My Vision for BringBackOurGirls Movement, Fight against  Boko Haram & Police Brutality in Nigeria-AISHA YESUFU, prominent Kano State born Nigerian activist, ENDSARS Movement member

…earlier directed attention to the abduction of over 200 girls from a secondary school in Chibok

*Graduate of Microbiology from Bayero University Kano overcome the challenge of a girl gender in a heavily patriarchal environment, joined women protesters that marched on the Nigerian National Assembly, Abuja, complex

*Chosen among BBC’s 100 Women in 2020, listed in Top Most Influential Africans in New African magazine in the year 2020

*”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 to this world, and I need to fix the world I put them in”-YESUFU

*BY AMINA IBRAHIM/CIVIL RIGHTS Correspondent, Abuja

SHE’S AMONG the few Nigerian women daily risking their lives to defend other vulnerable, oppressed women in Africa’s most populous black nation. AISHA SOMTOCHUKWU YESUFU, a leading Nigerian activist, a champion of change for the girls and women has not looked back in ensuring freedom for the womenfolk in Nigeria. She co-founded BingBackOurGirls with Oby Ezekwesili. She has been in the forefront of the civil rights struggle with other notable women in Nigeria. Not many were shocked when she was chosen among BBC’s 100 Women in 2020, listed in Top Most Influential Africans in New African magazine in the year 2020.

Yesufu #BringBackOurGirls movement brought attention to the abduction of over 200 girls from a secondary school in Chibok, Nigeria on 14 April 2014, after the students were kidnapped by the terrorist group Boko Haram. She has been prominently involved in the EndSARS movement against police brutality in Nigeria.

Though born, raised in Kano State, she is believed to have a heritage to Agbede in Edo State. Yesufu experienced the difficulties of being a girl in a heavily patriarchal environment. She reportedly said by the time she was 11 years old, she did not have any female friends because they all had either been married or died in childbirth, and that by the time she got married at 24, most of her friends were nearly grandmothers. She said her passion for books helped her during childhood, and reading made her realise: “there was a world beyond the ghetto that I was growing up in … and I wanted that life”.

She applied to the Nigerian Defence Academy in 1991,but was rejected because she was a woman. She was initially admitted to Usman Danfodiyo University a year later.After the school closed down, she enrolled at Ahmadu Bello University to study Medicine. Yesufu left Ahmadu Bello University after the school was also closed, following the killing of a professor in 1994. She completed her education at Bayero University Kano, from which she graduated with a degree in Microbiology.

After the terrorist group Boko Haram abducted 276 schoolgirls in 2014, Yesufu and Ezekwesili formed the #BringBackOurGirls movement to push for their rescue. Yesufu was among the women protesters who marched on the Nigerian National Assembly, in the nation’s capital, Abuja, on 30 April 2014.

Yesufu has been a prominent member of the EndSARS movement, which began in 2017 and draws attention to police brutality in Nigeria. The movement draws its name from a controversial police unit in the Nigeria Police Force called the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, SARS.A photograph of her wearing a hijab at an End SARS protest became an iconic symbol of the movement. Yesufu has 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 to this world, and I need to fix the world I put them in.”

Yesufu was among BBC’s 100 Women in 2020, listed in Top Most Influential Africans in New African magazine in the year 2020.

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