Young Ghanaian-born civil society activist Mutaru Mumuni Muqthar will be honoured today at a special occasion in Abuja as the 2017 Daily Trust African of the Year. He was selected for the honour by a pan-African selection team led by former President Festus Moghae of Botswana, who late last year succeeded the selection committee’s first chairman, former Tanzanian Prime Minister Salim Ahmad Salim. The award carries with it a cash prize of 25,000 US dollars which was donated by United Bank for Africa, UBA.
Since Daily Trust instituted this award ten years ten years ago, it has been won by many heroic Africans such as Congolese surgeon Dr. Dennis Mukwege, the late Nigerian-born pan-African activist Dr. Tajudeen Abdulraheem, former South African President Thabo Mbeki, South African football administrator Danny Jordan, Chief Justice of Niger Republic Salifou Fatimata Bazeye and the Beninois mental health activist Gregoire Ahongbonon. Other winners include Sierra Leone’s chief electoral commissioner Dr. Christiana Thorpe and the Malian musician Selim Keita. Also being honoured tonight with a Lifetime Achievement’s award is the eminent Egyptian surgeon Professor Magdi Habib Yacoub.
Muqthar is a 34 year-old graduate of the Coventry University, United Kingdom. He earned a Masters degree in international terrorism, international crime and global security from Coventry University and is founder and Executive Director of the West Africa Centre for Counter Extremism based in Ghana. He is being honoured for his work in turning young people in West Africa, including university students, away from terrorism. Muqthar and his centre have so far rescued 20 Ghanaian youths from extremism. Last year he prevented a 21-year-old Ghanaian boy from leaving his country to join ISIS in Syria.
Born in Salaga in Northern Ghana to a family of peasant farmers, Muqthar holds a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration from Ashesi University, Ghana. He said he was inspired to get involved in the fight against terrorism after his family became victims of the deadly Nanumba/Konkomba conflict that took place in northern Ghana in 1994. It was the worst civil conflict in Ghana since its independence in 1957 and it left at least 1,000 people killed while tens of thousands were displaced.
Muqthar now works across West Africa to deepen understanding of violent extremism and radicalisation while promoting the support available to vulnerable groups. Working with a team of professionals, he engages with the would-be extremists and takes them through a support system, de-radicalises them and helps them reintegrate into society, school and work. He has identified the group most susceptible to the Jihadist message to be “radicalised youths are in their early twenties with high school education,” university students as well as youths that are obsessed with social media or are frustrated over lack of employment opportunities.
On the other hand, Professor Sir Magdi Habib Yacoub is an Egyptian-British cardiothoracic surgeon and a retired professor of cardiothoracic surgery at Imperial College, London. This internationally acclaimed surgeon was born at Bilbeis, Al Sharqia, Egypt in November 1935. He studied at Cairo University and qualified as a doctor in 1957. He moved to Britain in 1962, then taught at the University of Chicago. He became a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at Harefield Hospital in 1973. As a visiting professor to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Yacoub and others performed the first open heart surgery in Nigeria in 1974.
Prof Yacoub was involved in the restart of British heart transplantation in 1980 and he carried out the first British live lobe lung transplant. He also performed more lung transplants than any other surgeon in the world. He is also the head of Magdi Yacoub heart foundation, which launched the Aswan Heart project in Egypt. We congratulate both Mutaru Mumuni Muqthar and Prof Yacoub on this great occasion and we wish them many more years of useful service to the people of Africa and the world.
