Adetola Onayemi (28)

Adetola Onayemi, LLB, LLM (Cambridge) is Assistant Chief Negotiator for Nigeria & Head, Trade Remedies at the Nigerian Office for Trade Negotiations (NOTN), with sole responsibility for “leading Nigeria’s trade negotiations” and which chaired the negotiating rounds that resulted in the single market for goods and services in Africa, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), with a population of 1.2 billion Africans, a projected GDP of US$ 3 trillion, and the largest trading bloc in the global economy since the WTO in 1995. Asides participating in the pivotal work of negotiating the African Continental Free Area Agreement, Adetola also participated in the Non-Tariff Barriers (NTB), Trade Remedies and Technical Barrier to Trade (TBT) select committees in the AfCFTA Negotiating Forum. He is Nigeria’s foremost international lawyer on international trade, investment, tech and the AfCFTA.

Adetola also designed the first-ever Trade Remedies Infrastructure for protecting the Nigerian economy from injurious and unfair trading practices from foreign countries and companies, with technical support from one of the biggest law firms in the world, King & Spalding LLP, at no cost to the Nigerian government. The Trade Remedies Infrastructure was approved by the Nigerian Economic Management Team in October 2018, and is projected to increase the competitiveness of domestic manufacturers by 50%. Within the NOTN, Adetola leads a 8-person team with responsibility for operationalising the Nigerian Trade Remedies Unit.

Prior to the NOTN, he served as Special Assistant on Industry, Trade and Investment in the Office of the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. At that time, he also doubled as a Reform Leader within the Enabling Business Environment Secretariat (EBES) of the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC), and led reforms across several of the World Bank indicators nationally (and particularly in Lagos and Kano). Thanks to this efforts, Nigeria moved up 24 ranks in the World Bank global 2018 Ease of Doing Business ranking.

Over the last 4 years, Adetola has been involved in setting up 3 major government interventions of the Nigerian government, namely, the Enabling Business Environment Secretariat (which leads Nigeria’s Ease of Doing Business efforts), the Nigerian Office for Trade Negotiations (which leads Nigeria’s trade negotiations), and the Nigerian Trade Remedies Infrastructure (which investigates allegations of unfair trading practices by foreign companies and countries). He is also the curator of the Abuja Global Shapers Hub, an initiative of the World Economic Forum.

Ibijoke Faborede (31)

Ibijoke Faborode is a transformational leader that currently serves as the Head, Agritech & Healthcare Advisory West Africa with UK Department for International Trade. She has 10 years’ experience in trade & investment advisory, international business development, stakeholder engagement, enterprise development, youth empowerment, gender advocacy and project management. A significant part of her work focuses on encouraging more uptake of Agriculture by the youths, working closely with UK agritech innovation centres and Nigerian stakeholders. In the past 2 years, she has worked with over 50 agritech start-ups across West Africa by connecting them to people and resources, as well as advising government at the federal and states level on job creation strategies through agricultural advancement in Nigeria.

Moses Onalapo (29)

Moses Onaolapo works with the Lagos State College of Health Technology, Yaba Lagos. He is the Asst. State Secretary for Lagos State Environmental Health Officers Association of Nigeria. He builds human capacity in the field of Environmental Health as well as running a public enlightenment program on radio to prolong life and sustain a healthy environment.

He lectures students and doubles as a radio presenter on Environmental health issues.

Moses has been consistently committed to promoting value reorientation and enlightenment on societal issues as an on-air presenter and lecturer at LASCOHET. With a weekly access to over 1000 students and listening audience.

Dr Achama Eluwa (31)

Achama Eluwa is a medical doctor who is passionate about improving the health of mothers and children in Nigeria. In the six years post training, she has gone from front-line clinical practice to health systems consulting and policy development. She currently works with the Health Strategy and Delivery Foundation to provide technical assistance to the Non-Communicable Diseases Division of the Federal Ministry of Health.

Prior to this, she ran a state-wide 18-month pilot for healthcare quality improvement in 20 public health facilities under the Nigeria Healthcare Quality Initiative [NHQI] which reduced maternal and neonatal mortality by 40% and 30% respectively. She also developed the model used to upscale the pilot as well. Her work has directly led to improved quality of care provided to over 30,000 women during childbirth in Northern Nigeria, a corresponding number of newborns, and most recently, the potential prevention of 50% of deaths from the Nigerian populace – as non-communicable diseases (NCDs) now claim more than half of the lives of Nigerians and about 56% of lives globally, resulting in the prioritization of NCDs in the SDGs and by the Federal Government of Nigeria. Some of her earlier work include a process to closely surveil maternal and neonatal deaths in Niger state and a child health and social justice scheme in Cross River state, while working for the Cross-River State government as a clinician and public health analyst during her mandatory national service year.

An innovative Quality Improvement Advisor, Achama was one of 10 Africans awarded the International Society for Quality in Healthcare [ISQua] Fellowship Scholarship in November 2018 for leading improvement efforts in service delivery, healthcare quality and patient safety; employing clinical/health systems research findings and expertise from successful pilot expansions. Only last week, she was exclusively invited to join a select group of 150 stakeholders, actors and influencers at the Stakeholders Summit – ‘Advancing quality maternal care in Nigeria: What are the missing links?’ as one of Nigeria’s key stakeholders in driving improvements in maternal care and indeed general healthcare service delivery, to contribute insights and expertise to conversations geared towards influencing policy, accelerating change and improving the maternal health sector in Nigeria.

Achama is fully licensed by the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria and spends her free time volunteering on medical mission projects to challenged communities, caring for children with autism, and facilitating knowledge sharing on a virtual maternal and new-born health education and support group of mothers across Nigeria.

Fehintola Ajogbasile and Judith Oguzie (27/32)

During the latter part of 2018, an unknown pathogen was infecting people in the city of Irrua, Edo State, about fifty (50) patient samples were sent to the African Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases (ACEGID) lab at Redeemer’s University where they co-led a team who within three days, analysed the samples,  and was able to implicate that the pathogen was yellow fever virus as the cause of the outbreak and quickly reported these findings to the NCDC who then declared a Yellow fever outbreak in Edo state, Nigeria with the help of young scientists at the latter part with Fehintola being the lead investigator.

Quick diagnosis and sharing of their results in real-time with the relevant health authorities facilitated the implementation of necessary and effective public health interventions. Treatment were provided for patients and a good number of patients survived. For the yellow fever outbreak, vaccines were quickly deployed to the affected local government areas in Edo state and people were vaccinated to avoid further spread. Both scientist co-lead this project. The outbreak was curtailed using an unbiased method.

Also, Judith and Tola were very instrumental with a team of experience scientist in quickly diagnosing patient samples sent from different states of the country and reporting the results/findings to the appropriate Federal Government authorities like the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), during the 2018 Lassa outbreak in Nigeria. These results helped the FG to declare the outbreak as Lassa and put appropriate measures in place to quickly stop the outbreak. The work of Fehintola and her colleagues also helped provide important insights into the outbreak.