, waking up in the morning to be sending oh dear and love messages. He started sending me amorous messages etc etc and when he refuses to change, I blocked him and by the time I did this he already got my number and he moved to WHATSAPP and I became angry. I had to meet his boss in the Fire Service to complain that this is untoward. His organization dealt with him appropriately and he finally understood. Imaging other girls that are younger than I am and that are put under this kind of pressure and that brings me to remember the late Bamishe the BRT victim in Lagos, which actually broke my heart. We need to really sit up to curtail harassment and gender based violence in our societies and communities.