The
Road
Stop by stop, 2005 to today. Keep scrolling.
Dr Kingsley Udo
Peacebuilder. Humanitarian. Country Director,
International Alert Nigeria.
Two decades of humanitarian action across West and Central Africa: keeping children safe, helping communities hold together, and building peace where conflict has done its worst.
Gwoza, Borno State
It began on a classroom floor.
“We sat with the learners on the floor and tried teaching them correct pronunciation of English words. Her passion inspired me.”
A volunteer teacher, and children who had escaped Boko Haram captivity. He had studied petroleum engineering and industrial safety. On that floor, he found his calling: standing with people at their most vulnerable.
He went to Maiduguri and trained for four years to become a certified teacher. Then he closed the circle: he paid for the volunteer who inspired him to earn her own Nigeria Certificate in Education.
We sat in the same exam hall in Gwoza during our final year.”
The
2005
Nigeria · Akwa Ibom
Uyo
The work begins with the Justice, Development and Peace Commission and Caritas Nigeria, in the Diocese of Uyo. Development learned the ground-level way.
The field years
Nigeria · North East
Across Nigeria
UNICEF Nigeria. Country Youth Programme Manager at VSO. Then the first Project Manager hired for Plan International's Humanitarian Response Programme in the North East, and humanitarian work with Save the Children UK. This is where the road met the conflict, and where Gwoza happened.
2013
Nigeria · Abuja
His own camera
Through those youth-programme years he was already a movement-builder. He founded the Camp 10:10 youth camps, wrote the book Don’t Judge Me... Help, and helped unveil VSO Nigeria’s first child volunteer. He filmed all of it. Open the archive, in his own words.
Four years
Nigeria · Borno
Maiduguri
A Bachelor of Education at the University of Maiduguri, and a promise kept. After training run by Pratham in Borno, he carried the Teaching at the Right Level approach back to Gwoza, to the very classrooms that had turned him.
By 2022
Cameroon & Sierra Leone
Cameroon & Sierra Leone
With Street Child: Senior Manager of Programmes, head of the Buea sub-office, later Head of Programmes. Education in emergencies through the Anglophone crisis, and Street2School, teaching street children in Pidgin English.
2025
Nigeria · Abuja
Abuja
Country Director of International Alert Nigeria. The humanitarian who once sat on a classroom floor in Gwoza now leads national peacebuilding: child protection, community resilience, and programmes that tackle the root causes of conflict across the country.
In the We Go Sabi pilot, 13 teachers were trained, and within seven weeks, 500 children, most of them displaced, climbed at least one level in literacy and numeracy.
Abuja, September 2025
From that floor
to a whole country.
For twenty years he kept children safe and learning through Boko Haram, the Anglophone crisis, and displacement across Nigeria, Cameroon and Sierra Leone. At International Alert Nigeria, that same instinct now works at national scale: building peace where conflict has taken root, with governments, communities and young people at the centre.
He directs programmes on justice and dialogue in the North West, climate-driven conflict in Sokoto and Benue, and safe schools nationwide. The fronts are different. The work is the same: resilience, engagement and conflict prevention where banditry, farmer-herder competition, gender-based violence and the scars of captivity still threaten everyday life.
from Kerala to Zamfara
Inclusive
neighbourhood spaces
He went to Kerala to study Kudumbashree, one of the world's largest women-led self-help movements, and the inclusive neighbourhood spaces that give children a place of their own. Then he carried the model home, training teachers and communities to build it in northern Nigeria, from Bungudu in Zamfara outward. It is the same neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood faith that drove his earliest youth movements, now practised at the level of states.
the first year in office
Peacebuilding
in practice
As Country Director, he partners with governments, civil society and global institutions to advance inclusive solutions in conflict-affected Nigeria: strengthening safeguarding, supporting mental health and psychosocial recovery, and empowering young people as drivers of peace. International Alert has worked here for over 15 years, from offices in Abuja, Sokoto and Benue. Three fronts from his first year:
Sokoto, November 2025
Justice within reach
A two-day, high-level dialogue on justice sector reform in North West Nigeria: judges, legislators, civil society and traditional leaders at one table, funded by UK FCDO through the SPRiNG programme. The dialogue advanced the Multidoor Courthouse model, with a bill at third reading in Zamfara and campaigns underway in Katsina.
Sokoto & Benue, February 2026
Powering peace through climate action
With the Sokoto State Government, International Alert inaugurated the steering committee for the second phase of Powering Peace through Climate Action, joining climate response to conflict prevention where the two pressures meet.
Abuja, April 2026
Schools without fear
A national stakeholder dialogue on anti-bullying in Nigerian schools, pairing school reporting mechanisms with Youth Peace Clubs. “It is important to note that bullying is not confined to schools; it occurs across all spheres of society: sports, workplaces, and even in leadership spaces.”
his own footage, 2013 to 2016
Before the title,
the conviction
Years before he was a Country Director, Kingsley Udo was a young man with a camera and a cause: founding youth movements, writing a book, training communities to protect their children. He filmed it all. This is where the story began.
Open the full archive: 11 films, 2013 to today
More on the work: Arise News on International Alert Nigeria and the SPRiNG programme in northern Nigeria.
Camp 10:10 · the youth movement he founded, 2013 “I am happy seeing how we are impacting the lives of children.”
He envisions a future where resilience and dialogue pave the way for sustainable peace. Two decades of humanitarian work in the hardest corners of West and Central Africa showed him where that future is built: close to the ground, in courtrooms, in climate committees, in school halls, and in the communities where conflict has done its worst.
The work continues.
Community by community.
