how could AI achieve this-accessing his library
Over the next five years, as AI accesses
Muazzam’s library, a lot will be revealed about knowledge and
alternative futures.
Muazzam’s library, a lot will be revealed about knowledge and
alternative futures.
On Fri, Oct 30, 2026 at 8:56 PM Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovadepojuifa@gmail.com> wrote:
wonderful. could we have the title of this book, its price and how to buy it?
On Fri, Oct 30, 2026 at 8:44 PM Jibrin Ibrahim <jibrinibrahim891@gmail.com> wrote:
Ibrahim Muazzam and the Quest for Philosophical Understanding
Jibrin Ibrahim, Deepening Democracy, Daily Trust, 30th October 2026
Last Saturday, I was the book reviewer for a book presented in a
festschrift organised by CITAD in honour of my good friend, Ibrahim
Muazzam. It was in recognition of his fifty years of scholarship,
research, documentation, teaching, writing and reflections about life,
society and human organisation. If everybody calls him Malam, it is
because that is what he is, a teacher. I was particularly glad to
notice many articles published over the past few weeks by many of his
former students thanking him for the intellectual guidance and
inspiration he gave them as their Malam.
It is appropriate that the focus of the book is the quest for
philosophical understanding as Ibrahim Muazzam is indeed a
philosopher. This means he is a critical thinker who has spent his
life in the systematic, rational, and critical study of fundamental
questions about existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and
language. The word, as we all know comes from the ancient Greek
philosophia, meaning the "love of wisdom". Rather than gathering basic
facts or running scientific lab experiments, philosophy investigates
the underlying meanings, concepts, and assumptions behind how we live,
think, and understand the world.
Muazzam has also been a documentarist with great respect for words,
texts and their significance. He has a massive library and has lived a
life of collecting sources of data before artificial intelligence
emerged to redefine human existence on the basis of the power of
access to big data and unleashing the massive strength and
capabilities locked therein. Over the next five years, as AI accesses
Muazzam’s library, a lot will be revealed about knowledge and
alternative futures.
Unlike Muazzam, I am not a philosopher. I am a simple and mundane
political scientist and the editors, Y.Z, Ya’u and Murtala Muhammad
have no business asking me to review this book. At the end I accepted
the task because my qualification is that I am his classmate who might
present some insights into the background that produced Muazzam.
I met Ibrahim Muazzam in January 1973 as students at the School of
Basic Studies (BASICO) of Ahmadu Bello University. We were 18-years
old and had two assets, a solid secondary school education and had
blank minds that were ready to learn. In our time, being Basico meant
having great ambition – to understand the world and change it into a
better one. We were that arrogant and we needed to be. It was a great
beginning and we had the teachers to guide us. We had a great teacher
of World Contemporary History, Paul Claugh, who was in his twenties,
rode a powerful motor bike and taught us that our mission of changing
the world would only happen if we understood it. He analysed the
post-industrial world by tracing the three industrial revolutions that
had transformed the globe into a single system of exploitation based
on control systems over human beings, natural resources and Nations.
Imperialism is real he argued but it is also contested and he trained
us on the imperative of contesting, conquering and transforming the
system.
We had Dr Bill and above all John Haynes the poet who taught us to
love words and introduced us to their mysteries, During the day, we
learnt poetry in class. In the evenings, we re-assembled and he taught
us how to write poems. His philosophy was simple, we must understand
the word, voice; and we ourselves must have voice and articulate it.
In 2006, John Haynes won the Costa Poetry Award in the United Kingdom
for his book length poem – Letter to Patience. God bless Patience, she
ran a beer parlour in Samaru village where we congregated to explore
what the workers thought about the voices being articulated. Malam
Muazzam would refuse to follow us to Patience but would demand I brief
him about the discussions there.
And then then the turning point came. We gained membership into STAR
(Social Theory and African Reality), a Marxist-Leninist Study group
initially established by Peter Waterman where we learnt the
theoretical basis for the praxis that would lead to the revolution. It
was STAR that was transformed into the Movement for Progress Nigeria
(MPN) when we decided that we will start the world revolution by
launching the Nigerian one. We had the ambition and belief, we learnt
the theoretical tools and we were set to change the world as
teenagers. Two voices in SBS moved us towards political science. One
was the young lecturer Mr Jacobs, later renaming himself as Prof A. T.
Gana who was inspirational in painting the beauty of political science
as a discipline. The other was Mrs Amusa, a young Afro-American who
introduced us to Malcolm X and his radical ideas.
After our Basico beginnings, Muazzam and I then moved to the
Department of Government in 1974 to study political science. Our first
move was to demand from the patriarch of the Department, Rev. Fr.
