The immediate past Vice Chancellor of Igbinedion University, Okada, IUO Edo State, and a tenured professor of Comparative Politics, University of Ibadan, Eghosa Emmanuel Osaghae, has been appointed as the Director-General of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, NIIA, Lagos, by President Muhammadu Buhari.
The news of Osaghae’s appointment was shared by Obajide Ilugbo, the principal public relations officer of Igbinedion University, via his Facebook account on Friday.
In the social media post, Ilugbo said “Edo State-born Professor of Comparative Politics and immediate past Vice-Chancellor of Igbinedion University Okada, Professor Eghosa Emmanuel Osaghae has been appointed by President Mohammad Buhari as Director General of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), Lagos”.
Professor Osaghae was vice-chancellor of Igbinedion University between 2004 and 2018.
Prior to his appointment as VC, Igbinedion University, Osaghae was Leader of the Ford Foundation-funded Programme on Ethnic and Federal Studies, Director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Ibadan, and chair of the University’s Senate Curriculum Committee. Between 1994 and 1998, he was Professor and Head of the Department of Political Studies at the University of Transkei, South Africa. He was also at different times a Visiting Professor/Fellow/Distinguished Senior Scholar at the Carter Centre of Emory University, United States of America, USA (1989), University of Liberia (1989/90), Salzburg Seminar, Austria (1993), University of Cape Town South Africa (1994), the Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala Sweden (1994), University of Ulster, Northern Ireland (1999, 2000), Northwestern University USA (2002, 2004), University of Cambridge UK (2003); a number of universities and research institutes in India (2005, 2009), Dartmouth College USA (2005) and Yale University USA (2009).
He was a Rockefeller ‘Reflections on Development’ Fellow (1989/90), and was a MacArthur Fellow. In 1996, he won the “Best Paper Award” at the Eighth annual conference of the International Association for Conflict Management in Helsingor, Denmark. Professor Osaghae also won the “Best Article Award for 2004” of the African Politics Conference Group – a coordinate group of the American Political Science Association, African Studies Association, and International Studies Association. The same article also won the 2004 Lawrence Dunbar Reddick Memorial Scholarship Award for the best article on Africa published in the Journal of Third World Studies.
The new NIIA Director General was the 2017 Van Zyl Slabbert Professor of Politics and Sociology at the University of Cape Town, and the 2014 Emeka Anyaoku Visiting Chair of Commonwealth Studies at the University of London. He is the 2019 Claude Ake Chair at the Uppsala University, Sweden.
Prof. Osaghae was a regular guest speaker at the annual national discourse forum, The Plaftorm, organised by Poju Oyemade, Pastor of the Covenant Christian Centre, Lagos.
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