Aderonke Ige, a lawyer, human rights activist, advocate for organically African development, is social justice crusader, environmental justice advocate and founder of Help Initiative for Social Justice and Humanitarian Development (HI), whose work spans the intersections of social justice, environmental justice and the intersections of women’s rights in these development agendas. She speaks with ADEOLA OJO on beliefs that spurred her advocacy, focus on grassroots, experience in communities and challenges among other issues.
What belief spurred you into advocacy works?
I believe that issues are gendered, just as realities are different. I am the founder and team lead of Help Initiative for Social Justice and Humanitarian Development (HI), a nonprofit committed to fostering a society driven by equitable justice and inclusive governance, where citizens are treated with dignity and respect. We organise to achieve this by working with communities of young people, shifting mindsets, mobilising grassroots and engaging the system through policy advocacy, and citizens-led actions. Our core action areas cover human rights and environmental justice. You will often find us campaigning for human rights to water, climate justice, child development, and gender justice. We support communities to effectively engage the system towards accountability, inclusive governance, and overall development.
Why are you focused on the grassroots?
Oh! For us, there was no debate about that. The grassroots are quite germane in the scheme of things! Capitalism-induced classism has turned society on its head, and that is rather unfortunate. The make-up of society itself suggests that the small units make up the whole. So, it ridicules reason that each time development agendas are framed, they are skewed against the grassroots communities. It doesn’t make any sense. What a top-bottom approach to governance and development does to us is that it gives us a maladaptive and maladjusted society whose affairs are tilted against the vulnerable. This is part of our deepest motivation: to see that no person or community is left behind because of class, status, or lack of proximity to political and economic power. It’s our mission to continue to amplify the voices of the grassroots and build power within communities that are not centred and therefore often excluded in development agendas. That’s the philosophy of Ubuntu: “I am because we are” and no one should be left behind. For us at Help Initiative, the goal is to see to that.
What has been your experience in communities you have worked in?
I have had several experiences, all diverse and very different from one place to another. First of all, I have worked with communities within and outside of Nigeria, being a big believer in the harmony of cross-learning and transnational power-building, especially as Africans. One outstanding observation for me is the warmth and grounding that exist within grassroots. It is one of the purest experiences of humanity I have had both in the course of my work and life generally. From food to expressions, hospitality, and discipline, there is an organic approach to dealing with life. This is one of the primary reasons that I advocate against the blind and blanket approach to “development.” I believe that before policymakers and holders of political ecosystems begin to parade the idea of development and “empowerment”, the true measure should be hinged on questions around the peculiarities and uniqueness of a people, such as their lived experiences, their aspirations, their preferred mode of existence and interaction etc. This approach is more useful than a cut-and-paste approach to development wherein there are importations of ideals that demean the essence of grassroots.
Another key observation for me is just how much intellectual wealth and experiential knowledge dwell within the grassroots. As a keen observer of life, I have been consistently awed by how much there is to learn after each learning. Every time we go out to the grassroots, I remind my team that we are not essentially there to educate or teach. Rather, the goal is to learn as much as we share. Besides, you cannot fully build trust until you have shown enough interest in learning about the one with whom trust is to be built. It is a principle of life, regardless of space.
In the grassroots, I feel at home. I almost always want to spread a mat and have a sound sleep, the sort that has now become a luxury in the artificially modernised terrain where most now run to. This is one of the reasons that we keep pushing against the destruction of lives and livelihoods in the communities at the frontline of environmental injustices, the chief of which is extractivism. These thoughtless and greedy acts of culprit corporations and the governments that back them are a direct affront to the rights of the people and a threat to the continued existence of these grassroots communities. It is unacceptable.
Do women face peculiar challenges in such communities?
Absolutely! Oftentimes, challenges are gendered. Men and women experience the world differently. To deconstruct this, we have to narrow our lens on social reproduction and how the frameworks automatically become burdensome to women in view of cultural expectations and assumptions of gender roles. From unpaid and unrecognised care work to socialised afflictions that have been normalised, it is challenging for women in a different way than men. I’ll take two quick examples: Let’s interrogate the issue of lack of access to water for a moment. Women are wildly socialised to perform every domestic task that requires water to the point where water is even s3xualised in some contexts.
Now, here is where it gets even more rigorous; the woman is expected to fetch water for the home, make the meals using water, bathe the children, do laundry, and amidst all of these, manage to look “good enough” to fit into the shallow and disturbing box of presentability or “pretty” which the deeply patriarchal society has built for her. Let’s not forget that this woman also has menstrual hygiene and her maternal health to take care of. The question, therefore, is, how are these expectations even sensible? In reality, they’re, at best, burdensome and demoralising.
If you see what women go through in many grassroots communities to get water, you will be moved to tears. The Help Initiative team was recently in Ona-ara local government of Oyo state and we visited Badeku, amongst other communities. The lamentations were the same, and we experienced the realities upfront. Every single drop of water is like gold! Yet, the women are expected to manage to somehow make magic happen. Logic tells us that if you are going to place such cumbersome responsibilities on a person, the least you can do is provide the facility and enabling environment to thrive. So, society has to be designed better, and that’s why policies have to not only be considerate but also feminist. This means that for every policy that we put out; the deep considerations of equitability have to be visibly included.
Another disturbing phenomenon is the objectification of the woman as an entity in the sense that predatory behaviours of men towards women, both overt and covert, have been aggravatingly condoned and institutionalised to the point of normalisation. This plays out even more crudely at the grassroots, and the women are expected to shut up about it. An attempt to express objections is considered insubordination, and such a woman is tagged difficult- that “difficulty” comes at a cost. Those are some of the issues.
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