For teaching purposes, Dr. Nwaubani's primary field is African history. Over the years, he has offered courses on aspects of precolonial, colonial and postcolonial African history. He also offers interdisciplinary seminars on subjects such as "Peoples and Cultures of West Africa," which draws heavily from the methods and discourse of anthropology as well as "The World Bank, the IMF, and the Crisis of Development in Africa," which follows the political economy approach. At the UMass-Dartmouth, he teaches "Introduction to African and African-American Studies."

Dr. Nwaubani's scholarship is primarily focused on colonial Nigeria (especially, constitutional and political history, decolonization, nationalist politics, as well as the invention and evolution of the Nigerian state). His areas of secondary research interest are (a) decolonization of British West Africa, (b) precolonial Igbo, and (e) United States diplomacy in sub-Saharan Africa. These are all areas in which he has done extensive reading, research, and some publications. He has also read widely and published on contemporary African political economy. His primary research, at the moment, is on "Nigeria: The Politics of Decolonization, 1937-1960."