Hajia Joda is a feminist and a human rights activist based in Yola, Adamawa State in north-eastern Nigeria. She is the founder of the Centre for Women and Adolescent Empowerment, an organization that works with the community to empower women and adolescents to take responsibility for their own rights, and know their rights and responsibilities both as citizens and as women and men. Her work has included stopping child marriages, securing divorce for women in abusive or unhappy marriages, and getting legal redress for girls who have been raped.
Hajia Joda also serves as a Board member of the Isa Wali Empowerment Initiative, a non-governmental and nonprofit organization established with the aim of transforming the lives of the most vulnerable groups (women and children), through the provision of access to improved healthcare, education, economic empowerment programmes channeled at boosting their confidence and self-esteem, and enhancing capacity building in order to motivate them towards a life of economic self-reliance and sufficiency.
Five years later, accountability for this gross crime against Nigeria’s democracy remains elusive. No one has been held responsible for the killings. Instead, Nigeria’s civic space continues to shrink, and the same patterns of state overreach persist.
Eleven years later, at least 91 of these 276 girls remain unaccounted for. Many were forcefully married to their captors, some died, and the insecurity that had marked Northeast Nigeria has metastasized and spread across the North-West and North-Central of the country.
Global Rights expresses deep sorrow over the recent petrol tanker explosion in Niger State that claimed at least 70 lives, and left countless families in mourning. This devastating incident underscores the urgent need for comprehensive measures to prevent such recurring tragedies.