She Writes Woman (SWW) Mental Health Initiative

If selected as a winner, the Elevate Prize funding and support will advance my work in equipping Nigerians with mental health conditions to advocate, elevate and champion their rights through a legislative change of the abusive 1958 mental health law in Nigeria and all its 36 states.

For over 63 years, Nigeria's mental health legislation has meant that people with mental health conditions can be chained, shackled and subjected to inhuman conditions at the discretion of the judiciary, mental health, traditional and religious practitioners. "The Lunacy Act" is long outdated and impedes the fundamental human rights of about 40% of Nigerians.

This Prize will accelerate work that started in 2018; where my organisation is finally raising, elevating and empowering people with lived experience to advocate for their rights and rewrite this abusive law nationally and for adoption across Nigeria's 36 states.

Through digital learning, we will train these self-advocates to use Nigeria's existing international commitments like the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD) and its underlying mantra of "Nothing About Us Without Us" to carry out strategic advocacy across stakeholder groups like government agencies, media and press, civil society, human rights defenders and legislators.

I nearly took my life, twice.

If 'caught', I would have been jailed. It is a criminal offence in Nigeria.

Diagnosed with bipolar and posttraumatic stress disorder with mild psychosis, I started a journey to be seen and heard without shame and judgement. I decided to speak my truth in the face of overwhelming stigma and build a movement of people like me to do the same.

I know what it means to have my rights stripped from me, to be someone that society looks at as "less than", a project to be taken upon and an issue to be fixed or solved. 

My vision and purpose are to empower people with mental health conditions to tell their own stories, co-create their solutions and advocate for their own rights. This is what my organisation, She Writes Woman, is about. We are centring people with lived experience at the core of fixing the mental health system in Nigeria.

The starting point? The law.

If the system doesn't recognise us as full and equal human beings, we are unlikely to get the welfare, social support, healthcare and full liberty we are entitled to.

This is personal and it's my life's work.

According to the Federal Ministry of Health in Nigeria, about 40 to 60 million Nigerians live with a mental health condition. That's a third of the population of the most populous black nation in the world. 

From being the poverty capital of the world to contributing the most to the out-of-school children index globally, Nigeria's socio-political and economic issues create a mentally unhealthy environment for its growing population.

In addition, there are barely 250 psychiatrists in Nigeria (1 psychiatrist to about 1.1 million Nigerians) and non-existent mental healthcare at primary healthcare.

With widely held misinformed narratives and stigma, these gaps are being filled by abusive and unregulated traditional, religious and even state-owned facilities with the help of an outdated mental health law that fosters inhuman practices.

At She Writes Woman, we are solving this issue right at the root of it - changing the legislation. Our women-led movement gives mental health a voice in Nigeria by empowering people with mental health conditions to tell their stories, co-create their solutions and advocate for their rights.

Through strategic advocacy - a combination of training experts by experience, leveraging media and press for awareness, and intersectional partnerships - we're championing rights-respecting legislation.

Historically, persons with mental health conditions are seen as projects to be taken on and issues to be fixed and solved. Our voices are silenced and decisions are made for us.

Then came what I consider the most revolutionary UN convention - the UN CRPD ensuring that whenever decisions are being made about a group of people, they must champion it, co-create it and be robustly consulted at every step of the way. "Nothing About Us Without Us" - that's our mantra.

Never before us in Nigeria's history have people with mental health conditions fought and gained seats at the table of legislative decisions that affect us. That's what makes this innovative. We are using the most powerful weapon - our lived experience - to advocate for our rights. 

We're disrupting what it is to publicly identify as people with mental health conditions and psychosocial disabilities. Our most recent win was making history as the first person with a mental health condition to testify in this capacity before the National Assembly in the event of the public hearing of an abusive mental health bill. We stopped the bill (affecting 40 - 60 million Nigerians) from passing into law.

She Writes Woman is creating an impact by using the human rights approach to making systemic changes that are at the root of Nigeria's mental healthcare dysfunction. We are doing this by holding the government accountable to international obligations it has ratified such as the UN CRPD. More importantly, we as people with lived experience are reclaiming our space at the decision-making table.

These are the overarching steps to our impact -

1. Undergo training on using international and regional conventions and commitments that Nigeria is a states party to as strategic advocacy tools to influence legislation
2. Identify and document abusive laws and practices that violate, abuse and disenfranchise people with mental health conditions
3. Engage press and media on our findings, violations and research to include public awareness and social consciousness
4. Train (virtually) people with lived experience across Nigeria on (1) above to democratise legislative change across Nigeria
5. Leverage influential public figures, CSOs, OPDs, agencies/ministries, religious and traditional leaders in intersectional partnerships
6. Engage in lobbying meetings, capacity building and legislative submission to influence and drive change in legislation and practice

Our method works because it centres and is championed by the community it affects while fostering evidence-based research and intersectional partnerships.