By Adagbo Onoja
Eminent scholar and activist, Prof Jonah Isawa Elaigwu is harvesting appellations across the world a day after his demise. Bits and pieces available to Intervention indicated his death early Tuesday, July 22, 2025 within an hour or thereabout of noticing breathing difficulty, meaning that death gave him little or no notice of striking. It was perhaps an Elaigwuseque way of departing because he wasn’t the sort of person who would have liked to be a subject of showers of emotions on a sick bed. It wasn’t pride but just a certain sense of self-understanding.
NPSA president, Prof Hassan Saliu invoked ‘larger than size’ language game
Fellow political scientists, former students and colleagues are referencing the complexity of his personality in a surge of appellations. The Nigerian Political Science Association (NPSA) leads the pack, starting with a tribute to Elaigwu by NPSA president, Prof Hassan Saliu. A revised version of the tribute has been most aptly titled ‘Larger Than His Size: A Tribute to Late Prof Elaigwu’. Prof Elaigwu was, indeed, a case of larger than his size. His gaze towered over and above his size, something he never forgot to signify each time he mounted a podium. ‘Can you see me?’ he would rhetorically ask the audience, a way of telling them: I may not be as tall as the podium but you had better listen because I think I have something to say. He always had something to say, especially but not exclusively on (comparative) federalism.
This must be the point Prof Chris Kwaja who must have encountered Elaigwu at UNIJOS is conveying by calling Elaigwu the Oracle. The oracular about him is unmissable when he spoke, with his extraordinary gift of what Prof Victor Adetula has referenced as Elaigwu’s contribution through ‘figurative expressions’.
It was in inventing or fabricating figurative expressions that Elaigwu came to his own. In fact, the puzzle is why he (and Prof Ali Mazrui) are not reckoned with as pioneer African discourse theorists instead of their current label as post-colonialists. Could that have to do with the incomprehensible hostility of some leading African scholars to the posts (poststructuralism, postcolonialism and decoloniality)? Otherwise, Elaigwu and Mazrui (and Bolaji Akinyemi to0, particularly for coining ‘the godfather complex’ which sums up so much about logocentrism, imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism) are the African replica of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the structuralist theorisation of language/meaning. A single example would suffice. Elaigwu will talk about Churchianity without Christianity’, something that makes sense only from a Wittgenstein notion of language game: meaning comes from usage of a word or an expression, not from a fixed, referential meaning. In a way, Prof Elaigwu’s use of language buttresses what Peter Salmon (the latest biographer of Derrida) told us in a class on Continental Philosophy regarding why Wittgenstein doesn’t enjoy the same stature as Derrida even when he preceded Derrida. There is something puzzling there except for those who would say that Wittgenstein wasn’t as sure or as forthright as Derrida.
Elaigwu’s language game must be the sense behind Prof Moses Ochonu calling him an intellectual iroko because all of them in that bracket (Achebe, Mudimbe, Mazrui, Elaigwu, Akinyemi, Okello Oculi – notwithstanding his rejection of discourse theory- or Prof Adele Jinadu for his prophetic study of Frantz Fanon – notwithstanding Jinadu’s disapproval of the qualifier ‘prophetic’ and a whole lot of them) were or have iroko stature in that sense. But, somehow, their heroism has not been more fully explored because of the dominant tradition of political science scholarship in much of Africa. Perhaps, there might be a lesson on that now that the best essay in the British International Studies Association (BISA)’s 2024/2025 awards is Dr. Uygar Baspehlivan’s “Theorising the memescape: The spatial politics of Internet memes” (published in Review of International Studies, Vol.50, Issue 1, pp. 35 – 57). Oh yea, Nigerian Political Science doesn’t have to copy BISA but BISA is a force in the global politics of knowledge production.
