Olukemi Ibikunle took a deep breath. The job match her to a T however would take her removed from her household in Lagos, Nigeria. Then the 38-year-old venture supervisor did what any meticulous planner would: she known as residence.
“I spoke to my husband, and he stated, ‘Why are you asking me? Go, go, go! Inform them sure!’”
His enthusiasm heartened her. However how may he handle all by himself, she argued. Their two kids have been solely seven and 10. He countered with a single, disarming query. “These kids you’re speaking about…are you able to inform me their surname?” She did. “That’s my identify,” he replied. “Depart them with me.”
Olukemi Ibikunle, 43, a corrections officer from Nigeria, is the 2025 laureate of the United Nations Trailblazer Award for Girls Justice and Corrections Officers.
Architect of dignity
The 12 months was 2020, and Kemi, as she is thought, had made herself indispensable inside Nigeria’s jail service.
When a roof leaked, a wall buckled, or a block needed to be designed from scratch, she was the particular person individuals known as. In Lagos State, she oversaw 5 custodial facilities holding almost 9,000 detainees – not a small feat in a subject nonetheless largely dominated by males.
The work was pitilessly particular, the type that performed to the strengths of the no-nonsense geologist by coaching: no glass home windows or ceramic basins that might shatter into weapons; strengthened bars for mild with out threat.
“We carry the stability between respect for the dignity of individuals and safety,” she stated. Even in a jail block, bogs will need to have privateness. “We use what we name a ‘dwarf door’: I can see your ft and it’s coated up simply to your neck, so I can know should you’re making an attempt to commit suicide.”
That stability was precisely what the UN was on the lookout for. MONUSCO, its peacekeeping operation within the DRC, wished somebody who may stroll the road between security and human rights. “Competence doesn’t have gender,” she stated, talking with the calm of somebody who has watched concrete set in actual time.
Kemi landed in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital, with a remit that on paper sounded administrative: to assist reform the nation’s ailing jail system. In follow, it meant redesigning the on a regular basis panorama of incarceration in a post-conflict State – pipe by pipe, door by door.
Altering minds
Jail reform, she knew, needed to begin with ground plans. MONUSCO’s corrections crew sat down with nationwide authorities to make the case for the Mandela Guidelines and Bangkok Guidelines – worldwide requirements calling for humane remedy of prisoners and gender-sensitive detention practices. However they have been met with resistance and a slender view of what a jail might be.
“They didn’t see why we wanted to incorporate a library or a workshop within the design,” Kemi recalled. So she tried a distinct tack. When prisons have sports activities centres, she defined, inmates are more healthy as a result of they train their our bodies. “And with a library,” she added, “they will spend their time studying as an alternative of fascinated by how you can get away.”
The message ultimately sank in. She and her colleagues drafted a blueprint for brand spanking new services nationwide and mapped the present ones, deciding which to rehabilitate and which to write down off.
Alongside the way in which, she insisted on constructing separate prisons for girls. “Don’t simply have a feminine block in a male jail,” she stated – that’s a recipe for exposing girls to sexual exploitation and violence. When full separation wasn’t doable, she pushed for fences and impartial hallways.
Olukemi Ibikunle (middle) organizes a tailoring workshop to assist the reintegration of feminine detainees in japanese Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Breaking the mould
Within the subject, at first, Kemi disregarded the ritual sexist feedback. Who was this “brief lady” who wished to see receipts, examine rebar, query the sand-to-cement ratio, and confirm the employees’ {qualifications}?
Her native Yoruba – and even her Nigerian English – have been of no assist. She picked up the technical French on the fly – armatures, agglo, dalles – and used the Congolese pricing repertoire to deflate padded bids. “That is overrated,” she would say. “We will minimize down this price range.”
One web site was presupposed to have air con all through, however the builder confirmed up with standing followers. “I introduced out the venture doc… trois climatiseurs,” she recalled, tracing a line within the air, the way in which she had then, along with her pen. Case closed. Ultimately, when contractors known as Kinshasa to complain, they bought the identical reply: “Speak to Kemi.”
When the rebels got here
By 2023, Kemi had been deployed east, to the province of South Kivu. Within the metropolis of Kabare, she oversaw the development of an $850,000 high-security facility designed to carry “tough individuals,” many linked to armed teams. It was a large-scale venture. She supervised the location day after day, commuting 20 kilometers every means from Bukavu, the provincial capital.
Then, in January, the M23 militia launched a serious offensive within the space. Underneath an settlement with Kinshasa, MONUSCO had withdrawn its peacekeepers from South Kivu the earlier 12 months, leaving solely its corrections crew in place.
UN troops remained stationed solely within the close by provinces of North Kivu and Ituri. By the point the Tutsi-led rebels reached Bukavu’s outskirts, Kemi was the one one left from the mission.
The evacuation of international personnel was chaotic. “We needed to undergo land borders with none UN logistics, every particular person discovering their very own means out, by some means,” she stated.
M23 fighters, backed by neighboring Rwanda – though Kigali has repeatedly denied this – had seized management of Lake Kivu, making navigation not possible. With solely a backpack to her identify, she caught a trip with two human-rights colleagues simply earlier than town fell.
