Ejiro previously worked as Country Director of the Centre for Development and Population Activities (CEDPA) where she took the lead in identifying new programming opportunities and seeking new funding sources from donors to supplement and expand CEDPA’s programme portfolio within CEDPA’s three primary programme areas – Girls Education and Youth Development, Gender and Governance, and Reproductive Health and HIV/AIDS.
At WERHC, Ejiro provides high-level technical assistance to government agencies and CSO partners and engages in policy dialogue and analysis to ensure that the aspirations of poor people, especially women and other marginalized groups are mainstreamed in policies and programmes.
Ejiro also previously worked as Gender and HIV/AIDS Programme Coordinator for Anglophone West Africa with the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) where her job entailed project design and implementation, monitoring and evaluation of regional Multi-Year Funding Framework (MYFF), work-planning and budgeting, recruitment and management of consultants and coordination of the NSF gender mainstreaming efforts by UNIFEM, CIDA and UNFPA in collaboration with gender focal persons in the partner organizations. She has 17 years of programming, management, and academic/research experience having worked in various organizations including NGOs, the private sector, public sector, the United Nations and the international development sector. Her area of specialization and interest is mainstreaming gender and human rights perspectives in development with a focus on Reproductive Health, HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, Malaria, Gender and Governance, Education and Poverty Eradication.
Ejiro is a human rights activist with strong skills in programme design, programme and personnel management, organizational development, financial management, monitoring and evaluation, gender analysis and mainstreaming, advocacy and social mobilization as well as policy formulation and analysis. In addition, she is a visionary leader, motivator and team player and has strong conceptual, analytical, interpersonal and resource mobilization skills.
As a trainer, she has facilitated several capacity building and strategic planning workshops in several countries including Nigeria, South Africa (Johannesburg, Pretoria, Ormonde, Soweto and Cape Town), Scotland (Edinburgh and Dundee), Kenya (Nairobi and Nyeri), UK (London and Oxford) and Washington DC, USA etc. Ejiro is a researcher and worked for several years as Lecturer at the Ramat Polytechnic, Maiduguri, Research Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR), Lagos, Coordinator, Women in Nigeria, Borno State, Executive Director, Women Empowerment and Reproductive Health Centre (WERHC), Senior Programme Officer, HIV/AIDS, the POLICY Project etc. She has planned, implemented and collaborated extensively (locally and internationally) in several assessments/evaluations, KAP and other studies on an array of development issues as well as scientific research in Tuberculosis and HIV coinfection. She was the Principal Investigator for the evaluation of the use of phage in the rapid diagnosis of tuberculosis in HIV/AIDS patients.
Ejiro is a prolific writer and author. Her recent books include Monitoring and Evaluation Demystified, HIV/AIDS, Human Rights and Women in Nigeria, Deadly Paradise, These Women Have Come Again! and Sexuality, Violence and HIV/AIDS (book Chapter in an international publication, Beyond Reproduction, 2008). She has also published several papers in peer reviewed journals. She is fluent in English, reads French, speaks four Nigerian languages (Hausa, Yoruba, Urhobo and Isoko) and understands Ibo and Bini languages. She has thorough knowledge of key stakeholders in the public and private sectors as well as civil society.