(Professor) James O’Connell that Senate must immediately change the
name of the department from government to political science. He
refused saying the word politics would irritate the military who would
not want to employ a specialist in politics. We fought him saying our
ambition was not government jobs but overthrowing the government. We
harassed him by writing articles criticizing his poster article – “The
inevitability of Instability in Nigeria” pointing out that he was the
current incarnation of the colonial divide and rule tactics we were
combating. Father O’Connell ran into troubles on two fronts. In his
personal life, he fell in love with a colleague in the Faculty,
married and had to leave the priesthood of the Catholic Church. On the
political from, Murtala Mohammed came into power in 1975 and our prof
was given 24-hour deadline to leave the country and the department he
had led since 1967. The Department of Government then became Political
Science.
Muazzam’s love for philosophy was deepened by our political philosophy
teacher, Ayuba Kadzai. The young and restless philosopher trained in
the Chicago School introduced us to the approach of architectonic
philosophy. It refers to the systematic classification of human
knowledge and the art of building a unified, coherent philosophical
system. Derived from the Greek word architekton (master builder),
architectonics treats philosophy not as a collection of isolated
ideas, but as a structured edifice where every part fit together
logically. It seeks to map out how different branches of knowledge,
science, and morality relate to and support one another. Muazzam and I
were less convinced about Ayuba’s obsession to transform Nigeria into
a great power as if that status was a higher order than building
cadres for the revolution which was in our view the fastest route to
great power status with the people rather than against the people. May
the souls of our teachers rest in perfect peace.
The final point about the Ahmadu Bello University of our time was the
strong ideological position not to have a department of philosophy.
The position was that philosophy is not an ordinary discipline you
learn in a department. It is about architectonics and is integral to
all disciplines. That is why PhD as a terminal degree is a doctorate
in philosophy. What ABU taught us is that the acquisition of knowledge
must be purpose driven but also based on strong ethics. Knowledge must
always go beyond self-interest and aggrandizement. That what we do
with knowledge must flow from the output of our knowledge which
reveals domination and exploitation of our continent by capitalism and
its system of imperialism. There is no surprise when purpose emerged
as the liberation, the emancipation of our people and our resources.
These fundamentals have not changed.
The book, the Quest for Philosophical Understanding: Essays in Honour
of Malam Ibrahim Muazzam has 23 chapters spread into six sections and
342 pages. It is a labour of love for the honouree Ibrahim Muazzam
from friends, colleagues, former students and mentees. It is the sign
that his long-life commitment to critical thinking has produced
fruits.
Section one is on the foundations and frameworks of philosophy and has
six chapters. It looks at the value of philosophy which guides us in
knowing the types of questions we should pose so that our critical
thinking could develop. Philosophy is about human conduct towards
others, what is right, what is wrong and the norms and values that
define society. Western philosophy is based on the Cartesian notion
of personhood in which reason is embedded in individuals who have
personal autonomy and freewill. African philosophy on the other hand
blurs the distinction between the individual and society.
The five chapters in section two, the issue of philosophical
approaches to governance and society is addressed. Nigeria and indeed
Africa needs to pose the question of why we have recurrence in the
emergence of poor leadership. Good governance has become a rare
phenomenon on the continent. There has been no clear approach to
develop a philosophy of governance which means we do not have a basis
for the establishment of responsible and legitimate governance
systems. In addition, many feel they are marginalised from governance
and the imperative of developing an inclusive system is yet to be
addressed.
Section three has four chapters on the philosophies of security, peace
and inclusion. The classic position is that the state has
responsibility for the provision of security. Perspectives however
differ on what security means, and for whom. There is also a wide gap
between narrowly or broadly defined approaches to what security is.
What is security has remained a persistent question.
In section four, four authors address the epistemology of knowledge
systems in Africa. An African system of epistemology known as
Igwebuike is presented and analysed. It is based on solidarity and
complementary within the society and could be viewed as part of the
process of decolonising Africa’s theory of knowledge. Feminist
epistemology and theories of power offering a gendered perspective are
also presented. There is also a presentation of the intellectual
history of Malam Amina Kano, a radical leader who advocated for the
promotion of people’s power and the emancipation of the masses,
talakawa.
The three chapters in section five present philosophical reflections
on leadership and ethics. It is proposed that the Nelson Mandela model
of leadership recruitment provides enough elements for a philosophy
of leadership in Africa. There is a path to follow in improving our
leadership selection system.
Professor Jibrin Ibrahim
Senior Fellow
Centre for Democracy and Development, Abuja
Follow me on twitter @jibrinibrahim17
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