Board Member
The Peace Institute · Since 2024
Brigadier General Saleh Bala (Rtd) is a decorated military officer, defence strategist, and security policy expert with four decades of experience spanning combat command, UN peacekeeping, and executive advisory roles across Africa and the United States.
Brig Gen Bala is the Chief Executive Officer of White Ink Consult, a private defence and security research, strategic communications, and training consultancy based in Abuja, Nigeria. He is also founder of the White Ink Institute for Strategy Education and Research (WISER), focused on capacity building at executive and middle-cadre levels in security governance and national security policy. Commissioned into the Nigerian Army on 15 December 1984, he served in varied command, staff, and training capacities — including as company commander of the 72 Parachute Battalion, instructor at the Nigerian Army Infantry School (Airborne, Tactics and Special Warfare Wings), and directing staff at both the Nigerian Armed Forces Command and Staff College and the National Defence College. His peacekeeping record includes service as a UN Military Observer with the United Nations Verification Mission in Angola II (1995–96) and as Military Chief of Staff with the United Nations Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (2011–12). He later served as Senior Special Adviser (Policy and Strategy Development) to the Honourable Minister of Interior, Federal Republic of Nigeria (2015–2017). Bala is a resource associate of the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies (ACSS) at the National Defence University, Washington DC, and of the Africa Institute for Strategic and Security Studies, Alexandria, Virginia. He has worked extensively with the ACSS on sensitisation and capacity development for the formulation of National Security Strategies and Preventing/Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) strategies across Africa.
