LEAP Africa honours 20 ‘innovative’ Nigerians

Leadership Effectiveness Accountability Professionalism (LEAP) Africa, a non-profit organisation, has honoured 20 young Nigerians for their outstanding contributions to the society.

At an event tagged: ‘Social Innovators Awards 2015’, which held in Abuja on Thursday, the awardees were encouraged to keep making meaningful impact in their localities.

Speaking with TheCable, Maria Eitel, chairman of Girl Effect, a non-governmental organisation with focus on empowering girls, described the 20 LEAP awardees as possessing the “X-factor”.

She added that the entrepreneurial skills demonstrated by the awardees, who are also LEAP fellows, were capable of transforming Nigerian society.

Also speaking, one of the fellows, Bashiru Adamu, whose work centres on rehabilitating convicts in Nigerian prisons, called on the government to work towards making the prisons a centre of positive transformation and not a den of punishment.

He said he had been able to rehabilitate some inmates at Otukpo prison in Benue state with no government support.

Doyinsola Ogunye, another awardee, who has been working to encourage children to be physically and mentally involved in the fight against environmental degradation in the country, also said she had been running her organisation, (KidsCleanClub) all by herself for six years.

She said instead of buying Christmas trees; she encourages children to tell their parents to plant trees.

Ogunye is focused on taking her environmental advocacy to all corners of Nigeria.

The LEAP Africa Annual Nigerian Youth Leadership Awards (ANYLA) was initiated in 2004 to celebrate outstanding youth across the country.

Many LEAP awardees such as Toyosi Akerele (Rise Networks) and Gbenga Sesan (Paradigm Initiative Nigeria) have gone ahead to establish full-fledged social enterprises.

In 2013, with the support of the International Youth Foundation, the Social Innovators Award was redesigned to include an annual fellowship for the identified social entrepreneurs who have started on their journey to making a change in their communities across Nigeria.

Since then, LEAP has launched two sets of social innovators including Michael Iyanro, whose organisation (Rainbow Gate Foundation) was recognised by the Google Rise Awards.

In addition, out of the four Nigerians recently honored by Queen Elizabeth II (Queens Young Leaders), two of them are LEAP fellows (Oladipupo Ajiroba – 2011 and Ogholi Kelvin – 2014).