Prof Ali Mazrui, Prof Elaigwu’s soul mate in word minting
Comrade Mathew Kuju, the Nasarawa State based veteran of community voice journalism concurs with this position, an inference drawn from him calling Elaigwu a towering figure, thereby taking us to the language game thing about Elaigwu. Physically, Elaigwu wasn’t towering. But in Kuju’s usage, he was, indeed, towering, being an authority on federalism and civil-military relations, two areas over which new nations in Africa have been grappling with through painful, misery-inducing wars and other forms of inter-ethnic hostility.
Above all, Prof Elaigwu’s death is bringing out key issues. UNIJOS’s Prof Victor Adetula is disclosing of a JOS School of Political Science to Elaigwu’s credit in a short tribute in one of NPSA platforms. This is what many Nigerian political scientists must be hearing for the first time, including this reporter. To know that there is such a School of Political Science is interesting. It may not be that surprising that there is a Jos School of Political Science, considering its University of Ibadan roots although it has since been understood that there is simply no link between Ibadan and Jos School of Political Science.
Ibadan School of Political Science, Ibadan School of History and the Zaria School of History are well known, especially the two schools of History but not Jos School of Political Science and what it says. Ibadan School of Political Science is a tough one which has turned out a nearly 100 per cent predictive score, a rarity in the social sciences. Unlike the two schools of History, Ibadan School of Political Science is not methodological warfare but on the soul of Nigeria.
From this, we can stretch Prof Elaigwu’s death to the question of how the brilliant start in academia could end up in the mediocrity that define what can be called the university system in Nigeria today? The mediocrity does not refer to the human resources component since the system still has its great minds. What the mediocrity speaks to is the totality of the system which is not able to even maintain the standards set by the pioneers, not to talk of rising higher above those standards.
May be the elders of Political Science discipline might want to have a session on this before widening the circle to the lower levels and to other disciplines. If this is what the death of Prof Elaigwu triggers, then the Oracle might still be at work even in his death. Did I say death? Do Oracles die? Intervention does not want Emi lokan‘s troubles. Those who want to know what the Ibadan School of Political Science has to say may, therefore, wish to go and find out.
Arising from the network crisis that circumscribed the circulation of Intervention‘s initial story on Prof Elaigwu, the story is reproduced below but minus the first paragraph which this new story has eaten into. The last paragraphs have also been updated just as the picture arrangements have been changed.
It is now known that he had a normal evening, retiring to bed around midnight Monday after watching an unnamed television programme with some of his children. A few hours later, he woke them up to report breathing difficulty. By the time they got to an Airforce medical facility, the doctors did nothing else than confirm him dead.
He died in the hands of two of his youngest daughters. They may be young but Intervention has been told they have been brought up in line with the Prof Elaigwu’s strict standards of propriety and brilliant finishing. Another of his children will be taking charge of The Institute of Governance and Social Research (IGSR) he set up and retired to.
From scholarly attention to federalism to scholarly attention to the biography of the chief ideologue of the federal idea in the making of Nigeria: Gen Gowon
Prof Istifanus Zabadi of the Department of Political Science at Bingham University in Karu, near Abuja was both an undergraduate student and later Special Assistant to Prof Elaigwu when Elaigwu was the Director-General of the National Council on Inter-Governmental Relations (NCIR). He told Intervention that coping with standards peculiar to Prof Elaigwu was what they learnt from him. In the end, Elaigwu would call the staff and say, I knew I was overworking you but the end justifies the means. It was Elaigwu’s own way of grooming those who worked with him and sending the notice that every output must have overcome any elements of clumsiness and anything sub-standard. It didn’t seem to matter to him that he was imposing the standards of the great opportunities that he and his generation had at ABU, Zaria of those days and Stanford University, a global front-rank American institution where he pursued his PhD.
Prof Elaigwu remained the foremost authority on comparative federalism in Nigeria but no less on civil-military relations. It is also not clear which of the two areas he had better mastery of. Unimpeachable sources credit him with writing the Concept Paper for the National Council on Inter-Governmental Relations (NCIR) of which he became the D-G and ran for about four years before it was scrapped by the Abacha regime.
