Finding Purpose in the Work of Peace

One of the things that stayed with me was a mentoring session with Mama Graça Machel. As we were talking about system change, leadership, civic participation and collective action, she said Young people are not the leaders of tomorrow; we are the leaders of today. She talked about leadership as service. A leader, she said, is not a boss; a leader is a servant.

Those words made me think about what leadership means to me and, more importantly, why I do the work that I do. For someone from a community that has lived the cost of bad leadership and broken systems, the notion of leadership as service is not some abstract concept. It's very much a personal one.

I'm from Maiduguri in the Northeast of Nigeria, a community that's lived through a long period of violent conflict. My own experience has led me to be very committed to the pursuit of peace and security for women and children. I've come to realise that peace is not simply the absence of violence. It's about creating an environment in which people feel safe, in which they can participate in the decisions that affect their lives, in which their voices can be heard and in which they can have the opportunity to build a better future for themselves.

But knowing that I want peace is quite different from knowing what I actually have to do to help achieve it.

Another moment that really made me think about this was at the 24th Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture at One Young World 2026, when Nobel Peace laureate Tawakkol Karman was asked to give one piece of advice to the young people in the room. Her answer was a rallying cry: "Be the hero, be the nightmare of the dictators, fight corruption, fight hatred, fight racism and be the leader of the world."

Her words helped me find purpose in a different way. I realised that if peace is what I'm after, then I also have to be prepared to face the things that stand in the way of it. Purpose isn't necessarily about solving every problem. It's about knowing which problems you're prepared to go head-on with and then just not looking away from them.

For me that means continuing to work for peace and security, particularly for women and children. It means using research to get to the heart of the realities that people experience in conflict and to understand what actually helps them to move towards safer, more peaceful lives. It means enabling young women and girls to see their own potential and to understand that their voices count.

My experience at One Young World reinforced another important lesson: purpose becomes stronger when it is shared.

I met all sorts of young people from all over the world, from all sorts of communities and backgrounds, all of them grappling with issues in their own societies. What really struck me wasn't the magnitude of what they were doing; it was the sheer clarity of the decision they had made. It was a constant reminder that meaningful change cannot happen alone. It requires relationships, collaboration, knowledge and collective action. It requires listening to one another, learning from one another and building networks that can actually get things done.

I came home with more than memories of Cape Town. I came home with a much greater sense of the responsibility that goes with having a purpose.

One piece of advice from Mama Graça Machel during the mentorship session has stuck with me: "Make this opportunity a reference for the rest of your life."

I want One Young World and the Nobel Women's Initiative to be those reference points for me. As a former participant in the NWI Sister to Sister programme I've experienced firsthand what it means to be part of a community that believes in the leadership of women and girls. Those experiences, One Young World and Sister to Sister, have not just given me the opportunity to stand on the world stage. They've actually enabled me to look at the work I want to spend my life doing in a much more focused way.

I know that achieving lasting peace is going to be difficult. There are all sorts of obstacles in the way, and it's going to take a long time. What I don't want to do is just watch those obstacles. I want to understand them. I want to confront them, and in whatever way I can, I want to be part of the process of overcoming them.

Maybe finding purpose isn't about having all the answers. Maybe it's about knowing what's important to you and then simply deciding every day to go about your life in such a way as to work towards that.

For me that's the purpose: peace. My commitment is to continue to work towards a world in which women and children can live with greater safety, dignity and hope.