Dr. Aisha Muhammed-Oyebode

Aisha Muhammed-Oyebode is a development specialist, international NGO expert and human rights activist specializing in women and girls’ initiatives. Aisha founded and serves as CEO of the Murtala Muhammed Foundation (MMF), a non-governmental organization that promotes good governance and is dedicated to engendering socio-economic change on the African continent.

On the Foundation’s platform are stakeholder driven interventions and advocacy activities that have impacted education and capacity building, with a focus on the girl child, women empowerment, disaster risk reduction and management. The MMF is one of the organizations driving the reconstruction of the northeast of Nigeria devastated by the Boko Haram insurgency and is in the fore of advising the Government on the policy of humanitarian response. Muhammed-Oyebode is a co-founder of the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) activist group formed in the aftermath of the abduction of over 200 girls from their school premises in the Chibok village of Borno State, Nigeria.

She is a member of the Northern Nigeria Governor’s Committee on Boko Haram. Aisha and a member of the Women’s Leadership Board of the Harvard Kennedy School - Women and Public Policy Program. She is an Advisor and Country Expert to the University of Pennsylvania Law Global Women’s Leadership Project and an advisor to the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), as a Member of its Senior Working Group on Northern Nigeria. Muhammed-Oyebode has an LLM in Public International Law from King’s College, University of London, and an MBA in Finance from Imperial College, University of London. She is a member of both the Nigerian Bar Association and Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. She is currently a Ph.D. researcher in Law with a focus on gender in conflict at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London.