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And Jimanze Ego-Alowes died from liver cancer at 62 before we could hatch his next-level proposal. A prolific author, he described himself on his Twitter handle as a “journalist, poet and writer with a passion for new knowledge and human development.” He was the founding Director of The Brace Institute, a Lagos-based think tank; and founder of a fledgling civil society advocacy group, Minority Rights Defense Initiative, MRDI; and Publisher of The Stone Press Ltd., with which he reissued his remarkable 2006 book, How Intellectuals Underdeveloped Nigeria and Other Essays, originally published by the University of Michigan Press.
As part of a recent research for an article, I found an intriguingly titled work by my friend, publisher, philosopher, and prolific writer and scholar, Dr. Jimanze Ego-Alowes. I contacted him to arrange how I could buy a copy of the book, The University-Media Complex. Afterwards, my dependable research assistant in Nigeria, Ifesinachi Nwadike, promptly bought it for me. But beyond obtaining a copy of the book, I was not prepared for the mail that would follow. Typically, I would not share this mail. But I am doing so because it highlights not just the ephemerality of life and how Death robs us of some of our finest, but also how much the living may owe the departed to help fulfill their unfinished work as best we can. An audacious and original thinker and public intellectual par excellence, Jimanze wished that his “humble missives” be given “more exposure than they can get in Nigeria.” By this post, I am hoping that I can be connected to the executors of his estate by whoever has their contact. I also wanted to draw attention to the depth of his work from his personal voice. Here is the mail: