The Chairman of the Governing Council of the National Human Rights Commission, Prof. Chidi Odinkalu, has been elected the National Secretary of the Federal Government College Okigwe Old Students’ Association.
The President of the association, Engineer Okey Chikwendu, was returned for a second tenure.
The election of the new executive of FEGOCOOKOSA was the highpoint of the National Convention/Annual Reunion of the association in Abuja on Saturday.
According to a press statement issued over the weekend by the Mazi Paul Ibe, the National Publicity Secretary, Prof. Odinkalu was elected with nine other persons into the National Executive Committee of the group.
Odinkalu, a professor of law and “one of Africa’s leading human rights lawyers”, heads the Africa Programme of the Open Society Justice Initiative.
The 1983 graduate of Federal Government College, Okigwe, Imo State was admitted to the Nigerian Bar in November 1988, received his PhD in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science, his Masters Degree in law from the University of Lagos and his first degree also in law from the then Imo State University.
However, following the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election in Nigeria, Odinkalu, a principal mover in the civil society response to the annulment as the then Legal Director of the Civil Liberties Organisation, relocated to the United Kingdom where he pioneered the Africa and Middle East Programme of the International Centre for the Legal Protection of Human Rights.
The statement noted that Odinkalu is widely known as an authority on international law, including human rights, international institutional law and international economic law affecting African countries.
He is a visiting Professor of law at the International Criminal Law Centre at the Open University of Tanzania and was formerly Jeremiah Smith Jr. Lecturer at the Harvard Law School in Cambridge Massachusetts and Brandels International Fellow at the International Centre for Ethics, Justice and Public Life at the Brandels University in Walthan, Massachusetts, USA.
According to the statement, Odinkalu founded the Coalition of for an Effective African Court on Human and Peoples Rights based in Arusha, Tanzania.
He is the chairman of the Board of Directors of the International Refugee Rights Initiative in New York, USA.
Odinkalu is also Co-Chairperson of the Sudan Consortium, a campaign coalition comprising over 400 African and international civil society organisations in support of the people of the Sudans and co-Chairperson of the Citizenship Rights in Africa Initiative based in Kampala, Uganda.
In addition, he is also a member of the Boards of Directors of the Fund for Global Human Rights in Washington D.C. and of the International Council on Human Rights Policy in Geneva; member of the International Council on Policy in Geneva and the Human Rights Advisory Council of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs in New York.
Between 2004 and 2006, Odinkalu led the Campaign Against Impunity to press for accountability by former Liberian President, Charles Taylor.
The campaign was ultimately vindicated with the transfer of Taylor to the custody and prosecution of the UN-supported Special Tribunal for Sierra Leone in April 2006.
He is also a leader of the FoI Coalition whose efforts were crowned with the enactment of Nigeria’s Freedom of Information Act in May 2011.
Also elected into the NEC of Federal Government College Old Students’ Association are Engr. Chikwendu (National President); Arc. Victor Akpan (Vice President 1); Dr. Harold Wilson Onumo (Vice President 2) and Mazi Paul Ibe (National Publicity Secretary). Others are Uzo Ogbonna (Assistant National Secretary); Muyiwa Oluwole (Treasurer); Emeka Adiele (Financial Secretary); Barr. Chinyere Chiaha (Welfare Secretary) and Jude-Martins Izunobi (Provost).
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