About

Ifeanyichukwu Charles Nweke is a Postcolonial Security Scholar and Theorist at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University. His work generates security theory from African political experience, examining how colonial legacies continue to shape threat construction, conflict, and security politics in postcolonial Africa. Combining securitisation theory, decolonial theory, environmental conflict theory, and immersive ethnographic fieldwork, his research demonstrates that Nigeria’s colonial past continues to structure how threat is experienced, governed, and contested.

His doctoral dissertation, Àmọ̀tẹ́kùn as Colonial Afterlife: How Colonial Legacies Shape Security Politics, Conflict and Governance in Southwest Nigeria, develops a decolonial theory of security through the case of Amotekun, arguing that the organisation is best understood not simply as another vigilante group but as a contemporary manifestation of Nigeria’s colonial experience refracted through Yoruba nationalism. Drawing on extensive fieldwork across Southwest Nigeria and archival research, including a novel dataset constructed from the Amotekun Court archive, the dissertation introduces the concepts of internalised securitisation, coloniality of security, and ethnicised security experience, advancing new theoretical approaches to security, authority, and resistance in postcolonial contexts.

His concept of internalised securitisation, developed through the empirical case of Miyetti Allah’s internal security practices, explains how securitised groups exercise pragmatic agency under structural constraint by becoming subjects and objects of securitisation simultaneously. By foregrounding this subaltern-constrained agency, the concept resolves the “silence problem” in securitisation theory, the framework’s longstanding inability to account for the agency of groups it renders voiceless. 

His research has been cited by BusinessDay Nigeria and provides scholarly context for contemporary debates on U.S. policy towards Nigeria, including U.S. Congressional Resolution H.Res.860 and the Nigeria Religious Freedom and Accountability Act of 2026 (H.R.7457), both of which construct Miyetti Allah groups as security threats and propose targeted sanctions. More broadly, his research programme develops analytical frameworks, grounded in African colonial experience, for theorising threat, order, security governance, and political authority in postcolonial societies.

Nweke’s research has been published in Critical Studies on Security. He is the recipient of the International Studies Association (ISA) Dissertation Completion Fellowship. He has presented his research at major international conferences, including CEEISA–ISA (Rijeka, 2024), the EISA Pan-European Conference on International Relations (Lille, 2024; Bologna, 2025; Lisbon, 2026 – forthcoming), and the British International Studies Association (BISA) Annual Conference (Belfast, 2025). He serves as a peer reviewer for Security Dialogue and Critical Studies on Security.

Originally from Nteje, Nigeria, Nweke is based in The Hague, the 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.