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Our favorite believer - a profile of Oby Ezekwesili

Her passion and resilience have driven a life of belief, dedication and service.

Oby leads the Bring Back Our Girls group to Aso Rock on August 22, 2016

Her easy, welcoming, even motherly countenance belies a zeal, a strength of purpose that seems unlikely in the face of the impending realities she ardently fights against.

You see it the moment she begins to speak.

She talks a lot of hope - buoyed by the teachings of a father she holds dear and a firm belief in God. "There is absolutely nothing the God I believe in cannot do", she says - you get the feeling it is the source of her passion - an insistence on ignoring what may be our idea of how things can be.

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Aunty Oby is a fighter.

A seasoned public servant and fearless campaigner, Madam Obiageli Katryn Ezekwesili, or 'Aunty Oby' as she is fondly called by most, was born on April 23, 1963 in the eastern state of Anambra.

From the earliest stages, she seemed to enjoy an education that primed her for a life of public service; after bagging a Bachelor's Degree from the famed University of Nigeria, Nsukka and a Master's Degree in International Law and Diplomacy from the University of Lagos, 'Aunty Oby' crossed the seas to get a Master's Degree in Public Policy and Administration from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

A chartered accountant, she began her career with Deloitte and Touche where she worked as an Auditor and Management and financial services consultant.

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But her passion could only bubble under the surface for so long, and in 1994, she co-founded Transparency International, serving as its founding Director for Africa till 1999.

The turn of the millennium saw her work with Professor Jeffrey Sachs in her new position as Director of the Harvard-Nigeria Economic Strategy Program; in this period, she was first appointed as an aide to then President Olusegun Obasanjo.

In 2003, she honoured her homeland's call to service and was designated Senior Special Assistant to the President of Nigeria on Budget Monitoring and Price Intelligence.

It was in this role that she earned the moniker 'Madam Due Process' for her dedication to cleaning up the process of public procurement and contracting at the federal level, a feature that has never been a strong point of successive Nigerian governments.

Aunty Oby values efficiency - a trait that she has reflected at all stages of her public life and career.

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She was appointed Minister of Solid Minerals (Mines and Steel) in June 2005, where she was the chairperson of the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) that led the first ever full audit of Nigeria's oil and gas sector.

In one of President Obasanjo's trademark cabinet reshuffles, she was then made Federal Minister of Education in June 2006, a position she held for barely a year - enough time for her to introduce a public-private partnership model for government schools.

In March 2007, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz announced her appointment as the institution's new Vice President for Africa - a role where she oversaw the bank's dealings in over 30 African countries as well as a loan portfolio of over 40 billion dollars.

Aunty Oby has pedigree - and it was never going to be ignored.

On October 1, 2012, Madam Ezekwesili was named as a director on the board of Bhati Airtel, one of the world's biggest telecommunications firms. She also sits on the board of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Central European University's School of Public Policy, New African Magazine and Tufts University's Center for Global Leadership.

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When the Islamist militant group, Boko Haram abducted more than 200 girls in the dead of the night from a secondary school in Chibok, Borno State in April 2014, Aunty Oby formed the #BringBackOurGirls campaign - a movement which started by using social media to carry out the arduous task of reminding us, the public and the government, of the schoolgirls' realities and the need to get them rescued at whatever cost.

She has fought for that cause and clamoured for the girls' release at every chance, so much that she was described by many as a thorn in the side of former president Goodluck Jonathan - she even had her passport seized by the DSS before a scheduled appearance on the BBC's HardTalk in 2014.

In 2016, with a Muhammadu Buhari presidency hinged on the promise of departing from a lethargic status quo, Aunty Oby has carried on with that zeal, perhaps more than before - and this year, it bore fruit.

It all started when, on May 18, it was announced that Amina Nkeki Ali, one of the Chibok girls had been found. Then, in October, 21 of the schoolgirls were released, to much fanfare and joy.

For a woman who has had to face insults and questions about her motives, it was a vindication of her struggle, but more importantly, a reason to continue in hope against all odds, until the remaining 196 of our girls are rescued.

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Aunty Oby is our favourite believer.

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