Oby Ezekwesili Shortlisted For Nobel Peace Prize
Obiageli Ezekwesili, Co-Founder, Bring Back Our Girls on 'Gone Girls' at The 2015 Women In The World Summit, Lincoln Center, New York City; 4/23/2015
Nigeria’s co-convener of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign and ex-minister of education, Oby Ezekwesili has been shortlisted for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize.
The Presidential candidate of the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN), firmly believes in the fact that every citizen matters, and has remained steadfast in the fight against corruptions in several ways.
Oby Ezekwesili who has also served as the Vice President of the World Bank and the Extractive Industry Transparency International (EITI) will be competing alongside other four laureates (Dr. Denis Mukwege, Nadia Murad & Tarana Burke for the World Food Programme), SOS Méditerranée, Doctors Without Borders & International Rescue Committee and Reporters Without Borders.
Ezekwesili is a master’s degree holder in International Law and Diplomacy from the University of Lagos and holds a Masters degree in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. She has expressed pure discontent over Leah Sharibu’s captivity and has pleaded passionately for the Buhari led administration to free her from her captors, like the other Dapchi school girls.
Other laudable achievements by Oby Ezekwesili include her appointment as the first head of the Budget Monitoring and Price Intelligence Unit (popularly known as Due Process Unit). During the duration of her appointment, she was credited with changing and cleansing the method of public procurement or contracting at the Federal level in Nigeria.
In June 2005, she was appointed the Minister of Solid Minerals (Mines and Steel) and again, she kicked off a reform that earned Nigeria global recognition as a mining investment destination.
The co-founder of Transparency International (TI) has previously been named in BBC’s 100 Women, Time 100 Most Influential People, New York Times 25 Women of Impact for 2015, Albert Einstein’s Foundation’s Genius:100 Visions of the Future, to mention but a few.
In 2014, she became a co-convener of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign; the campaign addressed the kidnap of the 300 Chibok girls and as a result, earned a great deal of global recognition.
Mainly as a result of her achievements and her “fight against corruption”, she has been nominated as a recipient of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize.
Her nomination is indeed laudable, as hopes are heightened that she goes on to win the prize, to join the Seventeen other women from around the world that have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize so far.