Nigerian Institute of International Affairs

Research Professors & Fellows

Professor Eghosa Emmanuel Osaghae

Director General

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Eghosa E. Osaghae holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Ibadan (1986), where he is a Professor of Political Science. He was appointed Director-General of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) by the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in March 2021, and was most recently Vice Chancellor of Igbinedion University, Okada, a position he held for a record fourteen years (2004-2018).

Professor Osaghae was the 2019 Claude Ake Chair at Uppsala University and Nordic Africa Institute, Sweden, and a Fellow of the Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Studies in South Africa.

He was the 2017 Van Zyl Slabbert Professor of Politics and Sociology at the University of Cape Town and the 2014 Emeka Anyaoku Chair of Commonwealth Studies at the University of London. His Anyaoku Chair Inaugural Lecture, A State of Our Own: Second Independence, Federalism and the Decolonisation of the State in Africa, in April 2014 became the first inaugural lecture by a Nigerian in the history of the University of London.

Before taking up an appointment at Okada, he was the Leader of the Ford Foundation-funded Programme on Ethnic and Federal Studies and Director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Ibadan. Between 1994 and 1998, he was Professor and Head of the Department of Political Studies at the University of Transkei, South Africa.

He has also been a Visiting Professor/Fellow/Distinguished Senior Scholar at the Carter Centre of Emory University USA (1989), University of Liberia (1989/90), Salzburg Seminar, Austria (1993), University of Cape Town South Africa (1994), the Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala Sweden (1994), University of Ulster, Northern Ireland (1999, 2000), Northwestern University USA (2002, 2004), University of Cambridge UK (2003), a number of universities and research institutes in India (2005, 2009), Dartmouth College USA (2005) and Yale University USA (2009).

He was a Rockefeller ‘Reflections on Development’ Fellow (1989/90) and was most recently a MacArthur Fellow. In 1996, he won the “Best Paper Award” at the Eighth annual conference of the International Association for Conflict Management in Helsignor, Denmark. Professor Osaghae also won the “Best Article Award for 2004” of the African Politics Conference Group – a coordinate group of the American Political Science Association, African Studies Association, and International Studies Association. The same article also won the 2004 Lawrence Dunbar Reddick Memorial Scholarship Award for the best article on Africa published in the Journal of Third World Studies.

Professor Osaghae served as Chair of the Panel on Quality Assurance Assessment, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, 2011-2012, Chair of the Pan-African Working Group on “Building Institutional Effectiveness in Africa” hosted by the Institute for Global Dialogue (South Africa) and Federal Trust Fund (UK) between 2005 and 2006, UN Expert on Somalia (2010-2016), and has been a member of the Technical Advisory Panel and Network on Parliaments and Parliamentary Institutions of the African Capacity Building Foundation, Harare, Zimbabwe, since 2003.

Between 1998 and 2004, he was Africa’s representative on the Steering Committee of the Civil Society and Governance Project based at the IDS of the University of Sussex, UK, and between 2006 and 2010, was a member of the Centre Advisory Review Group, Development Research Centre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability, which was based at the IDS, University of Sussex. He also served on the Steering Committee of the Consortium for Development Partnerships, a successful model of North-South intellectual collaboration that involved institutions from North America, Europe and Africa between 2005 and 2012.

Osaghae is a member of several learned societies and editorial boards. In 2002, he was Consultant to the African Development Bank’s Country Mission to Zambia, and produced the country’s Governance Profile. Between 2001 and 2003, he was a member of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Political Affairs in Nigeria, and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Nigeria Development Forum. He has consulted for the USAID, DFID, UNDP, and the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA), and is Founder and Chair of the Governing Board of the Community Relations and Conflict Resolution Centre in Ibadan.

Professor Osaghae has published extensively on governance, state politics and globalization in books and journals, and attended over 300 conferences, workshops and seminars in different parts of North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Amongst his books are Federal Character and Federalism in Nigeria (1989), which he edited with Professor Peter Ekeh, Between State and Civil Society in Africa (1994), Ethnicity, Class and State Power in Liberia (1995), Crippled Giant: Nigeria Since Independence (1998), Researching Conflict in Africa: Insights and Experiences (2005), a co-edited book published by the United Nations University Press, and Federal Solutions to State Failure in Africa (2020). In addition, he has published well over 150 articles in books and learned international journals.

