65th Anniversary Of Ford Foundation West Africa

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KEYNOTE REMARKS BY HIS EXCELLENCY, PROF. YEMI OSINBAJO, SAN, GCON, IMMEDIATE PAST VICE PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA AT THE 65^TH ANNIVERSARY OF FORD FOUNDATION WEST AFRICA ON THE THEME: SOCIAL JUSTICE AS AN IMPERATIVE TO DEVELOPMENT, ON THE 5^TH OF NOVEMBER, 2025

Protocols

Let me begin by thanking Ford Foundation West Africa for the kind invitation to give these keynote remarks. And may I add my congratulations to the foundation on its 65th anniversary here in West Africa, and commend the foundation on 65 years of the foundation’s unwavering commitment to advancing social justice and strengthening democracy across our subregion. Which leads me to the topic of my keynote remarks: “Social Justice as an Imperative to Development.” And if you look at the theme of this event, it is the journey to social justice.

Africa is currently the fastest-growing continent in GDP terms, and has been so for a while. Yet it remains the continent with the lowest overall quality of life, based on global indices like measuring health, education, infrastructure, and economic stability. In other words, GDP growth does not mean development for the majority; it does not necessarily translate to jobs or a decent life for citizens.

One of my biggest frustrations as Vice President and Chair of the Economic Team of our government from 2016–2019 was how people reacted when we talked about GDP growth figures. The vast majority will simply ask: “Do these people live in a different country? I can’t pay my children’s school fees or hospital bills. Where is this growth?” It became clear to me that when governments talk about growth, citizens wonder what they are talking about.

Only big business, banks, and corporations understand those things. For many, the promise of a better life that liberal democracy offers is simply not there. So, what is the problem, and how can it be resolved? How can development and growth touch the lives of the majority of our people? There is only one way it is possible, by making social justice the foundation of our economic thinking, planning, and development. In other words, we shouldn’t talk about development unless it is tied to the well-being and welfare of the majority.

What is social justice, and what does it have to do with development? It is quite simple. Social justice is the principle that every person must have fair access to the opportunities, protections of rights and resources needed to live a dignified and productive life. It places the human being, not statistics, at the center of development. Social justice ensures that the gains of economic growth are not captured by a few but converted into well-being, stability, and productivity for the many.

It is the basis of what has been described by some as people-centred governance. That means measuring development by how many people actually experience improvements in wellbeing, access to jobs, education, proper access to healthcare, and safety. The more people who benefit, the greater the national productivity. A people-centred framework or a social justice framework insists that budgets, public investments, and reforms must be designed around the welfare of the majority of people from the start, not as an afterthought. This requires a decisive shift from trickle-down assumptions that we make in budgeting to bottom-up, inclusive strategies.

When women, youth, rural populations, informal workers, and other marginalised groups gain education, legal recognition, healthcare, and social protection, they contribute fully as workers, innovators, and entrepreneurs. This is what social justice achieves: it expands the productive base of the economy. In practical terms, when budgeting in a country where most citizens are poor, you start at the bottom of the pyramid, not at the top, where we hope benefits will trickle down.

Fiscal policy must prioritize investments that improve the lives of the majority of people: rural healthcare, public education, clean water, smallholder agriculture, and microcredit for the informal sector. Supporting small enterprises that employ the bulk of our people with microfinance, skills training, and rural infrastructure is not social costs; they are high-return investment in human capital.

In many countries of the world, simply giving girls equal educational opportunities as boys can transform the development story. In the early 1990s, as some would recall, in rural Bangladesh, the girl child did not really have a future; early marriage, unpaid work, and silence were the lot of the girl child. Many girls never stepped foot in a classroom. But a bold idea emerged: what if girls were given the same education as boys? The government, supported by NGOs like BRAC (Building Resources Across Communities), launched a radical initiative, paying stipends to parents to send their girls to school. By the way, BRAC is a Ford grantee as well.

Suddenly, millions of young women who had been written out of the economy were holding books, learning skills, and imagining futures. Fast forward two decades, and those girls became the backbone of Bangladesh’s economic rise. They filled newly expanding garment factories, not as cheap labour, but as educated workers whose wages lifted families out of poverty. Today, the garment sector employs over four million workers, mostly women, and their earnings have helped cut poverty rates dramatically.

Bangladesh has grown from one of the poorest nations to a dynamic, export-driven economy, all because the country chose to do what was just. It unlocked the talent of half its population and rewrote its economic destiny. This is social justice at work, equal opportunity for women. The poorest societies are those that fail to give women, who in some cases make up half or more of the population, the benefits of equal opportunity.

Let me share a story from Lagos State in 1999; let me issue a disclaimer immediately, that I’m not making an empirical point here, it’s purely anecdotal, but I will share it nevertheless. In the first civilian administration after military rule, Governor Bola Tinubu, now President, appointed me Attorney-General, and we began a landmark reform of the administration of the justice system. Before I was sworn in, we conducted a survey of 200 lawyers practising in the Lagos High Courts. We asked several questions, and one of them was their perception of the integrity of judges in the State. 89% of them said judges in the State were notoriously corrupt.

