Foremost human rights activist, Professor Chidi Anselm Odinkalu has been unveiled as the Keynote Speaker for the 2025 Nigerian Bar Association Section on Public Interest and Development Law (NBA-SPIDEL) Annual Conference.
Highly respected for his integrity and propensity for speaking truth to power, Prof. Odinkalu was a highly successful Chairman of Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).
Meanwhile, Professor Stephen Shute, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Sussex, has been designated as the Discussant of the Keynote Address at the eagerly awaited Opening Ceremony on 2nd December, 2025.
The Annual Conference is scheduled to hold from December 1 to December 5, 2025, at the prestigious Ibom Hotels and Golf Resort in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital. To register, click here http://nbaspidel.ng/.
In a statement by Mr. Yakubu Bawa and Ms. Barbara Tosan Onwubiko, Chairman and Secretary respectively of the Media, Publicity and Publications Sub-committee, the duo noted that “Odinkalu was unanimously chosen due to his clarity of thought and patriotism.”
Prof. Odinkalu is a Professor of Practice in International Human Rights Law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. He is the Chair, Governing Council, of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University. He was also the Chair of the novel Truth, Justice, and Peace Commission, a transitional justice established to address legacies of violence and trauma in the states of South-East Nigeria.
In 2017, Prof. Odinkalu was part of a three-person Panel of Eminent Persons which facilitated the return of The Gambia to the Commonwealth. He was involved in the negotiations which led to the creation in 1998 of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and more recently led the advocacy which culminated in the adoption in February 2024 of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Specific Aspects of the Right to a Nationality and the Eradication of Statelessness in Africa.
Prof. Odinkalu is also associated with several international advocacy initiatives on human rights, forced displacement and mass atrocities. Among others, he chairs the boards of the International Refugee Rights Initiative and of Global Rights. He is also a trustee of Atrocities Watch Africa.
On his part, Professor Stephen Shute was appointed the 11th President of the International Penal and Penitentiary Foundation (IPPF) in 2023. He is the first UK President of the organisation and the first person from the UK to serve on the IPPF Council.
He has been a full professor of criminal law and criminal justice in the UK for over 25 years. He is currently based at the University of Sussex, where he served as Pro-Vice-Chancellor from 2014 to 2021. Prior to that, he worked at the University of Birmingham (as Dean of Arts and Social Sciences and Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor), and at the University of Oxford (as a Fellow of Corpus Christi College).
He has published extensively, and his work has been cited by policymakers, law reformers, and scholars around the world. He has also held a number of significant external roles, including as Inaugural Chair of the Crime Statistics Advisory Committee; Founding Member of the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody; and Founding Member of the Ministerial Advisory Board on Joint Inspection in the Criminal Justice System.
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