Assoc. Prof. Joshua Olusegun Bolarinwa, PhD

Director of Research 

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Joshua Olusegun BOLARINWA, PhD; is the Director of Research at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) Lagos, Nigeria. He studied at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile Ife, University of Ibadan and the University of Lagos where he earned his degrees with specialization in International Relations, Security and Strategic Studies. He joined the Research and Studies Department of the Institute in 2005. He has been conducting research and providing input to Nigeria’s foreign policy making and implementation, research on broad spectrum of international relations with emphasis on security, terrorism, strategic studies, peace and conflict resolution, post-conflict reconstruction, multilateralism, development studies, democracy/governance, regional integration, trafficking, migration studies, election monitoring and observation. He teaches at national policy strategic institutions which include Foreign Service Academy, National Defence College, National Intelligence Agency, National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies among others. He is a former editor, Nigerian Forum (An Opinion Journal of the Institute), former book review editor and the current editor of the Nigerian Journal of International Affairs (NJIA). He is an International Peace Academy (USA) scholar and a visiting scholar to the University of Calgary, Canada. He is a Consultant to many International Organizations, International and National Institutions and Agencies which include the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Inter-Governmental Action Group against Money Laundering in West Africa (GIABA), the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) and the African Union. He is a member of the African Union Strategy Group of the Net4Peace in Africa and member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) Study Day Group on West Africa and the Sahel Region.Bolarinwa has been part of several Nigerian Delegations to the ECOWAS, African Union and the United Nations Summits on many occasions. He has published in high profile journals and books both at home and abroad. Some of his recent publications include three co-edited books, Silencing the Guns: Reviewing the Agenda and Reassessing Prospects. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore, 2025, pp. 1-250; US-Africa Policy under President Obama. Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), Lagos, 2020, pp. 1-214; AGENDA 2030 and Africa’s Development in the 21st Century, United Nations University, Malaysia, 2017, pp. 1-341. He also has a single authored book to his credit, Development Initiatives in Africa, 1975-2010, Babcock University Press, Ilishan, 2018, pp.1-218. His other publications include “Peace Enforcement in the face of International Military Intervention,” in Africa’s Engagement with the Responsibility to Protect in the 21st Century, Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8163-2_14; 2024, pp. 235–250; “Resurgence of Military Coups in Africa: Can the African Union and Regional Organisations Defend and Consolidate Democracy?” Brazilian Journal of African Studies,  Porto Alegre, v.8, n. 16, July/December, 2023, pp. 11-39;“Gregory Stanton’s Schema and the Making and Unmaking of Genocide in the Cameroun – Anglophone Crisis,” African Renaissance, 2023, pp. 239-258. https://doi.org/10.31920/2516-5305/2023/si1n1a11; and “Assessing the European Union’s (EU) Role in Conflict Management and Post-conflict Development in Africa,” in Peace Studies for Sustainable Development in Africa. Advances in African Economic, Social and Political Development. Springer, Cham, Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92474-4_41; 2022, pp.531-554. Presently, he is a member of the Editorial Board of Adeboye Institute for Peace and Good Governance (AIPGG), Journal of Humanities and Peace Studies, Redeemer’s University, Ede, Nigeria; member, Editorial Board of the Journal of Peace Research, Institute of Peace and Conflict Resolution (IPCR), Abuja, Nigeria and member, Editorial Board of the Journal of Russian Science Academy, Moscow, Russia.

 

OFFICIAL ADDRESS AND CONTACT:

Joshua Olusegun BOLARINWA, Ph.D

Director of Research,

Research Department,

Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA)

13/15 Kofo Abayomi Street,

Victoria Island, Lagos.

Telephone : +2348054444452, +2348023980323, +2348133096833.

E-mail:segunbolarinwa1985@gmail.com 

segunbolarinwa@yahoo.com

j.bolarinwa@niia.gov.ng

directorofresearch@niia.gov.ng

ORCID:https://ORCID.org/0000-0003-0082-3632.

Prof. Efem Ubi, PhD

Professor & Director of Studies

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Efem N. Ubi is a Professor of International Relations/Strategic Studies and China-Africa Studies. He holds a BSc. in Political Science and a Master’s in Public Administration (MPA) from the University of Calabar, Nigeria. He has another MSc. in International Relations and Strategic Studies from the University of Jos, Nigeria, and a Ph.D. in Contemporary International Relations from the prestigious Jilin University, Changchun, Jilin Province, China.

