Paul Gadi on Polytechnics in Nigeria

In this episode you'll hear Paul Gadi, who is a faculty member in the Department of Business Administration and Management at Plateau State Polytechnic in Barkin Ladi, Nigeria.This week is about polytechnics, which sits at the intersection between vocational and academic education and could play a key role in upskilling Nigeria's working population. Dr. Gadi tells us about the bad and the good of these important institutions and shares what he would do if he were rector at the Plapoly, the consequences of Nigerian academia becoming a family affair, and the differences between Malaysian and Nigerian academia

Hajiya Halima Ben Umar is a Nigerian public intellectual and the Executive Director at Women in Media Communication Initiative. She is based in Kano, northern Nigeria, where she also co-anchors the popular TV programme Mata A Yau, Women Today in Hausa, that you will also hear discussed in the conversation. Ben Umar speaks with Gaddafi about fighting for the rights of women in Islam while being a working mother of seven; her tensions and collaborations with Islamic scholars; her Islamically-inspired engagement with a range of social problems such as drug use, mental health, and teenage pregnancies; and the importance of educating young girls - and what happens if a society fails to do so.

In this episode, Henry speaks with Dr Julie Sanda, a political scientist and the director general of the Plateau Peace Building Agency in Jos. In a very open and frank conversation, they explore the ethics of international partnerships, the impact of the difficulties of life on Nigerian academics, the importance of storytelling in science, being a “pocket psychologist”, and what the Nigerian academy looks like when it is intellectually vibrant and exciting.

This week, you will hear Dr Nzioka John Muthama, a professor at the University of Nairobi. Dr Muthama is an applied meteorologist with an interest in climate change and sustainability, and long experience teaching university students from the BA to the PhD.In this episode, he talks to Charity about the drastic changes in the University of Nairobi’s teaching methods after COVID, the impacts of his research on the ozone layer and climate change, the four questions of methodology, and writing a thesis that everybody wants to read.

In this episode, Gaddafi is speaking to Ibrahim Sani Kankara, an associate professor and pioneer head of the department of anthropology, faculty of history and development studies at Bayero University Kano, northern Nigeria. In this conversation, Dr Kankara talks about historians always being afraid of numbers, teaching students to mould their character, the importance of collaboration when researching conflict, and more.

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.