I met Professor Elaigwu through his former teacher and mentor, the late Professor Ali Mazrui who transited to glory on October 12 2014. My meeting with Professor Mazrui was fortuitous.
I was living in London at the time and had founded the publishing company, Adonis & Abbey publishers (www.adonis-abbey.com), in 2003. The following year, I also founded the periodical, African Renaissance, then a bi-monthly, semi academic journal, modelled after the US magazine, Foreign Affairs. That was at the height of ‘Afro-pessimism’, and there were efforts, especially from the Thabo Mbeki-led ANC government in South Africa, to promote the notion of ‘African renaissance’. One of the conservative newspapers in the UK had derided the whole notion of ‘African renaissance’ by mockingly posing the rhetorical question of ‘when did Africa ever have a naissance’. We used the journal to challenge theories and assumptions which we felt denigrated Africa or ruled out democratic and developmental possibilities for the continent.
The maiden edition, published in June 2004, was on ‘Afro-Arab Relations: Co-operation or Conflict’. The contributors included – Gamal Nkrumah (Nkrumah’s son), Mammo Muchie, Helmi Sharawi, Kwesi Prah, Marcel Kittissou and Chinweizu. The Ethiopian scholar Mammo Muchie gave me Professor Mazrui’s telephone number and suggested we should get him involved in the journal. Professor Ali Mazrui was already larger than life not just by his intellectual engagements but also by his documentary ‘Africa – A Triple Heritage’ (1986). Given his global stature, I wasn’t exactly full of confidence that an obscure scholar like me who had set up a nondescript publishing company and an unknown journal would get much of his attention. Surprisingly when I called, he was quite generous with his time.
I told him of his books I had read and proudly regurgitated some of the quotes I memorized from some of those books. However, rather irreverently, I told him that I didn’t like his allegorical work – The Trial of Christopher Okigbo (1972). I told him that I threw it away in disgust after reading it. Mazrui was silent for a while and then asked me if I thought I was old enough to understand the message of the book since I said I read it as an undergraduate when I was still a teenager. I argued that it was wrong for Okigbo to be found guilty in the book’s Hereafter apparently for subordinating his art as a poet to his community (Biafra). I further argued that a writer’s community preceded his art and that a writer who subordinates his art to his community is only celebrating art for art’s sake.
There was a long silence through which my pounding heart told me I had blown the opportunity. When Mazrui finally spoke, it was to give me his home telephone number and ask me to call at my convenience. We became quite close. I was his junior intellectual sparring partner because he would often email an opinion to me and ask me what I thought of it. Initially I was too deferential to disagree with his opinions but I also quickly found out that he preferred me to disagree with him or to “debate” him as he would put it. Our publishing company also became his preferred European publisher. In 2006, we published his very important work, A Tale of two Africas: South Africa and Nigeria as Contrasting Visions. In a book I edited in 2009 titled: Who is an African? Identity, Citizenship and the Making of the Africa Nation, Professor Mazrui contributed two chapters as well as the Preface to the book. Professor Elaigwu facilitated Gowon writing the Foreword to the book.
In 2011 we also published Public Intellectuals and the Politics of Global Africa: Essays in Honour of Ali A. Mazrui which was edited by Seifudein Adem, then Associate Director of Mazrui’s Institute of Global Cultural Studies at Binghamton University, USA. Professor Mazrui also became an adviser to African Renaissance. It was perhaps the recognition of our close relationship that when he transited to glory on October 12 2014, I was appointed co-editor of the book of worldwide tributes to him. The book titled, A Giant Tree has Fallen: Tributes to Ali Al-Amin Mazrui was published in 2016 by African Perspectives Publishers of South Africa.
Meeting Professor Elaigwu
Professor Mazrui introduced me to his former student and mentee, eminent Nigerian political scientist, Professor Jonah Isawa Elaigwu. We bonded very quickly, with our publishing company publishing the international edition of a number of his previously published books, including his magnum opus, Gowon: The Biography of a Soldier-Statesman. Professor Elaigwu also introduced me to a number of people in his circle including Dan Agbese, one of the founders of the iconic Newswatch magazine who was later to publish with us one of the most authoritative biographies of former military president Babangida entitled, Ibrahim Babangida: The Military, Politics And Power in Nigeria (2012).
Professor Elaigwu took active interest not just in my publishing firm but also in my career, strongly encouraging me to return ‘home’ and run it from here. When I began writing a back page column for the Daily Trust (2010-2020), Professor Elaigwu would often email comments or critiques of some of my writings.