We decided to act on two fronts: appointments and remuneration. We more than quadrupled take-home pay, created new allowances, and gave each judge a home and a car to be replaced every four years. We also believed, and this is important, that appointing more women judges could reduce corruption. Two-thirds of the 26 judges we appointed were women, and by 2001, 70% of judges in Lagos were female. When we repeated the survey in 2007, 0% of lawyers said judges were corrupt. Equal opportunity worked, and integrity was restored.

The point is quite simple: you don’t know what you are missing until you give equal opportunities to all genders. I’m not making the point that women are necessarily more honest than men; let’s not get carried away! But this was clearly demonstrated in the particular example I have just given.

Rwanda’s gender inclusion strategy provides further proof that equality drives growth. After the 1994 genocide, Rwanda rebuilt its society with a belief that women must be equal partners in rebuilding the nation. Key reforms included a constitutional requirement that at least 30% of decision-makers be women, equal property and inheritance rights, major investments in girls’ education and maternal health, and support for women-owned businesses and cooperatives.

Today, 60% of Rwanda’s parliamentarians are women, the highest in the world. The economy responded with record growth for two decades. With women earning and owning assets, poverty was reduced, households regained stability, and productivity soared. Social justice expanded the productive workforce, and empowerment created new markets and taxpayers.

You cannot build a strong economy with only half your population. But inclusion is not only about gender; financial inclusion is crucial, too. Just making it easier for rural populations to participate in the financial system can be a game-changer. Kenya’s M-Pesa is a prime example. This mobile-money system brought unbanked and rural populations into the financial system, widening access to finance for millions and driving major economic benefits. Research shows that M-Pesa increased per-capita consumption and lifted 2% of Kenyan households out of extreme poverty by enabling secure transfers, savings, and more resilient incomes.

Over 90% of adults in Kenya now have access to financial services. But social justice is also best expressed through social investment programmes, direct government interventions that empower citizens. Programmes like school feeding, cash transfers, and large microcredit schemes targeting informal traders have shown huge economic benefits. They remove the barriers that prevent people from participating effectively in the economy. Cash transfers ensure the poorest can become economic agents.

Microcredit allows informal traders who are the lowest in the trading chain to sustain their participation in commerce. Homegrown school feeding programmes create jobs from the farm to the classroom, for farmers, aggregators, and cooks alike. When women, youth, rural communities, and informal workers are empowered as full economic agents, productivity and shared prosperity will grow.

But social justice is also about climate justice. The climate crisis is a severe economic problem for Africa. Nigeria is among the top ten most climate-vulnerable countries, facing droughts, floods, sea-level rise, and erosion.  By 2050, Nigeria could have 9.4 million internal climate migrants, mostly poor rural farmers displaced by floods or desertification. Yet, we are not responsible for the crisis; the Global North is. Climate justice is therefore a social justice issue; it centers on fairness, ensuring that those least responsible for climate change do not suffer its worst consequences.

The Global North and corporations responsible for carbon-intensive activity over the decades must fund adaptation and loss-and-damage efforts in vulnerable countries like Nigeria.

There is also the issue of environmental exploitation. Communities where resource extraction occurs, such as in the Niger Delta, have suffered devastating pollution and loss of livelihoods. These communities deserve a voice and must be empowered to negotiate more evenly with both the State and resource-extracting entities. Climate action must prioritize those most affected. Local voices, especially women, youth, and indigenous groups, must be central to decision-making on climate action.

Lastly, good governance is a critical social justice issue, and corruption, both public and private, lies at its heart. In 1994, Soji Apampa and I founded an anti-corruption organization called “Integrity”, and part of what we did was publish a pamphlet titled ‘Scrutiny’ to highlight why corruption is an economic injustice and how to redress corruption. Ford Foundation funded the organisation from 1995.

A report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) estimates that if corruption is not addressed, it could cost Nigeria up to 37% of its GDP by 2030. Corruption is not just a public-sector problem; it is a development problem that leads to a situation where the future of our people is stolen. When public money meant for hospitals, schools, roads and other services is diverted into private pockets, the poor pay the price. A young lady named Amina opened her first retail store here in Abuja about 2 years ago. She had staff, stocked her shelves, had plans to expand, but soon, employees began to steal cash, divert stock, and it was small at the beginning. But constant theft began to eat into her profits, and the second branch she wanted to open was never opened.

The jobs were never created. The community never benefited. Even small-scale corruption becomes a barrier to growth.

Research confirms that employee theft and fraud in SMEs reduce profitability and block expansion. So, to produce development that reaches the majority, anti-corruption programmes are not just good governance programmes; they are social justice programmes. They protect public resources, strengthen businesses, and create jobs. When we build systems of fairness and accountability, in government and in the marketplace, we unleash inclusive economic growth and give our people what they deserve: a future that works for everyone.

I conclude by saying that Africa’s true wealth is not beneath our soil — it is in our people. When we invest in them, when every policy, budget, and reform answers to the needs of the majority, we lay the foundation for genuine progress. Social justice is not charity; it is sound economics. It builds nations that are stable, peaceful, and productive because every citizen has a stake in their country’s success.

Once again, let me congratulate Ford Foundation on its 65^th anniversary. God bless the Foundation, and God bless us all.

Thank you.