Bukky Shonibare

Bukky is effectively using data to drive policy change and social transformation in Nigeria. By building partnerships and fostering a data-driven culture, she is accelerating progress towards gender equality in the country.

Bukky is actively championing social justice and human rights in Nigeria’s gender space by engaging government, civil society, media, and community leaders to address the dire conditions faced by women. She leverages data as the critical “missing link” to identify, assess, and communicate the realities and gaps in gender equality, ensuring that policies and programs are informed by up-to-date, relevant information. Her efforts are already making a tangible impact, laying the groundwork for a more gender-equal society in Nigeria.

Bukky has developed a robust data collection and analysis framework, which she presents through infographics, scorecards, and dashboards to capture attention, drive change, and track progress effectively. She founded a community of state-level data collectors, known as the iData team, to ensure the information is accurate and contextually relevant, and she is training other organizations to expand this effort.

By using data to raise awareness among duty-bearers at various levels, Bukky influences policy changes and budget allocations. Her data-driven, collaborative approach—where she educates politicians about the issues rather than blaming them—has successfully garnered the attention and support of policymakers at both the state and national levels. She is strategically orchestrating catalytic partnerships with influential bodies like the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) and the Nigerian Governors Wives Forum (NGWF), opening crucial doors for her to work with state-level policymakers. These partnerships are enabling her to shape government policy and direct budgetary allocations toward gender issues. Additionally, Bukky is fostering gender sensitivity within citizen organizations and society at large, ensuring that the changes she advocates for are understood and supported by a broader segment of the population, thereby increasing the likelihood of sustainable impact.

Bukky’s work has both direct and systemic impacts. Directly, she trains local community organizations in data collection, empowering them to advocate effectively. Systemically, the collected data drives policy changes and budget allocations, creating a more equitable environment for women and marginalized groups.

In Nigeria, the lack of detailed, localized data on human rights and gender inequality severely hinders efforts to address these issues, especially in rural and underrepresented regions. National data often mask significant regional disparities, making targeted interventions difficult. For example, while 30% of women nationwide report experiencing physical violence, this figure rises to 45% in the Northeast and drops to 20% in the Southwest. Similarly, maternal mortality rates are starkly different, with 1,549 deaths per 100,000 live births in the Northeast versus 165 in the Southwest. These disparities underscore the critical need for granular data to guide effective policies. The lack of such data not only perpetuates cycles of gender-based violence (GBV) and human rights abuses but also leads to the misallocation of resources, weak monitoring systems, and limited advocacy efforts.

Despite some government and civil society initiatives, significant gaps persist in funding, expertise, and coordination. The lack of timely, accessible, and reliable sub-national data leaves policymakers with inaccurate information, leading to ineffective programs and resource misallocation. Gender-focused government units often face resource constraints, resulting in inconsistent data collection and fragmented efforts. This fragmentation makes it difficult to create a comprehensive and unified dataset that can inform effective policies and programs.

Additionally, a gap in technical expertise hampers the ability to collect and analyze gender-sensitive data. Cultural norms and societal attitudes often downplay the importance of gender-specific data, leading to underreporting, especially in cases of gender-based violence (GBV). This underreporting distorts the data, making it difficult to grasp the true extent of these issues and undermining the development of data-driven interventions.

Bukky employs a comprehensive strategy through her non-profit, Invictus Africa, leveraging a human rights-based approach to design, collect, analyze, and disseminate gender-focused datasets across five domains: gender-based violence (GBV) prevention and response, women’s health, political representation, economic empowerment, and educational parity. By engaging local communities, government officials, and civil society organizations, she makes gender data accessible, equipping local actors with tools and training to gather accurate data, identify root causes of gender inequality, and design data-driven solutions.

Her strategy begins at the subnational level with State Research Consultants (SRCs) and iData Team—comprising 74 researchers and data collectors spread across Nigeria’s 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory—managed by a dedicated Data and Research Lead. Utilizing Invictus Africa’s KoboToolbox account, SRCs and iData team members collect standardized data, which are centrally cleaned, analyzed, and validated through internal quality checks, external stakeholder feedback, and expert reviews. The established partnerships with government officials and local organizations further enhance data credibility, robustness, and representativeness, providing contextualized insights into gender issues often overlooked by broader analyses. This collaborative network—including the State Research Consultants (SRCs), iData team, and internal/external validators—enables targeted advocacy and effective interventions.

