Qualifications:LL.B (Ebonyi State University Nigeria), B.L (Nigerian Law School Lagos), LL.M in Public International Law (Bournemouth University), PhD in Law (Bournemouth University), Fellow (UK Higher Education Academy)
I am a Lecturer in Law at the
University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol Law School and a
Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy. Before joining UWE in
September 2022, I taught law at UG & PG levels at Bournemouth
University. I hold a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B) Degree with 'First Class Honours' from Ebonyi State University Nigeria (2013) and a
Master of Laws (LL.M) Degree with 'Distinction' in Public International
Law from Bournemouth University UK (2017). In May 2021, I gained a PhD
in Law from Bournemouth University. Earlier in 2015, I obtained my
Barrister at Laws (B.L) Honours Degree from the Nigerian Law School
Lagos and was consequently enrolled as a Barrister and Solicitor of the
Supreme Court of Nigeria in October 2015. In September 2016, I joined Bournemouth
University for my postgraduate studies. Before then, I worked with
Kola Sodiya & Co, a firm of legal practitioners and consultants in
Lagos Nigeria. Working with this law firm as an attorney, I acquired
considerable experience in litigation (civil and criminal) and
represented numerous individual/corporate clients in superior courts of
records across Nigeria.
I
am a recipient of many prestigious academic and scholarship awards.
Among them: Attorney General of Ebonyi State award for 'best graduating
student' in constitutional law, Ebonyi State University (2015); Fully
Funded Abakaliki Local government Area Ebonyi State Nigeria
Undergraduate Scholarship award for academic excellence (2009-2013); the
highly prestigious Fully Funded British Government Commonwealth Shared
Scholarship award for Master’s study tenable at Bournemouth University
UK (2016-2017); and a highly competitive Fully Funded Open Call PhD
Studentship for my winning PhD research proposal on the subject of
'Missing Migrants' in International Law (selected out of 90 applicants)
awarded by Bournemouth University (2017-2021). In February 2022, I
received the UK Global Talent Recognition as an 'Emerging Global Leader
in the Field of Law' following a successful endorsement by the British
Academy.
Area of expertise
My research expertise/interests span the different fields
of Public International Law from general principles of international
law and institutions to specific doctrines/principles of international human rights
law, international humanitarian law, international criminal law and
international criminal justice, transitional justice, transnational law
as well as international migration and refugee law. Specifically, in
the field of ICL, my research explores how the domestic implementation of the
complementarity
principle of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court within the African national legal orders and the African Union can end impunity for
international crimes in Africa. In May 2020, my research (with S-D
Bachmann) in this ICL field published in the Brooklyn Journal of
International Law was cited twice before the ICC in The Hague in regard to the Situation in Central African
Republic II (The Prosecutor v Alfred Yekatom and Patrice-Edouard
Ngaissona). In the field of international migration and refugee law, my
research building on my PhD thesis analyses the legal, policy and
psychosocial
dimensions of missing migrants in the context of the Europe migrant
crisis.
In the area of international human rights law and global security, I am currently exploring new research themes around the interface
between international human rights law and state counterterrorism measures and
how certain state-invented counterterrorism doctrines attempt to limit
the applicability of international law rules/norms to such measures. I am also currently researching the international history
of modern human rights in an African jurisdictional context and its interconnections with the
development of human rights and constitutionalism in Great Britain. I seek to understand how the universalist claims of western
positive law that it has replaced the erstwhile pre-human legal order in
primitive societies now sit tight at the heart of modern discourses on
the international history of human rights in the world. My research feeds into the deeper philosophical thoughts
that attempt to connect the emerging forms of international legal
enforcement to a historical or philosophical foundation from where the
widely professed emancipatory and redemptive power of human rights is
said to derive its validity and origin.
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