Iyorwuese Harry Hagher, (born 25 June 1949) is a Nigerian professor of theatre for development, playwright, poet, politician administrator and activist for social justice. He was a senator, cabinet minister, envoy and pro-chancellor of Afe Babalola University. He is renowned for his groundbreaking research on Kwagh-Hir theatre, which was inscribed on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists in 2019. Hagher is passionate about the issue of leadership. His plays are preoccupied with the search for true leadership and other solutions to Africa's socio-political problems. He is known to have engaged cultural diplomacy as a tool for foreign relations while serving as Nigeria's Ambassador to Mexico, and later High Commissioner to Canada. In 2019, he was a presidential aspirant, under the platform of the Social Democratic Party (SDP). He is currently the president, African Leadership Institute, Dayton, Ohio, United States. Background Iyorwuese Hagher was born to the family of Tica Daniel Hagher Gbaaiko. His father and mother were both Christians. He was the only boy of the union which also had six girls. His father was a headmaster and missionary with the Dutch Reformed Missionaries of South Africa and worked as a field worker planting new stations and outreaches. Iyorwuese grew up sharing his parents with other children as his father adopted a lot of primary school children so they could get an education. As he would recount, he too belonged to the whole village and everybody brought him up. His early life was in the village of Tse-Gbagir in Torov, present-day Ukum local government area of Benue State. It was a typical communal Tiv village. Growing up, he lived the village life: fishing, hunting, mingling, and eating anything in neighbouring homes, orchards, farms, and fields. The communality of the village imbued him with love and engendered in him the freedom to think, dream, and be adventurous. As a primary school pupil, Iyorwuese witnessed a case of police brutality and abuse of power, when his father was arrested by the Tiv Native Authority Police during a class. His father's crime was being an active member of the United Middle Belt Congress (UMBC). During Nigeria's first republic, the UMBC had been formed to struggle for the creation of the Middle Belt State from the large Northern Region and serve as an alternative minority voice in the Northern Nigeria Assembly which was dominated by the Northern People's Congress (NPC). On the occasion of