NSUKKA, Enugu State — Nearly six decades after he graduated from the University of Nigeria’s Faculty of Law, Professor Boniface Obinna Okere has returned to his alma mater in a distinction that places him in the institution’s history twice over.
Professor Okere was conferred with the rank of Professor Emeritus of the University of Nigeria at the institution’s 55th Convocation held at Nsukka on Saturday, July 25, 2026, becoming the first alumnus of the Faculty of Law to receive the honour since the university was established.
The recognition also crowns an unusual journey through the same Faculty where he began as a student, returned as an academic, became its first alumnus to attain the rank of professor and later served as its dean.
Born on October 10, 1943, in Owerri, Imo State, Okere graduated with a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Nigeria in 1967. Following the Nigerian Civil War, he proceeded to the University of Paris, where he obtained the Docteur de l’Université de Paris with the highest honours, setting the course for a career that would span legal scholarship, university administration and international public service.
He returned to the University of Nigeria in 1976 and began another chapter of his association with the institution, this time from the other side of the classroom.
Over the following two decades, he rose through the academic ranks before becoming Professor of Law in 1996, the first alumnus of the Faculty to attain that rank. He subsequently became the first alumnus of the Faculty to serve as its Dean.
His tenure was marked by efforts to strengthen the Faculty’s physical and academic infrastructure. Among the initiatives associated with his leadership were the establishment of the Faculty Alumni Association, the Justice Mary Odili Auditorium, improvements to the Law Library and the expansion of information technology facilities.
For a scholar whose principal field has been international law, his academic influence has extended well beyond Nsukka.
Professor Okere has written extensively on international law and humanitarian law and has served in distinguished capacities with institutions including the African Union Commission on International Law, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Nigerian Foreign Service Academy.
His work has placed him within a generation of Nigerian legal scholars whose careers helped connect the country’s legal academy with international debates on the laws governing states, armed conflict, humanitarian protection and the responsibilities of nations.
Retirement from the University of Nigeria did not end his academic career.
He continues to teach and mentor younger lawyers and scholars as Head of the Department of International Law and Jurisprudence at Godfrey Okoye University, maintaining a connection with legal education long after completing his formal career at Nsukka.
Presenting him for the conferment of the emeritus title, the university described Okere as an “eminent jurist, distinguished scholar of international law, accomplished academic leader and devoted alumnus”, whose career embodied the institution’s ideals of academic excellence, integrity and service.
The honour therefore carries a significance beyond the title itself. It marks the return of an alumnus to the university whose Faculty of Law helped shape his professional life and which he later helped shape in return.
For Professor Okere, the distinction closes one circle while leaving another open: the student who graduated from the Faculty in 1967 became its professor, its dean and an architect of some of its institutional development, before returning decades later to receive the university’s recognition as Professor Emeritus.
In the history of the University of Nigeria’s Faculty of Law, that journey is difficult to separate from the institution itself.
