By Olusegun Adeniyi
(Text of my tribute at the 5th Year Memorial and 4th Annual Lecture in honour of the late Innocent Chukwuemeka Chukwuma, at the Centre for Memories in Enugu on Thursday 9th April 2026)
When the news came that Saturday evening in April 2021 that Innocent Chukwuma had passed at the age of 55, it was as though something vital had been snatched from the Nigerian civic space without warning. But despite not having the luxury of a proper goodbye, Innocent had spent his entire adult life preparing a different kind of epitaph–one written in reformed systems, and in the lives of the countless young people he mentored and empowered.
I speak today not only as someone who admired Innocent from a professional distance but also as a journalist who was a direct beneficiary of his vision and generousity of spirit. When I was researching my book, ‘Naked Abuse: Sex for Grades in African Universities’, it was Innocent, through the Ford Foundation, where he served as Regional Director for West Africa, who provided the grant that made that research possible. He did the same for my earlier book on irregular migration, ‘From Frying Pan to Fire: How African Migrants Risk Everything in their Futile Search for a Better Life in Europe.’ But let me be clear, Innocent did not fund those book projects because we were friends. He funded them because he believed that knowledge, rigorously pursued and honestly presented, is the most potent instrument of social change. That was the philosophy that guided everything he did.
I have often reflected on what made Innocent different from so many of his contemporaries in the civil society space. It was not only courage, though he had that in abundance; it was his uncommon conviction that the activists must also work for providing solutions to the problems they highlight. Having cut his teeth as a student union leader under military rule before joining the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO), Innocent followed the 1991 Oko-Oba Massacre, when some rogue police officers wiped out an entire family in Lagos. How to deal with that tragedy and come out with appropriate lessons to prevent a recurrence became the central focus of Innocent’s intervention. He refused to be content with simply documenting such brutality. He wanted to help in fixing the police.
That distinction is important. It is easy to stand on the outside and condemn; it takes a different kind of imagination and mindset to engage the very institution you criticise and attempt to transform it from within. That was the principal motivation for the CLEEN Foundation, established by Innocent in 1998. It is an organisation that chronicles abuse, and work with law enforcement agencies to reimagine policing in a democratic society. By dint of hardwork and commitment to its ideals, CLEEN became the first African NGO to receive the MacArthur Foundation Award for Creative and Effective Institutions.
Yes, as I wrote five years ago following his passage, it is true that good people die every day. But it is not all of them that affirm for us the goodness in humanity like Innocent did both in his private and public life. And while Innocent may no longer be with us physically, he taught us enduring lessons about making an impact no matter the length of our lives. When the Ford Foundation appointed him as Regional Director for West Africa in 2013, the first Nigerian to hold that position, Innocent expanded the foundation’s footprint into areas like impact investing, political memory, and the arts.
Brilliant, humble and humorous, Innocent impacted our world by making a difference in the lives of those he met. And he worked tirelessly to realize a Nigeria that works for all citizens, with security as his primary focus. On a personal level, although our paths crossed several times during the pro-democracy struggles in the nineties, it was not until 2010/2011 that Innocent and I became friends. We were both in the United States at a period he was a visiting lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School where he taught a course on the management of non-profits, and I was a fellow at the Weatherhead Centre for International Affairs. From the moment he and his beloved wife, Josephine, visited our humble Cambridge MA apartment for lunch; the friendship blossomed.
Today, as we honour Innocent Chukwuemeka Chukwuma, let us confront the question his life poses to all of us who occupy the civic and public space: Are we building institutions, or are we erecting pedestals for ourselves? Are we mentoring the next generation, or are we blocking them? Innocent spent his life asking questions that mattered. The least we can do, in his memory, is to answer them honestly.
As former Vice President Yemi Osinbajo wrote in his tribute five years ago, Innocent’s “thoughtful, knowledge-driven, drama-free, but relentless pursuit of justice and the common good will be an enduring legacy.” May God continue to comfort Josephine and their three wonderful daughters.
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