Mentees of University of Jos political scientist, Prof Audu Gambo, are stretching appreciation to a new height. PhD students he supervised have not only produced a Festschrift in his honour, they are also staging a public presentation of the stuff at a high profile event, come Tuesday, May 5th, 2026.
It will be happening at an event to be attended by three incumbent Vice-Chancellors and two potential Vice-Chancellors, as far as Intervention can see from the invitation extended to it. There will be Prof Shishi Zhema, the Vice-Chancellor of the symbolically named Kwararafa University, Wukari who will chair the event; Prof Tanko Ishaya, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Jos who will be the Special Guest of Honour and Prof Audu Naven Gambo, the subject of the Festschrift and the Vice-Chancellor of Karl Kum University, Vom.
The list of the men on the High Table extends to Prof Gideon Goshit, the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences of UNIJOS as well as Dr. Kwopnan Bulus, the brand new Head of Department of Political Science in the university. The event is enjoying close coordination by senior political scientist and immediate past HoD of the Department of Political Science, Prof Major Adeyi.
DCI Grace Jonathan Mutfwang is leading the discussion on the book as the reviewer. She has an interesting task as drawing a link between International Relations (as opposed to international relations) and democratic governance in Nigeria is not an area which has attracted scholarly attention in this country. There is the Bolaji Akinyemi edited book on Foreign Policy and Federalism but foreign policy has ever been an epistemic as well as a practical domain whose connection with how federalism works out lacks the mystique of the relationship between International Relations and democratic governance.
If that is a sustainable claim, then the event could become a double move: UNIJOS Political Science probably breaking into a new ground and expanding the discipline while also intellectualising mentee-mentor nexus away from the spasms of sycophantic seizure so pervasive today!
