Professor Freedom Chukwudi Onuoha is the Coordinator of Security, Violence and Conflict (SVC) Research Group at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He has over seventeen years of teaching and research experience, focusing on national and transnational security threats with emphasis on organised crime, violent extremism, terrorism, insurgency, maritime security, climate change, violent conflict and state fragility. Freedom is also a member of the Folke Bernadotte Academy’s International Research Working Group on Africa. He was a member of the National Working Group that developed Nigeria’s first-ever Policy Framework and National Action Plan for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (2017).
Freedom has over a decade’s worth of expertise in conflict and climate change research in sub–Saharan Africa, critically examining security dynamics and environmental stressors shaping regional stability. He has also facilitated training programmes for state security forces and informal policing groups engaged in counterterrorism and stabilisation operations, contributing to policy and practice in security governance in the region.
Freedom will contribute to the XCEPT Project by examining how climate-induced livelihood crises drive conflicts, insurgency, and extremist recruitment in the Lake Chad region and the Liptako-Gourma area.
