Uchechukwu Ngwaba
Associate Professor
Department: Lincoln Alexander School of Law
Email: uche.ngwaba@torontomu.ca
Education: LLB (University of Jos, Nigeria), BL (Nigerian Law School), LLM (University of Lagos, Nigeria), PhD (Macquarie University, Sydney, Aus.), Diploma in Law (Legal Practitioners Admission Board, Sydney, Australia)
Discipline: Law
Areas of Expertise:
Comparative Constitutional Law
Constitutional Theory
Health Governance Frameworks
Health Systems
International Human Rights Law
Public Health & Human Rights
Transitional Justice
Dr. Uchechukwu Ngwaba is an Associate Professor at the Lincoln Alexander School of Law, Toronto Metropolitan University. Dr. Ngwaba’s scholarship engages multidisciplinary, comparative, and socio-legal methods to explore complex questions affecting health governance frameworks in the Global North and South. He engages critical human rights perspectives and post-colonial theory to examine how health governance and regulatory systems impact health outcomes in these areas. He frequently engages the language of human rights in enquiries about how weak health systems can be strengthened to achieve better health outcomes.
Dr. Ngwaba currently leads a research program focused on advancing regional health governance approaches in the Inter-American and African Human Rights Systems. As a Research Fellow at the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, Dr. Ngwaba pushed for the establishment of a Health Law Centre, which produced several important policy documents towards health reform in Nigeria.
Dr. Ngwaba draws appropriately on multiple disciplines (law, humanities, economics, medicine, etc.) to redefine problems beyond disciplinary boundaries and to explore solutions grounded in shared understandings of complex health situations. His work in the area of transitional justice engages Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) as a useful theoretical lens for critical internationalism to interrogate claims about universalism in the pursuit of international criminal justice, whilst pushing for better representation for the subaltern in international thought and action.
- Macquarie University Postgraduate Research Fund (PGRF) Grant with Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Commendation Award, 2015.
- International Macquarie University Research Excellence Scholarship (iMQRES) 2015-2017.
- Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Academic Excellence Award, 2014.
- Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies PhD Tuition Scholarship Award, 2013-2014.
Related Content
- “International Accountability in the Implementation of the Right to Development and the ‘Wonderful Artificiality’ of Law: An African Perspective” (2020) 7 Transnational Human Rights Review, 1-34 (with Obiora Chinedu Okafor).
- “Constitutional Rights Norms as ‘Guidelines and Impulses’? Towards an Account of Health Rights Normativity in the Global South” (2020) African Journal of International and Comparative Law (forthcoming).
- “Getting it Right with Health: Foreign Direct Investment as Africa’s Best Chance to Achieve the Health Targets of Agenda 2030 Sustainably? (2019) 40:2 Australasian Review of African Studies, 90-104.
- “A Right to Universal Health Coverage in Resource-Constrained Nations? Towards a Blueprint for Better Health Outcomes” (2018) 5 Transnational Human Rights Review, 1-22.
- “Canadian-Anglophone African Human Rights Engagement: A Critical Assessment of the Literature on Health Rights” (2017) 4 Transnational Human Rights Review, 188-199.
Dr. Ngwaba began his career in commercial legal practice in Chief Ladi Rotimi Williams Chambers, Lagos, where he was involved in several high-profile litigations before the Superior Courts of Nigeria. He subsequently took up an academic position as a Research Fellow at the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (NIALS). As one of the principal institutions for legal policy discourse in Nigeria, Ngwaba’s work at NIALS exposed him to policy-oriented research that traversed a broad field of legal enquiry, unified by a focus on achieving policy and systemic changes in Nigeria.
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Selected Media & Activities
Dr. Uche Ngwaba appears on an episode of "Today in Global Health" on Lagos Talks 91.3fm to discuss inequities faced by Black women in the health care system.