It’s not every day a professor ends up teaching a country’s president. But that’s exactly what happened to Eghosa Osaghae, one of Nigeria’s most respected political thinkers. He didn’t chase the opportunity — it came as a call to serve.

In 1989, while he was barely 30 years old, the University of Ibadan-trained scholar joined a handpicked Nigerian delegation of professors sent to Monrovia to instruct Liberia’s ruling elite.

The request came directly from then-President Samuel Doe, who had resumed his studies and needed in-country academic support to complete a Master’s in Political Science.

“It was part of Nigeria’s support for Liberia,” Mr Osaghae, who is now the Director General of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, NIIA, recalls in an exclusive interview with PREMIUM TIMES. “Not military support, but intellectual engagement.”

That mission, interrupted by the outbreak of Liberia’s devastating civil war, remains one of the most fascinating — and little-known — episodes in West African diplomacy.

It not only highlighted Nigeria’s regional soft power at the time but also marked a unique experiment in statecraft, scholarship, and international cooperation.

The Ibrahim Babangida Graduate Programme in International Studies at the University of Liberia was inaugurated in 1988, commemorating then Brigadier General Ibrahim Babangida, former Head of State of Nigeria.

This academic initiative emerged from a bilateral agreement between the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the Republic of Liberia during the tenure of President Samuel Doe.

The programme offers a comprehensive focus on International Relations, Political Theory, Comparative Politics, and Government, fostering academic specialisation in these key areas.

“The president of Liberia at the time, may his soul rest in peace, Samuel Doe, was back in school. He was taking a master’s in political science in Liberia,” Mr Osaghae said. “He didn’t have the luxury… of going to study outside Liberia. So he approached the Nigerian government to send him a team of seven professors who would teach him and the rest of the class.”

That “rest of the class” turned out to be the Liberian government itself.

“There were seven of us… Having to teach the president of a country. As far as I recall, all the ministers in Liberia were in that programme. Even the president of the Senate and the speaker of the House of Representatives. There were students also.”

For Mr Osaghae, then a specialist in comparative politics — one of the foundational subfields of political science — it was an unusual opportunity.

“That was how I got nominated and went to Liberia along with the other professors… It was a very wonderful experience.”

Despite the sensitive nature of the assignment and the proximity to power, Mr Osaghae maintains that the relationship with Mr Doe was strictly academic.

“Professional relationship only. Nothing personal or private.”

Still, the connection was genuine. Mr Doe, who had taken his first degree from the University of Liberia, saw in Mr Osaghae a version of the academic future he desired for himself.

“He actually had laid out his future plan, which included leaving government and becoming a university professor. But there was something that he sort of found very attractive about me… I was the youngest of all of us who went there… And I was the only one who studied in Nigeria. So I was homegrown. And that excited him to no end.”

Mr Osaghae recalls the former Liberian president often saying: “Professor, I’d like to be like you.”

It was a moment of pride for the Nigerian professor, especially as many of his colleagues in the programme were foreign-trained.

“The other guys had studied in the U.S., mostly, and then in the U.K., and so on. But here I was…”

According to Mr Osaghae, Liberia, at the time, was a place of promise. Monrovia, with its U.S. dollar legal tender and its peaceful streets, felt like an ideal posting.

“Liberia had to be one of the sweetest places to live in the world,” The NIIA DG declared. “People who were contented and happy. There was very little crime.”

The contrast with what would come shortly after — the brutal civil war that erupted in late 1989 — remains stark in his memory.

“If a thief broke into any person’s house in Liberia, what would they steal? Maybe two cups of rice. Maybe one piece of cotton on the window. You could leave your doors unlocked.”

He was in the U.S. when he was called back to go to Liberia and found himself stunned by how peaceful the country was.

“But you know what happens to a place like Liberia after war? It’s not the same thing.”
The once-cohesive society became fractured. Roads and institutions were destroyed, and violence took root.“The country that didn’t know violence at all had come to see that kind of violence on a large scale.”

Still, Mr Osaghae acknowledges the efforts Liberia has made in recovery.

“The rebuilding efforts have gone on. And they also had a peace and reconciliation process, which has been very helpful. Liberia remains a place of joy,” he concluded.