Many would say it is overdue for a major text on Malam Ibrahim Muazzam to show the engagement with Classical and Contemporary Political Thought in a Nigerian university in the decade of the eighties. Nobody better embodies that realm than him in the case of Bayero University, Kano, (BUK) until his retirement recently.
His intertextual grasp of the subject matter was such that with him, Classical Political Thought covered more than its key Western voices to the non-Western, especially the implication of such voices for the African world. This is more so if he was taking the fourth year version, “Third World Political Thought”
Such an exertion that lasted about 40 years certainly need documentation, and in the process, deconstruction of the man and the process taken together.
Malam Ibrahim Muazzam
Now, that is about to be done. The masterminds are still working on what the final outcome would look like but the journey of a thousand miles has started and the snippets such as the thematic areas are out in the side graphic in this story. According to what Intervention was told, until it becomes a finished product, the team working on the planned project will continue to receive more suggestions on how best it should turn out.
When it turns out fine, it will not be just about a teacher and the teaching of Political Thought in BUK but the story of the depth of knowledge Muazzam’s generation received at the Ahmadu Bello University, (ABU), Zaria in the late 1970s and from where he emerged as an academic at Bayero University, Kano in the 1980s, handling that course as to have trained students scattered all over the country and beyond today with a uniquely Muazzamic touch in that realm.
A book of this sort would thus be another angle to the recent past in what the different potential contributors bring to the table on the ‘Pilosopher-king’
