Hope Behind Bars Africa Appoints Additional Board Members to Improve Efficiency

Hope Behind Bars Africa is pleased to formally announce the expansion of its board with two new members who will bring diverse expertise and insight to its work.

Over the years, we have worked diligently to ensure that our board and leadership represent a variety of experts from the fields of International Development, Law, as well as advocacy groups; and our new board additions are no exception. The new Board members resumed their tenure in October 2022 and would serve for a period of 3 years.

Meet our new board members:

Mr. Stanley Ibe?is the senior partner at Goodshare & Maxwells, a consulting firm with interests in law and rights, the non-profit sector and international development. He is also a commonwealth scholar at the University of Oxford.

Prior to joining Goodshare & Maxwells, Stanley was legal officer for Africa at the Open Society Justice Initiative. In that role, he had primary responsibility for the organization’s criminal justice reform work in Africa. Amongst other accomplishments, he co-led a successful continent-wide advocacy campaign culminating in the adoption by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights of?guidelines on conditions of arrest, police custody and pretrial detention. He also served as counsel on record in the path-breaking African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights advisory opinion on the decriminalization of petty offences; and led the effort to institutionalize and transition the?Police Duty Solicitors Scheme?from a state-led early access criminal justice project to a bar-led project operational in about a dozen branches of the Nigerian Bar Association.

Stanley earned a master of business administration from University of Essex and a master of laws from Maastricht University. He has held a number of highly regarded fellowships, including the Draper Hills Summer fellowship of Stanford University’s Centre on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and the Reagan-Fascell Democracy fellowship of the National Endowment for Democracy, Washington DC.

Among other affiliations, Stanley is a life member of Pan African Lawyers Union (PALU) and member of the editorial board of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) law journal.

Mr. Gabriel Okeowo?is the Country Director of Budgit Nigeria and a development sector professional with over 16 years of multi-stakeholder, country-level, and regional experience across Africa. He is competent in thematic areas which cut across social protection, human development, community development, health promotion, youth and family economy and livelihood, organizational development, and promotion of public sector transparency and accountability.

He has coordinated projects with funding support from Global Fund, World Bank, EU, British Council, Dutch Government, and other international foundations like Bill & Melinda Gate Foundation, Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Open Society Foundation, Skoll Foundation, and Conrad Hilton Foundation. He serves as a volunteer faculty member of Fate Foundation entrepreneurship program and as a Mentor in the LEAP Africa’s Social Innovators’ Program. He is also currently serving as a member of the Advisory Committee for the development of South-West Agricultural Transformation Framework.

Ms. Winnie Ishaku,?the newly appointed Secretary of the Board has worked as a volunteer with Hope Behind Bars Africa since its inception. A Lawyer and a Human Rights Advocate, she currently works as a Programs Officer with the National Association of Persons with Disabilities, the umbrella organization of persons with disabilities (across their diversities) in Nigeria.

In the past, she has worked as Programs Officer at Hope Behind Bars Africa, interned at Connected Development and was a Campaigns Volunteer for Amnesty International. Ms Ishaku is an alumnus of the YALI Network West Africa Program and a participant in the Nairobi Summer School on Climate Justice in Kenya.