Akinbode Oluwafemi

Akinbode Matthew Oluwafemi, is a social equity advocate who has over twenty years of experience in journalism, public relations, and social promotion. He currently serves as the Deputy Executive Director of Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth, Nigera (ERA/FoEN), which is Nigeria's leading environmental rights lobbying organization.^[9]

Oluwafemi takes charge of ERA/FoEN's Tobacco Control and Water Campaign. He has been actively involved in various tobacco control initiatives in the African region. Before joining ERA/FoEN, Oluwafemi was a journalist with The Guardian, which is Nigeria's top national newspaper. As a journalist, he played an active role in the press freedom struggles, during the dictatorial rule of the late General Sani Abacha. Over the past few years, he has been putting his energy into constructing the "Our Water, Our Right Coalition," which is challenging water privatization in Lagos and throughout Nigeria.^[10]

He became a member of the steering committee for the Network for Accountability of Tobacco Transnationals (NATT).

According to Olufemi Akinbode, “The tobacco enterprise in Nigeria goes on with skillfully exploiting and circumventing the gaps in the law to run almost without control in the virtual space.“Tobacco industries and their charity arms are now using the provision of corporate social responsibility (CSR) to promote their activities on social media without mentioning anything about the harms of their products.^[11]

Akinbode has been rewarded the Bloomberg Award for Global Tobacco Control^[12]