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2013 Tutu Fellow Tomiwa Aladekomo has been been appointed as the Acting National Chair of the Youth Party, a registered political party in Nigeria, in preparation for the 2023 general elections. This appointment was announced by Party Chairman Seun Sule and the Board of Trustees in a statement in late October 2020. Tomiwa's appointment is expected to be ratified at the party’s convention in March 2021.

The Youth Party recently regained the right to compete in all elections moving forward till 2023, following a Federal High Court ruling.

The following is the full text of an open letter from Nigerian Tutu Fellows to President Muhammadu Buhari on the violent treatment by Nigerian security forces of #EndSARS protestors.

Open Letter to the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria

October 21, 2020

President Buhari,

You appealed to Nigerians to give you a mandate in 2003, 2007 and 2011.

2019 Tutu Fellow Samson Itodo has been appointed by the Nigerian government as a member of the national steering committee for the new Nigerian development plan, Agenda 2050. Itodo is the Executive Director of Yiaga Africa, a community of change-makers focused on building sustainable democracies in Africa anchored on the principles of inclusion, justice, accountability and constitutionalism.

He convened the Not Too Young To Run movement that led the successful advocacy for the reduction of age limits for running for public office in the Nigerian constitution. The campaign was adopted by the United Nations, African Union and ECOWAS as a global campaign.

2007 Tutu Fellow Hassan Musa Usman has been appointed as an Independent Non-Executive Director of Access Bank Plc, following the approval of the Central Bank of Nigeria.

Access Bank is a Nigerian multinational commercial bank, owned by Access Bank Group. Hassan brings his experience as the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Aso Savings and Loans Plc to his board position, as well as other previous experience in this space.

2019 Tutu Fellow Akintunde Oyebode has been appointed as the Commissioner for Finance and Economic Development for Etiki State in Nigeria. He was sworn in by the State Governor, Kayode Fayemi, following a cabinet reshuffle. Akin has played several senior roles in Ekiti state government, with this now being his most senior role.

Akin was previously the Special Adviser on Investment, Trade and Innovation at Ekiti State government, where he was responsible for leading the state government’s efforts to make Ekiti an attractive destination for investors and innovation-driven enterprises. An additional element to that portfolio had been creating jobs for young people.

Two Tutu Fellows, Lai Yahaya and Moji Rhodes, have been appointed as Special Advisors to Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari.  Lai is a 2009 Fellow and Moji a 2014 Fellow.

Lai was appointed as a Senior Special Advisor to the President handling Strategy and Planning, while Moji was appointed as a Special Advisor handling Social Development and Humanitarian Affairs. Their appointments were announced in August 2020.

2013 Tutu Fellow Ifeoma Malo has been awarded the Power Industry Leader of the Year at the prestigious Nigerian African Power, Energy and Water Industry Awards. 

Ify is the Nigerian Campaign Director for Power for All, a global decentralized renewable campaign organization. She is also the founder and CEO of Clean Tech Hub and the Energy Innovation Center in Abuja. She was the immediate past Senior Policy Adviser on Energy Policies, Regulations and Partnerships to the Minister of Power in Nigeria and advised on the policy direction for large-scale grid-connected and off-grid power.

2007 Tutu Fellow Mezuo Nwuneli's Sahel Capital team has won the Impact Investment Award given by the Impact Investors Foundation at the Blending Finance for Social Investment Conference in Nigeria. The foundation says that the award honors and recognises a leading social enterprise and an investor within the Nigerian impact investing space who have made significant impact by providing solutions through their innovations, products, services or investments.

The award recognises entities who are able to set high standards through their business activities and investment decisions which further underscores the possibility of “doing good while doing well.”

Nigeria's Business Day has written a lengthy profile on the groundbreaking work that 2007 Tutu Fellow Mezuo Nwuneli has done in financing and agribusiness.  It tracks how his company, Sahel Capital, started in agribusiness by backing a startup after discovering that a local noodle company was importing 50 tons of chili pepper a month. 

Mezuo and his wife, who ran the company, believed that chili could be sourced in Nigeria and set out to facilitate import substitution. This was a change from their initial business plan, which was to produce jams, spreads, spices, and seasonings.

The Governor of Kaduna State in Nigeria, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, has appointed 2011 Tutu Fellow Muhammad Sani Dattijo as his new Chief of Staff. Previously, he served as the Commissioner of Planning and Budget and was also the Director of Strategy for the Governor’s 2019 re-election campaign. In 2015, he joined the Kaduna State Excecutive Council as its youngest member. 

As budget czar, he was acknowledged as a champion of reform and was instrumental in moving Kaduna state to commence the implementation of  the Open Governance Partnership and presenting and delivering budgets ahead of time to the state legislature.

By day, 2015 Tutu Fellow Wiebe Boer is an impact investor who works with partners to increase access to commercial energy products and services.  By night - or in his spare time - he is a Nigerian football historian. 

Dr Wiebe Boer's latest work on Nigerian football, a book titled The History of Football In Nigeria - A story of Heroes and Epics, is to launch in Lagos on 10 June 2018.  It's been favorably reviewed by no less than Aliko Dangote, the President and CEO of the Dangote Group. 

Bella Naija, a leading online site, has featured 2015 Tutu Fellow Deji Adewunmi and his two co-founders for their employment portal, called Jobberman.  The company has been listed at number eight by Forbes in tech start-ups in Africa.   Jobberman is Nigeria's largest job website and quite possibly the largest site of its kind in West Africa.  Deji, along with Opeyemi Awoyemi and Olalekan Olude, met at university as undergraduates and became friends, going on to launch the business together.  The site has more than two million job applicants and carries jobs from more than 40 thousand employers. 

Students who attended the Visiola Foundation's 2016 STEM Summer Camp for teenage girls impressed U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and American ambassadors when they visited Abuja, Nigeria. One of the projects the girls had was to make a robotic forklift (see video below). The Visiola Foundation was founded by 2014 Tutu Fellow Lade Araba.  It educates high-potential girls and young women in the STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering & Math) fields to build a pipeline of leaders and innovators who will help to transform African countries.

BBC News is carrying a series of letters from African journalists and recently carried a piece by novelist and writer Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani on Boko Haram's Islamist insurgency. Nwaubani, an AFLI Leadership for Change Fellow, travelled to the Nigerian town of  Michika and found it split on grounds of ethnic and religious lines.

The following essay was submitted by Tutu Fellow Uzodinma Iweala as a thought piece for the 2015 Tutu Leadership Programme and garnered a second place.  In it, he asks what it is to be a Nigerian and what are the common threads, the common narratives - myths, if you wish - that all Nigerians need  to create and sustain a common nationality.