Professor Ubi is presently the Director of Studies at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Lagos. He was formerly the Ag. Director of Research and Studies (2020-2024). Additionally. He is also a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Institute of African Studies at Zhejiang Normal University in China. In 2021, he was appointed the “First Academic Committee Board Member” of the Collaborative Innovation Center, Zhejiang Provincial Council/Ministry of Education, PR China. He is also presently a Visiting Professor in the Department of History and International Relations Graduate School, at Elizade University in Ilare-Mokin, Ondo State. Professor Ubi has been a Guest Lecturer at some Strategic institutions in Nigeria, such as the National Defence College (NDC), Abuja, Nigeria; the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru, Jos, and the National Institute for Security Studies (NISS), Bwari, Abuja.

Ubi has received numerous prestigious awards throughout his career. He is an alumnus of the United States’ prestigious International Visitors Leadership Program (US-IVLP). Other Notable Awards include the “China-Nigeria Friendship Award”, presented in 2024 by the Consulate General of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in Lagos, Nigeria. He is a recipient of the “October 1st Award of China-Nigeria Friendship” presented by the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in Nigeria in 2021. In 2015, he received the Foreign Talent Introduction Program from the Zhejiang Provincial Administration of Foreign Expert Affairs in Zhejiang Province, China. He was appointed and commissioned as an “Ambassador of Goodwill” by the State of Arkansas, United States, in 2008. Ubi is also widely traveled across the globe for conferences, workshops, roundtables, and to present Lectures.

Professor Ubi’s recent publications include, but are not limited to: Nigeria: The Absence of National Identity? Political Identity and African Foreign Policies, Boulder, USA: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2024; China and Africa’s Peace and Security: Examining China’s role in Nigeria’s insecurity, Routledge, 2020; Pre-Emptive Peace and Security Approach in Africa-China Security Cooperation. The Beacon Journal, 2022-23. Pakistan Navy War College, 2024; Is Liberal Democracy Failing in Africa or Is Africa Failing Under Liberal Democracy?” (Co-authored), Taiwan Journal of Democracy, 2019. Other publications include: Terrorism and Counterterrorism in Nigeria: The Domestic and Foreign Policy Dimensions – (Essays in Memory of Professor Ogaba Danjuma Oche) (co-edited Book), NDA and NIIA Press, 2022 (Edited); US-Africa Policy under President Obama: 2020. Lagos: Nigerian Institute of International Affairs Press, 2020 (Edited); Perspectives on Nigeria Contemporary Nigerian Politics and International Relations: Essays in Honour of Professor Warisu Oyesina Alli. Kaduna and Lagos: Nigerian Defence Academy Press and Nigerian Institute of International Affairs Press, 2020 (Co-Edited)

Email: efemubi@yahoo.com

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7994-6891

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/efem-n-ubi-phd-6b75342a/

Assoc. Prof. Chinasa Agatha Ugwuanyi, PhD

Associate Professor

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Chinasa Agatha UGWUANYI, PhD is a Research Fellow with the Nigeria Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), Lagos, Division of International Economic Relations, Research and Studies Department. She is a graduate of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Zaria, Kaduna State, Nigeria; where she obtained her degrees in Agricultural Economics and International Affairs and Diplomacy.

Her research interest is in the areas of environmental and food security and has attended several National and International Conferences, Seminars and Workshops. She has also published a number of journals and book chapters in these areas.

Kelechi C. Nwogu

Research Fellow

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Kelechi C. Nwogu is a Research Fellow at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs,(NIIA), Lagos, Nigeria, he is with the division of International Politics. He obtained his first degree(B.sc Hons) from the University of Abuja, Gwagwalada, FCT; Masters degree(M.sc) from the University of Lagos,(Unilag) in 2008, in Political Science with specialization in International Relations and strategic studies .

He teaches International Relations, History and strategic studies at the Lagos State University (LASU) and National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) on part-time basis. His geographic areas of interest include Africa’s Regional Economic Cooperation (RECs) particularly the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS); the Politics of the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, conflicts between Israel and Palestine in the Gaza Strip as well as the Nigeria Relations with the United States of America (USA). His research interest are in the areas of Regional Integration and Co-operation, Nigerian Foreign Policy, Democracy, Post Conflict Reconstruction, IDPs , Corruption, United Nations Sustainable Development Goals(SADs) Human Trafficking, The conflict in Syria, Nigeria/ China Relations e.t.c.

