REGINA ALACHI x-rays Amina Salihu’s latest book which attempts to align values with practice
On development discourse, most Nigerians have become expert curators of failure. They assemble evidence of what does not work with the thoroughness of archaeologists, catalogue systemic dysfunction with ethnographic precision, and then remarkably leave it all there, as if documentation were itself an achievement. What most rarely do is what Dr Amina Salihu has attempted in ‘Leading with Our Humanity’ which tracks the unglamorous, incremental work of trying to make stated values operational, and then submit that work to scrutiny while it is still fresh enough to sting. Salihu documents an attempt to align values with practice. The result is something uncommon in this genre: an honest book.
The framework is straightforward. Drawing from her experience as Deputy Director at the MacArthur Foundation Africa office, particularly its Gender Equity and Social Inclusion (GESI) framework on Nigeria Programme, Salihu sets out to explain what it means to take equity seriously when power, money, and institutional inertia are ranged against it. The book is organized around five objectives: establishing why GESI matters, building knowledge and awareness, centering grantee perspectives, offering practical tools, and charting a path forward.
