Executive Director

Samson is an experienced community organizer and development practitioner with over a decade’s experience in constitution building, governance reform, electoral governance, civic engagement, and political organizing. He serves as the Executive Director of Yiaga Africa and Convener of the Not Too Young To Run Movement. With a background in law and postgraduate degrees in Law and Public policy, he provides strategic policy advice to parliamentary committees, electoral commissions, political parties, civil society organizations, and academic institutions. In 2018, he was appointed by the Gates Foundation as a Goalkeeper and honoured by the National Democratic Institute (NDI) Washington DC as 2018 Rising Democracy leader in Africa. He is the winner of the Future Africa Award Young Person of the Year 2018 award and the Leadership Newspaper 2018 Outstanding Young Person of the Year award. He was also inducted into 100 Most Influential Young Africans by the African Youth Awards in 2017. He is a recipient of numerous prestigious fellowships such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu Leadership Fellowship, Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance at the University of Cape Town, International Visitors Leadership Program of the US Department of State, Swedish Visitors Leadership Program, European Union Visitors Program (EUVP) and the UK International Leaders Program. 

Samson is also a member of the Board of Advisors of International IDEA, and he previously served as lead consultant for International IDEA on the development of a strategy for mitigating electoral and political violence in Africa. He also served as Research Facilitator for United States Institute for Peace (USIP) and the National Assembly’s institutional reforms committee. He is currently engaged in the preparation of Nigeria’s Medium Term Development plan (2021 – 2025) and Nigeria’s Agenda 2050.