Mentally Aware Nigeria Initiative

Victor co-founded Mentally Aware Nigeria Initiative (MANI) with a group of friends in 2016 to combat the stigma around mental health in Nigeria. Mental health is a neglected public issue in the country, outdated legislation continues to frame the crisis and 80% of people with serious mental health requirements are unable to find appropriate care. Victor has first-hand experience of this situation, he was able to access psychiatric services when he needed them but he noticed that many of his friends and peers at medical school could not. MANI emerged as an online campaign, but the group quickly developed a text-based service to broaden their reach amongst vulnerable demographics.

At the One Young World London Summit in 2019, Victor learned practical lessons of leadership that would have been difficult to find elsewhere. The event itself proved to be an inspiration for him, helping to scale his vision for the mental health conversation in Nigeria through his efforts to engage influencers in the country. MANI has worked to simplify discussions away from the seminar-workshop model, in the process building an image of itself to which young people can relate. It has also increasingly focused on policy advocacy and government engagement to tackle the structural determinants of mental health challenges.

Since 2016, MANI has delivered more than 108,000 free sessions, impacting 40,000 people. During the End SARS campaign against police brutality, MANI had counsellors active at protest sites providing guidance and panic attack cards. Through social media, the organisation reaches over 3 million people monthly, and every month it shares a toolkit on a particular mental health condition with insights on risk factors and support in five languages. It also runs conversation cafes in 18 Nigerian states, training over 35,000 people on mental health awareness.

"Before the One Young World Summit I wasn’t thinking about how to engage people who are influential to further the conversation in the country. It gave me a vision to look forward to and inspired my change in strategy to more advocacy based"