About

Ifeanyichukwu Charles Nweke is a Security Studies scholar at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University. His work examines how colonial legacies shape threat construction, conflict, and security politics in Nigeria, combining securitisation theory, environmental conflict theory, and postcolonial theory with immersive ethnographic fieldwork.

His dissertation, Àmọ̀tẹ́kùn As Colonial Afterlife: How Colonial Legacies Shape Security Politics, Conflict and Governance in Southwest Nigeria, examines colonial continuities in Nigerian security politics using novel data from the Amotekun Court archive and fieldwork across Southwest Nigeria. This work combines empirical depth with theoretical innovation — most notably “internalised securitisation,” which theorises securitised groups’ pragmatic agency under structural constraints — using Miyetti Allah’s internal security practices as its empirical anchor, thereby resolving the so-called “silencing problem” in securitisation theory.

The concept has been cited in BusinessDay Nigeria and provides scholarly context for U.S. policy toward Nigeria — specifically, U.S. Congressional Resolution H.Res. 860 and the Nigeria Religious Freedom and Accountability Act of 2026 (Bill H.R. 7457), both of which construct Miyetti Allah groups as threats and propose sanctions against them. This work advances Nweke’s broader project of building frameworks, grounded in colonial experience, for theorising threat, order, and resistance in postcolonial contexts. His research appears in Critical Studies on Security; he holds the International Studies Association (ISA) Dissertation Completion Fellowship.

Originally from Nteje, Nigeria, Nweke is based in The Hague, Netherlands. He holds an MSc in International Development from Wageningen University & Research, an MBA from Aston Business School, and a BSc in Anthropology/Sociology from Nnamdi Azikiwe University. He has presented his work at major international conferences, including CEEISA-ISA (Rijeka, 2024), EISA PEC (Lille, 2024; Bologna, 2025), and BISA (Belfast, 2025).