WFHR Launches Health, Environment Sustainability Campaign in Nigeria

Esther Oluku

WikiforHumanRights (WFHR) has launched its health and environment sustainability campaign in Nigeria for the year 2025.

This campaign began following a partnership between the Wikimedia Foundation and United Nations Human Rights in 2019 and is held by all affiliate countries of Wikipedia globally.

The global #WikiForHumanRights campaign was inspired by the Wiki Por Derechos Humanos run by Wikimedia Argentina.

This year’s event marks the second time seven communities will be spearheading the campaign in Nigeria and is themed ‘Our right, our future right now’.

Billed to run from October 2 to December 13, 2025, the campaign is targeted at increasing awareness, documenting stories and shaping global discourse around climate change, environmental degradation, activism and the broader health implications of these environmental challenges on communities through storytelling.

According to the WFHR Nigeria National Coordinator, Kemi Makinde, the programme will focus on amplifying stories across seven states in Nigeria. These states include: Anambra, Kogi, Osun, Imo, Rivers, Kaduna and Gombe.

She said: “This year for the second year running, seven vibrant communities are coming together to launch the Wikipedia For Human Rights campaign with one focus— the right to a healthy environment and sustainability.

“In the Wikipedia community, our goal is to use free knowledge to protect the environment, document stories that matter and empower people to understand their rights while shaping conversations that affect our collective future.”

Speaking on the importance of the campaign, Associate Professor at the university of Lagos, Dr. Rose Alani, explained that while Nigeria faces immense environmental challenges, documentation and action remains very low.

Alani stated that documenting the stories represents a first step in spotlighting the problems and holds a potential to inspire positive social change.

“In Nigeria, the environment has borne the heavy costs of extraction, neglect and injustice, oil spills, illegal mining, plastic waste, desertification, air pollution and indiscriminate dumping of hazardous materials. These are not isolated events. They form a pattern of environmental injustice that affect human rights.

“Despite these struggles, the documentation of Nigeria’s environmental challenges remain inadequate. Wikipedia shapes how global citizens interprete local struggles and by documenting these stories on a platform which has a wide readership like Wikipedia, we are ensuring that every community is represented and the advocacy for environmental justice and equitable access to human rights is upheld,” she said.

In his remarks, President, Wikipedia Nigeria User Group, Mr. Olushola Olaniyan, highlighted the role of the media in amplifying this advocacy stating that by supporting Wikipedia’s free learning platform, more Nigerians will be empowered to lead environmentally conscious initiatives in their communities.