Tajudeen Ademola Akanji is the Director of the Institute for Peace and Strategic Studies, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He is a specialist in Industrial and Peace Education with a considerable experience in capacity building, project development and management. He is also the lead person for the Programme of Traditional Conflict Resolution Mechanisms, which enabled me to interface with local communities on disaster prevention advocacy. Akanji facilitates courses in Conflict Prevention and Early Warning, and Disaster Risk Management, in the professional Master program in Humanitarian and Refugee studies. He is a beneficiary of several professional development programs, the latest being a diploma in Conflict Prevention, Intervention Reconciliation and Reconstruction from Transcend Peace University, Romania. He is a professional trainer, and a chartered Mediator and Conciliator, having been admitted as a member of the Nigerian Institute for Training and Development, (NITAD), and a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Mediators and Conciliators in Nigeria. Professor Àkànjí is a grantee and the Principal investigator in the following on going and completed studies, namely;

1. Border security issues in the Farmer Herder conflict in the Sahel region supported by Search For Common Ground Organization Washington DC.

2. Developing standards for Monitoring, assessment and evaluation of conflict management projects in Nigeria supported by Tetfund

3. A ‘hidden’ crisis-in-crises: a transformative agenda ‘Boko-haram and education’ in the countries of the Lake-Chad region through visual narratives” supported by the Academy of Medical Sciences UK.

Àkànjí has also served as consultant/trainer to many local and international organisations. He was the consultant to Konrad Adenaeur Stiftung for designing and implementing policies for inter-agency cooperation among the Security agencies and also dialogue programs with the community. Akanji has been involved in program designs, monitoring and evaluation, capacity building in some focal areas including, community empowerment, Community mobilization, environments, Security, conflict prevention and good governance in Nigeria since 2007 till date. He was the South West Coordinator of the project for Mapping and Assessing the Capacity of Community Development Associations in Strengthening Local Governance in Nigeria, a study conducted for Coalitions for Change, sponsored by DFID in 2009. Akanji also won the consultancy with the United Nations Office of Project Services (UNOPS), during which he developed the Curriculum and manual for training of Trainers on the Niger Delta Job Creation and Conflict Prevention Initiative. Furthermore, he was also part of the team that designed early warning education program for the Lisa community in Ogun State, Nigeria, following the Belview plane crash in 2005. Apart from the above, he has publications from many researches dealing with community-based approaches to conflict management and in collaboration with my research students. He is engaged in some on- going researches in Traditional Early warning systems. Presently, Akanji is in the committee designing the framework for profiling and disposal of special detainees in Nigerian prisons and other detention facilities. He speaks fluent English and Yoruba and can converse sparingly in Hausa and Arabic