Osai Ojigho, Director of Policy, Public Affairs and Campaigns at Christian Aid, has marked her first anniversary at the organisation with a LinkedIn post on 21 March 2024. Reflecting on her first year, Ojigho highlighted two areas of significant professional growth – climate justice and UK politics and policy.
Ojigho notes that when she first took on the role at Christian Aid, climate justice was a new area she had not dealt with substantially in the past. However, she quickly learned of its importance to the organisation’s mission and programming worldwide.
“I took on the role of Christian Aid director of policy, public affairs, and campaigns (PPC) without much knowledge about the organisation,” the immediate past Country Director of Amnesty International in Nigeria wrote. “The opportunity to be a thought leader on key global issues attracted me to the role. In my years of development sector engagement, I had no dealings with the organisation. This was, therefore, a leap of faith to largely unknown territory.”
Ojigho credits leaning on her knowledgeable colleagues to get up to speed on positioning, advocacy strategies, and coalition work. Representing Christian Aid’s stance in forums with policymakers and media allowed her to deepen her expertise over the past 12 months.
Osai Ojigho, a lawyer called to the Nigerian Bar in 2000, reported that the Christian Aid role strengthened her understanding of UK politics and parliamentary processes.
“From joining the CEO Patrick Watt at a May 2023 Parliamentary event during Christian Aid Week (CAW), where I engaged with parliamentarians on loss and damage fund to help countries battling with climate change, to attending and speaking on panels at the Labour and Conservative Party Conferences in October, and meeting with faith leaders at a House of Lords event discussing peace for South Sudan, it has been an experience of learning, unlearning and application,” Osai said.
She now feels more equipped to strategically engage stakeholders and leverage Christian Aid’s influential position. The Christian Aid role builds on her experiences engaging in campaigns for social justice in Nigeria, including the Bring Back Our Girls and End SARS protests. She looks forward to continuing this journey of learning and amplifying Christian Aid’s impactful work in the year ahead.
The organisation’s web page on Osai says, “She leads a diverse department located in Latin America, Africa, Asia, Europe, and the UK, working on issues of governance and rights, economic, environmental, gender and social justice.” The site goes further to describe her work: “Osai is researching international treaties as a tool for social transformation and is interested in impactful and inclusive rights-led development practice. She is a member of RINGO – Re-Imagining the INGO project – an initiative that seeks to transform global civil society to respond to today’s challenges.”
The latter has been of concern of late, considering the closing of civic spaces, the rise of populism, and digital technologies that spread disinformation, issues that Osai experienced first-hand at Amnesty in Nigeria. The challenges formed the core of an April 2018 article by the Head of Civil Society Communities at the World Economic Forum, Silvia Magnoni, who observed that populist movements and leaders in many countries criticise established NGOs and view them with suspicion, and that civil society needs to adapt to these challenges through new forms of organising, using technology to their advantage, and forging new partnerships.
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