Samson Itodo is an experienced community organizer and development practitioner with two decades of experience in constitution building, governance reform, electoral governance, civic engagement, and political organizing. He serves as the Executive Director of Yiaga Africa and Founding Convener of the Not Too Young To Run Movement. 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 the 2018 Rising Democracy leader in Africa. He was also inducted into the 100 Most Influential Young Africans by the African Youth Awards in 2017. Samson is a member of the Board of Kofi Annan Foundation and the Board of Advisors of International IDEA; he previously served as lead consultant for International IDEA on developing a strategy for mitigating electoral and political violence in Africa. He also served as a Research Facilitator for the United States Institute for Peace (USIP) and the National Assembly’s institutional reforms committee. Samson leads one of Nigeria’s largest citizens movements on electoral integrity, #WatchingTheVote. Watching The Vote is a citizen-led election observation initiative promoting electoral integrity using technology and data. He has led international election observation missions to Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Sierra Leone, United States of America, and South Africa. Samson holds Bachelors’ and Masters’ degrees in Law, both from the University of Jos, and a Master of Public Policy from the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. He teaches Election Law at the Nassarawa State University where he currently serves as a Visiting Scholar on Election Law.
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