#FindingIbiwunmi
A national search for the best of us to join politics.
Nigeria does not lack people who can govern. It loses them to every field except this one. So we went looking, by name, for the ones already doing the work.
Ibiwunmi Akinnola
Ibiwunmi is an educator who started a school for the youngest learners 25 years ago, sent 400 children to the best schools in Lagos, and has since advocated nationally for widows and vulnerable children.
We found
Ibiwunmi Akinnola.
Now we are looking for the next one.
Why Ibiwunmi
This is the record politics keeps overlooking.
Not a title, not a following. A long, unglamorous record of doing right by people who could not repay it. That is the qualification we are searching for.
Twenty-five years, not one news cycle
A school built for the youngest learners and kept running for a quarter of a century is a record of governing something, budgets, staff, parents, standards, long after the excitement wore off.
Four hundred children, individually
Sending 400 children on to the best schools in Lagos is not a slogan. It is four hundred separate acts of advocacy for four hundred families.
She spoke for people with no leverage
Widows and vulnerable children have no lobby and no campaign fund. Choosing to advocate for them nationally says what someone does with power when there is nothing to be gained.
The school behind the search
This is who came looking.
The School of Politics, Policy & Governance grew out of Dr Oby Ezekwesili's #FixPolitics movement. The idea was blunt: stop hoping good people drift into politics, and start preparing them for it on purpose. The people it trains are the doctors, lawyers, teachers and organisers the rest of public life keeps for itself.
SPPG treats one problem as the source of the rest. Africa is not so much short of talent or money as it is short of decent people willing to take power and use it properly. Everything the school does works back from that.
The room is not full of career politicians. It is full of people who were already doing the work before anyone asked them to, now spending ten months in the Certificate in Public Leadership and Policy under more than 115 practitioners and academics.
Across the continent
The same search, right across Africa.
This is not only a Nigerian story. SPPG already runs in Senegal and Kenya, Ghana is next, and the plan reaches towards twenty countries in time. Wherever you are reading this, there is likely a class within reach.
Founders Scholarship
Half the tuition. Ten places. One deadline.
If this search found you, we are not going to let cost be the reason you stay out of politics.
Run to Win. Govern Good.
Ten places at half tuition, closing 31 August 2026. The class starts with people who were already serving before anyone was watching.
Apply for the Founders Scholarship →Know someone
Do you know someone like them? Nominate them.
The search does not only run on applications. If someone comes to mind before you have finished reading this, tell us about them.
Nominate someone →The programme
What you would actually be joining.
A 10-month Certificate in Public Leadership and Policy: seven themes, 26 modules and a community capstone, taught by practitioners and academics.