Eghosa Osaghae, a professor and the director-general of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), is widely regarded as one of Nigeria’s leading political scientists and public intellectuals.

A former Vice Chancellor of Igbinedion University and long-time faculty member at the University of Ibadan, his voice carries weight in discussions on education, governance, and regional integration.

In this exclusive interview with PREMIUM TIMES, the NIIA DG speaks about his formative years in the classroom, an unusual experience teaching Liberia’s top government officials, his thoughts on the direction of Nigeria’s higher education and the evolution of ECOWAS at 50.

Excerpts…

PT: While you were in school (University of Ibadan), you taught a course that virtually everyone across faculties had to take in one way or another. How did that make you feel? And for those who don’t know, please tell us what course it was.

Osaghae: The course is POS 111 — Introduction to Politics. There’s an Ethiopian proverb that describes the life of a teacher as a giant tree. Under that tree, from season to season, from week to week, and year to year, everyone comes to enjoy what it offers. To each person, it means something different — wisdom, knowledge, rest, community, even refuge. That’s the life of a teacher.

The classroom is your factory, your main office — a sacred place where you shape people’s destinies and empower them for life after school. When I taught POS 111, my goal was to ignite students’ passion for political science.

Politics is a master science — that’s not my phrase. The Greek philosophers said it first. Anyone who aims to govern properly must be well-versed in politics. It’s central to nation-building, community building, and governance.

PT: Many who passed through you remember you could teach for an hour without referring to notes. How did you manage that?

Osaghae: I never took lecture notes to class. A teacher gives what they have. You can’t give what you don’t know. So, I made sure I was well prepared, understood what I was teaching, and was ready to challenge and motivate students to think critically.

The classroom isn’t just for delivering content — it’s a space for analytical thinking and engagement. My classes were not monologues. I encouraged students to prepare ahead, to question, and to engage. It was a dialogue. I didn’t pretend that I knew everything that I wanted to teach. But the students also helped me a great deal because they had a course outline, and I would encourage them to say, before we come for the next class, make sure that you’re also prepared. Go and read ahead of class, and so on

PT: At one point, you were selected ahead of more senior colleagues to go to Liberia and set up the IBB Leadership School. Why do you think you were chosen?

Osaghae: This was 1989–90. 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. And 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 in the MA Political Science course.

The Nigerian government itself then went looking for seven professors in different fields. What was allotted to UI was comparative politics. And that’s my speciality. I’m in comparative politics.

That was how I got nominated and went to Liberia along with the other professors, seven of us, who then had the most unusual experience, having to teach the president of a country.

And then having to see the entire government, almost, of Liberia in school. Because, 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.

PT: What was your relationship with President Doe and General Babangida like?

Osaghae: Professional relationship only. Nothing personal or private. With Dr Samuel Doe, he was very enthusiastic. He actually had laid out his future plan, which included leaving the government and becoming a university professor.

But there was something that he found very attractive about me. Two things. First, I was the youngest of all of us who went there. The second was that of the seven of us, I was the only one who studied in Nigeria. So I was homegrown. And that excited him to no end.

PT: Can you describe life in Liberia then? Have you visited since the war?

Osaghae: Liberia had to be one of the sweetest places to live in the world. I was in the US when I was recalled to go to Liberia. From the moment I arrived at Roberts Field International, I saw a country, a society at peace with itself, people who were content and happy.

There was very little crime. I used to joke: if a thief broke into any person’s house in Liberia, what would they steal? Maybe two cups of rice. And maybe one piece of cotton on the window. So Liberia was so peaceful, you could leave your doors unlocked.

But you know what happens to a place like Liberia after war? It’s not the same thing. The country that didn’t know violence at all had come to see that kind of violence on a large scale.

And now Liberia has become a very divided society. That was very unfortunate. But the rebuilding efforts have gone on. They also had a peace and reconciliation process, which has been very helpful. Liberia remains a place of joy.

PT: Recently, ECOWAS marked its 50th anniversary. Would the Founding Fathers be proud of where it is today?

Osaghae: In life, there’s always more to be done. When ECOWAS came into being, the model of economic integration was what the world knew. But General Yakubu Gowon, one of the founding fathers, said that following the Nigerian Civil War, he undertook a thank-you visit to his neighbours for their support, and that’s how the idea of ECOWAS integration came.

So those founding fathers, on the 28th of May in 1975, signed what is now called the Treaty of Lagos, establishing ECOWAS. And ECOWAS has blossomed. It has gone beyond economic integration to political stability, and now into governance and constitutionalism. One of the more notable ones is the Protocol on Free Movement of Goods and Persons, which has been a huge success.

Most of all, the one area where ECOWAS has become a true model for the global south is the initiative in 1990 with ECOMOG. It was the first time that, for what has become the mantra today — African solutions to African problems — Africa intervened effectively.

PT: Finally, as a former Vice-Chancellor, what are the major challenges facing Nigeria’s tertiary education today?

Osaghae: I even think that today we have brighter, better-equipped, and better-educated people graduating from our universities. We haven’t had any decline in the quality of our education. If anything, the quality has grown higher. But what is the challenge? The major challenge I see is that universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education seem to have lost the appearance of relevance to society. Whatever has happened to them is because society can no longer see the difference that they make.

Universities should be at the forefront of solving many of our problems. Look at electricity and clean water. What are the institutions doing about that?

For example, there was a prolonged drought in Cape Town for nearly three years. But the universities came together and conquered drought. These are the kinds of things that one wants to see.

We’ve been conditioned to be consumers of things produced from outside. We need a reorientation. We need a new template for our universities and institutions of higher learning. They have to become more relevant. And once they hit that relevance factor, we will be the ones saying: we cannot afford to have the universities closed for even one week.