Innocent was born on February 6th, 1966 at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Umuahia (now capital of Abia State) to the family of late Pa Dennis & Eileen Chukwuma of Umuodia village in Umuegwu-Mpam in Ahiazu local government area of Imo State. The fifth in a family of seven, Innocent had his primary education at St Stephen’s primary school; and secondary education at Holy Ghost College in Umuahia before proceeding to University of Nigeria, Nsukka campus for his undergraduate studies. 

Like every child who grew up after the civil war, where every family had to start life with £20, regardless of how much they owned before the war, Innocent never had a childhood. He had to help from an early age in augmenting the family income through hawking and assisting his mother in trading. Helping his mother and putting a smile on her face daily, was Innocent’s joy. He did this in the mornings, and went to school in the afternoon. Through this, Innocent cut his tooth in entrepreneurship, which helped in later in life in being a serial social entrepreneur. 

Innocent gained admission into UNN in 1986 to study Religion & Philosophy. In his second year he joined the radical student movement known as the Marxist Youth Movement, and through that joined students’ union politics and got elected Speaker of the UNN Student Union, as well as Senate President of the National Association of Nigerian Students, NANS. Watching late Chima Ubani, then the President of the Students Union Government, SUG speaking at Zik House, influenced his joining the student union activism. He was among the student leaders across Nigerian campuses that led the national anti-SAP (Structural Adjustment Programme) protest of 1988/89 which was the first organised national resistance against the World Bank/International Monetary Fund Structural Adjustment Programme that destroyed the social welfare movement in Nigeria.
As a result of the protest, Innocent and other student leaders from UNN were expelled and had to fight it out in court, to get re-instated in school. It was the late Gani Fawehinmi and Civil Liberties Organization, CLO that gave him free legal assistance, which got him back to school, and enable him graduate.

On graduation, Innocent was posted to Monguno in Borno State for his National Youth Service, NYSC. He spent only a few months there, before deciding to relocate to Lagos, to join his friends and mentors in the students movement – Chima Ubani and Emma Ezeazu (both of blessed memory) – who at the time were working in Civil Liberties Organization, CLO, the foremost human rights organization in Nigeria. He got to Lagos and squatted with his friends at their two bed-room apartment in Fadeyi. He followed them to work daily, as a volunteer because he felt it was his way of saying thank you for the assistance rendered to him.

Long before he built his profile as an expert in crime and policing in Nigeria, Innocent first ventured into civil society in the professional space as an unpaid volunteer at Civil Liberties Organization (Nigeria’s foremost Innocent’s human rights organization) in 1991. He was promoted to a full-time member of the staff a year later after he put together a report on police human rights abuses. His career at CLO spanned 6 years, rising from an Assistant Program Officer to Acting Executive Director, a position he held before resigning from the organization in December 1997. While at CLO, Innocent was actively involved with various other pro-democracy groups, he was also among those who lobbied for sanctions against the military before the US Congress, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, etc. His work in these various international campaigns won him the prestigious Reebok award in 1996 (the first of many awards he would go on to win for his groundbreaking work across the decades), which included a cash component of $25,000. An amount he would go on to use to set up the CLEEN foundation in the coming years.

Innocent’s Career as a serial entrepreneur in the civil society space began when he founded CLEEN (Centre for Law Enforcement Education in Nigeria) in January 1998. The idea to found CLEEN stemmed from the absence of an organization that would both chronicle police abuse and work with them as they began their transition from military to civilian police. He set out in CLEEN to build partnerships between civil society and law enforcement agencies, pioneering institutional research into law and enforcement agencies and introducing Community Policing in Nigeria. Under his tenure, CLEEN reviewed the legal framework of the police in Nigeria .CLEEN was the first African nongovernmental organization to receive the prestigious MacArthur Foundation Award for Creative and Effective Institutions  As the organization's executive director, Innocent saw to the longevity of the foundation by setting up an endowment fund for its sustainability.  

Innocent’s work as an entrepreneur in the civil society space extended past CLEEN. He founded several other organizations with and without partners across the years to address key issues he found in Nigeria’s ecosystem, all of which he handed off to successors to run. These include-

•     Transition Monitoring Group (TMG) in 1998 (with Edetaen Ojo, Clement Nwankwo, and Festus Okoye) – The foremost independent civil society election-based organization in Nigeria
•     Network on Police Reforms in Nigeria (NOPRIN) in 2000- A network of 53 Civil Society Organizations spread across Nigeria and committed to promoting police accountability and respect for human rights.
•     Altus Global Alliance in 2004
•     African Policing Civilian Oversight Forum (APCOF) in 2004 
•     Oluaka Institute of Technology in 2017 
•     Impact Investors Foundation in 2018

Innocent's work in Nigeria’s Civil Society space took another turn when he joined the Ford Foundation in 2013 as the Regional Director for West Africa, the first Nigerian to hold that position. From Lagos, he oversaw all grant making in the region, supporting efforts to ensure that all people have equal access to economic and social opportunities. In managing this work, he addressed issues of democratic and accountable government, freedom of expression, and sexuality and reproductive health and rights. Notable achievements of the Foundation’s West Africa office under his tenure include:

•     Coordinating strategic funding by Ford, McArthur Foundation, and OSIWA (Open Society Institute for Africa) for the anti-corruption agenda of the government, after President Buhari’s election in 2015
•     Pioneering the hosting of essential conversations on Nigeria’s civil war, its impact, and the way forward.
•     Initiating the groundbreaking work of impact investing in Nigeria to leverage private sector resources towards meeting the Sustainable Development Goals.
•     Supporting Lagos State Government with vehicles to assist in contact tracing at the height of the pandemic (2020).

Innocent retired from Ford Foundation on January 31st, 2021, after eight years of meritorious service.

Innocent met his lovely wife of 23 years, Josephine (a feminist and women's rights activist) in September 1996. After a fast courtship, Josephine and Innocent married on July 19th of the following year, a date important to the couple for more reasons than one. Referred to as the 1st human rights couple in Nigeria, as they were the 1st activists to meet on the job and get married. Josephine and Innocent to all who knew them were inseparable in planning their wedding, they operated on the philosophy of "equal founders and equal joiners." They both moved from their respective apartments into a place they jointly found and set up. Their love and marriage was one of true partnership that will continue to serve as the bedrock of our family for years to come. Innocent and Josephine are blessed with three wonderful daughters- Chidinma Ekanem, Amarachi Itu and Nkechi Ama. Innocent was well known as his daughters' biggest fan, supporting and championing them and their accomplishments to all who would hear through the years.