Recognizing governments’ pivotal role, Bukky strategically influences policymakers at state and federal levels using performance Report Cards, prepared to highlight gaps and necessary interventions. Her collaboration with the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) and the Nigerian Governors Spouses’ Forum (NGSF) provides opportunity to engage and secure commitments from state-level leaders to adopt policies, make data-driven decisions, and allocate resources to effectively address GBV. Supported by the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA), Bukky spearheaded critical initiatives such as developing the Orange Pages (a national directory of GBV responders and service providers) and the PAS Model (focused on holistic prevention, accountability, and support for GBV survivors). She is also at the forefront of advocating for more Sexual Assault Referral Centres (SARCs) in states across Nigeria, such that are proportionate to the state population. As of March 2025, there are 50 SARCs across 24 states and the FCT in Nigeria.

Bukky and her team utilize infographics to present clear, visually appealing, and easy-to-understand data and insights on human rights and gender justice. Bukky conceptualized the annual Womanity Index, to evaluate state governments’ performance in preventing and responding to gender-based violence, based on indicators spread across five indices: laws and policies, access to legal justice, support services, information and awareness, and budget and spending. This index has spurred significant policy actions by complementing existing advocacies leading to impact such as Katsina State’s passage of the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) (VAPP) law and establishing a SARC following its low ranking in an edition of the Womanity Index. Additionally, Bukky’s nonprofit, Invictus Africa, organizes the Womanity Index Peer Learning Sessions, facilitating inter-state exchanges of lessons and best practices.

At the civil society level, Bukky’s dual approach highlights programmatic and funding gaps. With support from international organizations such as OSIWA, Ford Foundation, TrustAfrica, Malala Fund, and Gates Foundation, Bukky leads her team to produce and analyze data that highlights inequality gaps, which informs policies and programs. Concurrently, she strengthens organizational capacities to collect and utilize data, enhancing their ability to develop evidence-based programs, advocate effectively, and hold governments accountable.

To amplify her advocacy, Bukky strategically leverages media technology through the production of explainer videos and podcasts such as Data Café. She also harnesses online technology, through its Dataly platform, to serve as a centralized data hub, making gender data accessible. To make this more easily available, Bukky plans to enhance data accessibility by transforming its Dataly platform into a generative AI tool, functioning similarly to generative pre-trained transform (GPT) models, to instantly provide users with accurate and timely gender data. Additionally, she is developing an AI tool called KeepIt to support survivors of sexual violence by enabling them to safely document their experiences, linking them to relevant legal provisions and judicial precedents, and securely preserving their testimonies and evidence for future use in seeking justice. Bukky also ensures community engagement that involves engaging traditional leaders, community gatekeepers, and religious leaders, while also deploying innovative materials such as comic books and the #ChessAgainstSGBV curriculum used in some school clubs to effectively sensitize young people on sexual violence prevention. Bukky plans to scale her impact further by establishing an Institute aimed to build capacity of nonprofit leaders, their workforce, and other development actors in data-driven approaches, principles, and strategies with a view to producing more data-conscious changemakers.

Growing up as the second child in a family of five, Bukky experienced a tumultuous childhood characterized by domestic violence, poverty, and educational setbacks. The abuse she saw within her household and the sexual violence she faced during her teenage years resulted in fear and instability. After her mother—a then clerical officer in the Nigeria Air Force—left her abusive marriage, they struggled financially, often resorting to begging to survive.

Bukky’s personal experiences with gender-based violence, economic hardship, and educational disruptions deeply shaped her commitment to addressing gender inequality. During her secondary school years, she fiercely defended her peers against bullying, eventually joining the Man-O-War—a predominantly male paramilitary leadership training club reserved mainly for tough boys. Yet, leveraging her proficiency in mathematics, Bukky conducted tutorials for her peers and students preparing for their final secondary school examinations—a practice she continued when she was studying for a Law degree.

The decision to establish Invictus Africa was catalyzed by a profound realization during Bukky’s involvement in the #BringBackOurGirls campaign—a movement that advocated for the rescue of 276 schoolgirls abducted in Chibok, northeastern Nigeria, by the Boko Haram terrorist group. Initially, government officials denied the abduction, and even after acknowledging it three weeks later, they significantly downplayed the figures. The data collection and evidence-gathering process, which clarified the number and details of the abducted girls, opened Bukky’s eyes to the transformative power of data. The figure "276" not only became a rallying call but also revealed to Nigerians and the world the true scale of the insurgency and the insurgents’ capabilities. The campaign further exposed broader, yet often unnoticed, issues faced by women and girls in conflict-ridden areas due to a lack of accurate and representative data. Recognizing the need for critical rights-based and gender data, Bukky now leverages her expertise to address gender inequality, promote human rights, and advance gender justice for women and girls using frequently overlooked data from state and local communities.