He has published a number of journal articles, book chapters in these areas. He is currently on a doctoral (Ph.D) programe. He is a member of the Nigerian Political Science Association (MNPSA), member of the Nigerian Society of International Affairs (NSIA). He has attended several External and Internal Conferences, Seminars and Workshops and has made Presentations.

Dr. Idris Erameh, PhD

Research Fellow

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Erameh Nicholas Idris is the head of the Division of International Relations at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA). He holds Bachelor of Science (BSc), Master of Science (MSc), and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degrees in Political Science from the Department of Political Science, University of Ibadan.

His area of specialisation is international relations. Before joining the NIIA, he taught at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Chrisland University, Abeokuta, Ogun State, where he was Acting Coordinating Head of the Department (Political Science & International Relations). He was also a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Politics and International Relations, North West University, South Africa. Erameh is the recipient of several grants, awards, and scholarship prizes.

He has co-edited several books and has published numerous articles in well-referenced journals. He has attended and presented academic papers at local and international conferences in Africa and across the globe.He is a member of several local and international organizations.

Erameh’s research interests cover global politics and security, human rights, human security, mass atrocities, peacekeeping, post-conflict reconstruction, refugees and migration, armed conflict, ethnic and genocide studies, humanitarian intervention, and the responsibility to protect.

Dr. Chinyere Rita Agu, PhD

Research Fellow

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Chinyere Rita Agu is a Research Fellow with the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), Lagos.

She holds bachelor of laws (LL.B) (Hons) degree from Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT) 1997; and was called to the Nigerian Bar in 1999. She also has a Masters Degree in Law (LL.M) from Imo State University Owerri (2008). She is a currently a doctoral (Ph.D) candidate at the Faculty of Law, Abia State University, Uturu.

She has worked as Special Assistant (Legal) to the Secretary to the Government of Imo State from 2007 to 2010. Her research interests include international trade law, family law and diplomatic law.

She is also experienced in diversified law practice as Barrister and Solicitor, Supreme Court of Nigeria in which capacity she has done so many pro-bono cases for women and children. She has publications in reputable international and local journals.

Sunday Olubejide

Research Fellow

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Ifedayo Sunday Olubejide is a Research fellow at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Lagos. He is of the Division of Security and Strategic Studies. His Research interests include International Migration, Conflict and Post-Conflict reconstruction, Peace Building and the Refugee Flow Regime. He is also interested in general issue areas such as Climate change, Environmental Degradation and Sustainable Development.

He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in International Relations from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-ife, Nigeria, and a Master’s Degree from the Institute of African Studies’ Peace and Conflict Studies Programme at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.

He received the Ambassador of Peace Award on the 5th of May, 2011, in recognition of his immense contribution to “universal moral values, interreligious cooperation and intertnational harmony” by Universal Peace Federation, an Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace headquarted in New York City, USA.

Adeola Akindoju

Research Fellow

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Adeola Akindoju is a Research Fellow in the Division of International Politics of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs. She is a graduate of Political Science from the University of Ibadan and also holds a Masters Degree in Social Research Methods from the London Metropolitan University, London United Kingdom.

Her Research areas include Women and Children in Conflict Zones, Migration, the United Nations Millennium Development Goals and Sustainable Development Goals, Terrorism, Foreign Policy and Gender Issues.

Her area of further research also includes Climate Change and Conflict Resolution. She has attended a number of International and Local Conferences, Seminars, Roundtables and Workshops and has also written some Journal articles and Book Chapters. She is also a member of the Nigerian Society of International Affairs.

Vincent Ibonye

Research Fellow

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Vincent Ibonye is a Research Fellow in the Division of African Politics and Integration. Vincent is an alumna of Jilin University, China; he holds a MA in International Relations and a BS in Political Science.

Previously a Political Aide with the Office of the Secretary to the Lagos State Government, Vincent’s experience includes policy-related research, public policy and project management. Vincent’s main interests include, but are not limited to, the geopolitics of old and rising powers, China-Africa relations, cost-benefit discourses on resource governance/politics, and addressing discordant development.

He has worked on a few projects funded by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and Samuel Hall FZE, with particular focus on the socioeconomics of returnee emigration. International peer-reviewed journals he has published in include among others, Asian Journal of Comparative Politics, Taiwan Journal of Democracy, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, International Area Studies Review and Kritika Kultura