Alongside the way in which, her husband saved messaging her on WhatsApp: The place are you? Are you okay? In order to not fear him, she replied merely, “I’m high-quality.” Solely now does she permit herself to look again on that second. “It was a scary interval…the few of us who remained, we grew to become like household.”
On the Rwandan border, the uniform on her picture ID drew a more durable stare. “They checked out it and stated, ‘You’re police.’ I stated, ‘No, I’m not police; I’m correctional.’ They stated, ‘It’s the identical – you’re police!’” She was pulled apart for questioning. Calls have been made. Then extra calls. Ultimately, she was let by means of.
Now stationed in Beni, a metropolis nonetheless beneath Authorities management in North Kivu, she continues her work with MONUSCO’s corrections crew. The massive jail venture she as soon as oversaw in Kabare, nevertheless, stays on standby.
Olukemi Ibikunle (middle) supervises the development of a jail in japanese Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
A trailblazer’s recognition
This week, Kemi’s work is receiving worldwide recognition because the 2025 winner of the UN Trailblazer Award for Girls Justice and Corrections Officers – an honour that celebrates girls who break gender limitations in peace operations and redefine what management seems like behind jail partitions.
By the point I met her at UN Headquarters on the eve of Wednesday’s ceremony, she was already one thing of an area superstar.
On the way in which to our interview, a UN safety guard – a fellow Yoruba – acknowledged her without delay and came visiting to congratulate her.
Uvira: The place waste grew to become gas
The tales she talks about most vividly predate the M23 turmoil — tangible tasks that quietly remodeled life behind bars.
One stands out: the biogas system she helped launch in 2021 at Uvira Jail, in South Kivu, the place human waste was was cooking fuel. Kitchen fires not consumed forests. Sewage stopped bursting by means of cracked pipes. “No extra odour,” she stated.
Her crew educated officers and long-term detainees to keep up the system. After MONUSCO’s withdrawal from the province, water deliveries stopped; a borehole was funded from afar and monitored by means of shaky video calls.
In 2024, she made the eight-hour drive to see for herself. “My pleasure was that the biogas system was nonetheless working…Three and a half years later, every part was like the way in which we left it.”
The officers informed her the set up was “tamper-proof” and largely self-sustaining. The road that stayed along with her got here like a benediction: “That is the very best factor you’ve gotten accomplished for us.”
The feminine inmates of Bukavu
One other reminiscence – virtually trivial in value however immense in that means – got here from the Bukavu jail, which held 80 girls and greater than 1,400 males. Every morning, sacks of meals went to the boys. The ladies, she stated, merely bought “nothing.” Officers informed her their households introduced them meals and charities stuffed the gaps. Why spend the jail’s ration on them?
Then there was the kitchen itself: a damage of soot and damaged stoves, every lady cooking over a single charcoal flame. Kemi wouldn’t have it. She scraped collectively $2,000 from leftover price range strains, purchased pots and bowls, employed a technician, and stood beside him till the kitchen drew breath once more.
However the actual battle was bureaucratic. She went to the jail chief and argued that the Authorities supplied meals for each prisoner – not only for males.
For 2 weeks straight, she confirmed up at 7am to verify the rations have been shared pretty. She watched the beans being measured out, nudging the portion from one bucket to 2, then three, till equity grew to become routine. “Ultimately,” she stated, “it grew to become a norm: within the morning, males get their meals – and ladies get additionally.”
If the ladies couldn’t thank her aloud, they did it silently – a small, wordless thumbs-up every time she stepped into the yard.
The price of leaving
Throughout her missions, Kemi by no means stops being a mom, staying near her kids by means of long-distance video calls. “We speak on WhatsApp,” she stated. “On their approach to faculty they all the time name. Even on my flight right here, I had Wi-Fi, so I used to be in a position to talk with them.” In Lagos, her husband works from residence, protecting the household’s rhythm intact.
When she first left for the DRC, her seven-year-old son performed it cool. “You’re leaving tomorrow? Okay, see you,” he stated, whereas his older sister clung to her, asking for “5 extra minutes.”
However after the chaos of her evacuation from Bukavu, the boy – now a young person – dropped the act. He broke down in tears. “You may simply come residence,” he informed her. “You don’t have to work. Daddy will deal with us.” She smiled and gave him the one reply she is aware of: “It’s not nearly cash. It’s about doing one thing for myself – and for you.”
Deputy Secretary-Basic Amina J. Mohammed (proper) presents the Trailblazer Award to the 2025 winner Olukemi Ibikunle, a correctional officer from Nigeria deployed to MONUSCO.
The smallest particulars
Kemi typically returns to the identical guideline: that dignity lies within the smallest particulars – a dwarf door, a kitchen pot, a pipe that doesn’t burst.
This Wednesday in New York, she walked onto a stage to obtain the Trailblazer Award. For just a few ceremonial minutes, she was seen – the applause, the pictures, the quoted strains.
However afterwards, she’s going to return to the quiet work that defines her: the blueprint, the ledger, the early-morning checks – and the lengthy, cussed labour of proving, one repaired kitchen and one quiet library at a time, that peace begins behind jail partitions.
