Abdul-Gafar holds a PhD in Social Sciences from KU Leuven and lectures in the Department of Political Science, Lagos State University (LASU). A former journalist at Vanguard newspaper, he was a fellow of the Social Science Research Council’s (SSRC) Next Generation of Social Science in Africa programme (2013-2014) and a University of Edinburgh's Centre for African Studies Catalyst Fellow and Non-Residential Catalyst Fellow (2019-2020). Abdul-Gafar is a co-founder of Conflict Research Network West Africa (CORN - West Africa). He is currently an American Council of Learned Societies African Humanities Program (ACLS/AHP) postdoctoral fellow (2020-2021), working on a book entitled “Imageries of Mao Zedong’s China in Ghanaian newspapers, 1957-1976”.