Abdourahmane Idrissa on wrestling with the state in West Africa and the Sahel.

This week, we get to hear Dr Abdourahmane Idrissa, a Nigerien philosopher and political scientist based in Leiden but who has worked and lived all around the world. Idrissa’s areas of research expertise include the state, Islam, democracy, and security in the Sahel and West Africa more broadly.In this episode, he speaks with Henry and Gaddafi a truly wide range of subjects, from the impact of 9/11 on his academic path to the birth and death of the Songhai empire, and from the intellectual prophets of the 1960s to West African social structure - and, of course, the security crises in the Sahel.

In this episode I'm speaking to Dr. Samuel Ntewusu, the director of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana in Accra.Prof. Ntewusu is an expert in African history and politics and teaches African studies and specifically courses on chieftaincy and development in Africa. We talk about moral icons, chiefs, the impact of the display of wealth by Ghanaian politicians, how to be approachable as a teacher, and a lot more.

In this episode, you’ll hear Dr Mildred Ambani Songoro, a university lecturer and Land Use Planner, GIS Expert, and Cartographer with over ten years’ experience in Nairobi, Kenya. In this episode, Charity talks with her about why “planners come after God”, about what it means to teach urban planning in the aftermath of COVID, about her research on industrial gentrification in Nairobi, and how to prevent a PhD from giving you permanent head damage.

In this episode, we are introduced to Dr. Angela Adeoye, a senior lecturer at the University of Jos whose work sits at the intersection of gender, conflict management, and development. Drawing on her research in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps in Northern Nigeria, she reflects on how gender-based violence is shaped by conflict and displacement. Dr Adeoye also speaks candidly about the realities of Nigerian academia, including mystification, chronic underfunding and its impact on research quality.

In this first episode of the brand new season, we are introduced to Dr. Zubairu Dagona, a professor at the University of Jos who specialises in Clinical Psychology at the University of Jos. In this conversation, he shares how engagement with qualitative methods has shaped his understanding of trauma and healing within the Nigerian context. Dr. Dagona also articulates a compelling argument against the reliance on Western instruments, suggesting that such practices can perpetuate neocolonial attitudes in research. Besides that, he critiques the prevalent academic culture that dismisses qualitative research as inferior, advocating for a comprehensive approach that includes both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. 

Abraham Dogo is a Professor of Veterinary Parasitology, Entomology and Public Health at the University of Jos, Nigeria. In this final episode of the season, he talks with Henry about phytomedicine, his directorship at the Africa Centre of Excellence in Phytomedicine Research and Development, and his work as a clergyman - all in the unusual times of COVID-19. They also touch on the potential of COVID-tea and other herbal solutions to the coronavirus, the positive impact of lockdowns on innovation in the church, ASUU's never-ending strikes, anti-snake-venom vaccines, and the central role of church care groups in Nigeria. 

Gaddafi meets Aliyu Isa Aliyu, Senior Lecturer in Mathematics at Federal University Dutse, Nigeria, and Senior Research Associate at Sun-Yatsen University in China. Dr Aliyu speaks about his work and academic career, including his recipe for a successful PhD, the high quality of Nigerian undergraduate math courses, the role of complex mathematics in fixing hospital queueing, lie symmetry analysis, the need for a total overhaul of Nigerian basic education, GPS software that can help you locate your cars and loved ones, and even the potential of politics to give back to society. 

Gaddafi talks to Ibrahim Bello Kano ("IBK"), Professor of English Studies at Bayero University Kano and vocal critic and public intellectual. They talk about the romance of academia but also its (sometimes ugly) political economy, and also touch upon: the growing historical ignorance of students; the importance of the literary analysis of nonfiction writing; the place of non-African sources in a decolonised curriculum; why staying in university housing makes academics subservient; the threat of intellectual ghettoisation; the central place instability should have in our social analyses; and the challenges of Nigerianisation versus universalist thought. 

Henry talks with Barira Mohammed, a historian and Director of Research at Plateau State University in Bokkos, central Nigeria. Henry and Dr. Mohammed touch on the impact of COVID on teaching and research in Nigeria, the importance of being a polyglot, Nigeria's school of historical championed by Prof. Bala Usman, the responsibility of African scholars to come together and assert themselves, the need for reform in African academic journals, and the complex position of South Africa in the Global South. 

Gaddafi speaks to Yusuf M. Adamu: member of the Nigerian Academy of Letters, Social Science Academy of Nigeria Laureate, poet, novelist, critic, blogger and photographer, and a professor of medical geography at the Bayero University Kano. They discuss Prof. Adamu's work on maternal health and other academic matters, but also engage with his work as a poet and author - both in English and Hausa. They raise questions about what Nigerian youth should be taught, who gets to set the intellectual agenda in Nigerian academia, how writing can change the world, why gender equity is important, and how important female readership is to northern Nigerian literature.