Prof Hassan Saliu, the president of the Nigerian Political Science Association (NPSA) agrees that the demise of Prof Elaigwu is the end of an era in itself. His death has depleted the rank of the elders of the Political Science discipline in Nigeria. those that readily come to mind are Prof Bolaji Akinyemi, Prof Okwudiba Nnoli, Prof Sam Egite Oyovbaire, Prof Moibi Amoda, Prof Tunde Adeniran, Prof Okello Oculi and Prof Adele Jinadu. It is not clear immediately if Prof W. O. Alli and Prof Sunday Ochoche belong to this club in terms of age but both of them were close to the late Prof. Elaigwu. While Prof Alli taught in the same Department of Political Science, University of Jos with Elaigwu, it was Elaigwu who drew Prof Ochoce from Philosophy to Political Science. Ochoche is, otherwise, a Philosophy graduate of the University of Ibadan.
Beyond the Political Science constituency, Prof Elaigwu’s death will be felt in the military (many of whose commanders were his students one way or the other); the civil society where he was an eminent resource person and head of a civil society platform; larger academia and politics (he wasn’t a politician but his students and friends were. Alhaji Gali Umar Na’Ábbah who became the Speaker of the House of Representatives was his student at ABU, Zaria and consulted him a lot as Speaker).
It was from ABU, Zaria Elaigwu went on to become a star at UNIJOS, beefing his stardom up with the arrival of his long time friend, Prof Ali Mazrui. In Mazrui’s Triple Heritage, there is a section featuring Prof Elaigwu’s father’s interview.
Prof Isawa Elaigwu looks like the one about whom can be said to have put everything in place in anticipation of death. His daughter is already in charge of his own institute. She started running the place under the departed Prof’s gaze.
In Political Science, there are no less than about five successors on ground, from Eghosa Osaghae of UI to Okey Ibeanu of UNN, Attahiru Jega of BUK, Sam Egwu of UNIJOS, Jibrin Ibrahim. The list would certainly be longer if extended to younger specialists of that field outside of the generation of Nigerian political scientists uniting the above five. He didn’t produce them but there is a link in that he preceded them all. The logical implication is that he charted the way.
The hint is that he even drew a list of those to be contacted and informed of his death whenever it happened. That list, it is understood, has been followed.
The one area it didn’t click is him becoming the Och’Idoma of Idoma in 2022. There is no knowing if Prof Elaigwu was ever aware of this since the idea was never his but a reflective surge which considered that someone of Prof Elaigwu’s standing would give voice, visibility and presence to that stool, variables that a minority of minorities such as the Idoma was thought to need.
Intervention is aware that almost everyone consulted on that possibility wondered if Prof Elaigwu would ever accept to serve as Och’Idoma, given his frustration with social decay of late. The response had been that it was not a case of whether he was going to accept or not but that Idomaland was giving him an assignment. However, the idea died as suddenly as it erupted long before the selection process produced the incumbent, Dr John Elaigwu Odogbo, Och’Idoma V. Agaaaaaaaba-Idu!
Aside from Director-General and Chief Executive, National Council on Intergovernmental Relations (NCIR) which has already been mentioned, Prof Elaigwu was also an Executive Committee Member, Research Committee on Federalism and Federation; Chairman, Board of Trustees, United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR); Member, Presidential Advisory Committee, The Presidency and a Director, New Nigerian Development Company (NNDC) of yore.
In the evening of his life, he became so religious. In recent years, it was impossible to speak with him on telephone without him asserting the primacy of God in one’s every move. The idea of a modernist Prof of Political Science asserting the primacy of God is the next debate around Elaigwu that Intervention will explore.
What remains to establish is if he published a book that he had started writing and which he spoke of. Some sources spoke of a book he published about two years ago but there is no knowing now if that is the same book he mentioned to Intervention in more than one conversation some four years back. As Prof Zabadi pointed out, he wrote even more after becoming a Professor of Political Science. His last book will certainly embody more of the Elaigwu gaze than anything else.