Sometime in 2010, Jennifer (Jamila) Abubakar, then a wife to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and one of our authors, asked me if I would like to return to Nigeria to help in her husband’s presidential campaign. Atiku had then challenged President Jonathan for the PDP’s presidential ticket. I enthusiastically accepted the offer and was part of Atiku Abubakar’s Presidential campaign team from October 2010 to December 2010. The three month stay during the campaign, among others, gave me the opportunity to meet Professor Elaigwu face-to-face which further cemented our relationship.
After Atiku failed to get the presidential ticket, I returned to the UK but relocated back to the country in early 2011. Professor Elaigwu was insistent that I needed “an academic address” and facilitated my appointment as a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Nasarawa State University, Keffi. He invited me to several events organized by his Institute of Governance and Social Research (IGSR), Jos, and occasionally sent me to other institutions to present papers in his behalf. Despite his deteriorating health in the last ten years or so, Professor Elaigwu continued to write, and remained intellectually alert. For instance, in June 2025, he sent the manuscript, Leadership and Governance in Africa, which he asked me to read over and index for him. It will now be one of two books he wrote which would be published posthumously – the other being, Nigeria: A Compendium of Selected Violent Conflicts 1980-2021.
Professor Elaigwu was not just an academic mentor but also a general adviser. As an adviser he primarily used two methods – one was the use of wits and humour. For instance, in 2015, Professor Elaigwu and I were among three Nigerian scholars invited to a global conference of Africanists in Nairobi, Kenya, to discuss how to institutionalize the intellectual legacies of Professor Ali Mazrui who died a year earlier.
We flew with Kenyan Airways. I am a self-confessed coward in several areas of life including heights and flying. Professor Elaigwu sat just on the seat in front of me. I was getting really uncomfortable with the bumpy turbulence and whispered several times to him, “Prof, this is getting out of hand”. He would part me on the shoulder and whisper back, “Everyone here is as afraid as you are. They hide their fears. So hide your own too.”
At other times he would resort to the ‘Socratic method’, in which he would ask a series of questions so that in the end you would take the decision yourself. For instance, shortly after Buhari came to power in 2015, a number of academics and public intellectuals received forms (presumably from the Office of the then Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El Rufai) asking them to list areas they would like to serve in the government. At that time Buhari did not have a cabinet or even advisers and there were a lot of idealisms and expectations from the new government.
I received one of such forms. Though I appreciated the honour of being approached, I was conflicted because I was a known critic of Buhari and the APC through my column in the Daily Trust. I went to consult a number of individuals I held in esteem – Bishop Matthew Kukah, Fr. George Ehusani and of course Professor Elaigwu.
“So you are concerned that as a critic, a political appointment would silence your voice?”, he asked with grandfather type of wise grin.
“Of course that is a big part of it”, I answered.
He smiled again. “I think you are wrong on that. A political appointment does not stop anyone from being a critic. It merely transforms you from being a critic for public applause into putting your criticisms as a memo and in a nicer language”.
He then asked several other questions: What would you hope to accomplish by holding that office? How well do you sleep, because once you get a political appointment you will also realize that sleep is a luxury and privilege?
While we spoke quite often on the phone, the last time I saw him was when I went to record his goodwill message for my Inaugural Lecture in November 2024. Though he had become weaker as the years went by, he insisted on walking me to the door. When in the early hours of July 22 2025 I received a phone call from one of his daughters, I knew immediately that the worst had happened. For the next 24 hours, the shock of his transition was overwhelming. Professor Elaigwu was a good man.
Born in Otukpo, Benue State, on March 10, 1948, Professor Elaigwu transited to glory in Jos, Plateau State, around 2 AM, on Tuesday, July 22, 2025, aged 77 years. He was the President of the Institute of Governance and Social Research (IGSR), based in Jos, and a foremost authority both in comparative federalism and on civil-military relations. He is credited with writing the concept paper for the National Council on Inter-Governmental Relations (NCIR) of which he became the D-G, and which ran for about four years before it was scrapped by the Abacha regime.
From teaching at Ahmadu Bello University, Professor Elaigwu moved to the University of Jos, where he was able to bring the legendary Ali Mazrui to hold a concurrent Faculty Chair in the department. He was variously an Executive Committee Member, Research Committee on Federalism and Federation; Chairman, Board of Trustees, United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR); Member, Presidential Advisory Committee at the Presidency and a Director, New Nigerian Development Company (NNDC) of yore.
