Gospel artiste and 3rd runner up of West African Idol 1, Eric Arubayi, died yesterday at the Delta State University Teaching Hospital after a brief illness.
He’s pictured above with his wife, Chinonso Arubayi and son. Eric Arubayi had just celebrated his 3rd wedding anniversary last two months, Dec. 28th 2016. He was just in his mid-30s. May his soul rest in peace, amen.
There is an unconfirmed report that Eric Arubayi died after taking an expired malaria drug.
More photos below…
(FILES) This file photo taken on December 07, 2016 shows actors Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling pose with writer and director Damien Chazelle (L) at their Hand and Foot prints ceremony in front of the TCL Chinese Theater in Hollywood on December 7, 2016 ahead of the release of the film LA LA Land set for December 9. AFP PHOTO / Frederic J. BROWN
Fresh from victory at the Golden Globes, Hollywood musical “La La Land” leads the nominations on Sunday for Britain’s Bafta awards, which are seen as a good indicator for future Oscar triumphs.
Damien Chazelle’s poetic love story has 11 nominations, including best film, best actor for Ryan Gosling and best actress for Emma Stone.
Chazelle, Gosling and Stone are all expected at the ceremony along with a clutch of stars including Amy Adams, Casey Affleck, Emily Blunt and Nicole Kidman.
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling will also be there as the spin-off film “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” is nominated for Outstanding British Film.
Sci-fi film “Arrival” and psychological thriller “Nocturnal Animals”, both starring Adams, come second in the nomination ranks with nine each.
“Manchester by the Sea” is in fourth place with six nominations, including best actor for Affleck.
Veteran leftwing director Ken Loach’s “I, Daniel Blake” — a gritty drama about one man’s struggle against Britain’s social welfare system — leads the pack for British films with five nominations.
Loach, who made a documentary about the opposition Labour party’s leader Jeremy Corbyn last year, first won a Bafta for television drama production in 1967.
Meryl Streep is nominated for best actress for “Florence Foster Jenkins”, a tragi-comedy about a wealthy US socialite and amateur soprano from the 19th century mocked for her terrible singing.
Streep’s scathing condemnation of then president-elect Donald Trump at the Golden Globes last month made international headlines.
Trump hit back saying she was “overrated”.
This is Streep’s 15th Bafta nomination, which puts her on a par with previous record-holder Judi Dench.
British actor Hugh Grant, whose last nomination and award was in 1995 for “Four Weddings and a Funeral”, also gets a supporting actor nod for his role as Streep’s husband and manager in the film.
“The range of films is quite extraordinary,” Amanda Berry, chief executive of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, told the BBC.
“That’s what makes this year’s nominations so intriguing and interesting,” she said.
This occasion could not have been at a more appropriate time and nothing could have been more appropriate than Arts, Humanities and Global Peace Initiatives in the 21st century, just as it were in the ancients, the scholastics, the renaissance, the enlightenment and the modernity, but more pungently the contemporary time during which Arts and Humanities as a global peace excavator bestrode human history after the Second World War in the 21st century.
This question underlies the historicity and significance of Arts and Humanities and its undulating, over bearing and overarching significance to global peace conversations, interrogations and interlocutions in this 21st century’s high-tech innovation, digitalization, economic recession, social stress, religious fundamentalism, militancy, insurgency and political instability. It is on the basis of this indefatigable premise that I settled for “The portrait of God as an artist and humanist: the portrait of the artist and humanists as the agent of peace in the 21st century”.
Our excursion into this Arts and Humanities’ tapestry cannot be justified without due, fair and honest acknowledgement that it is the goose that laid the golden egg because it is the historical platform upon which past and modern peace initiatives were predicated.
Definitions of Arts and humanities are appropriate in articulating this lecture to the desired goal of initiating peace in the 21st century. Some have defined Art as a “diverse range of human activities in creating visual, auditory or performing artifacts, expressing the authors imagination or technical skill, intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power” (Adaora Mbehi – Dania, 2016). Therefore, Art is aimed at evolving emotion and it is also a science to some extent. Humanities are on the other hand, studies about human culture such as literature, philosophy, history including visual, auditory or performing arts. All together, Arts and Humanities are practice and theory of culture.
Therefore, permit me to stress that the goose that lays the golden egg cannot be neglected. Our duty as intellectuals and faculty members of Ivory Towers, is therefore, to resonate or rekindle the gold mine of the past for peace, sustainable and innovative development. The ancient and modern tapestry of Arts and Humanities provides the axiology, the ontology, the epistemology and the cultural semiotics for exchange of the common humanity’s heritage of peace.
At this juncture, it is important to stress that peace existed in the past, irrespective of its complacent environment far away from the ambiences of industrialization and technology of the present. Yet it is a unique and unadulterated and primitive kind of peace articulated by Arts and humanities through mans appreciation of the ontology of nature. This is the artistic, the natural, the poetic peace which characteristically belonged to the idyllic age. It is peace which minstrel, music, poetry, Arts and Humanities are great providers which echoes, ebbs, edifies, beautifies and galvanizes both the inner most and sublime cubicle of human person and humanity.
These arts and humanities are many in one trinity called philosophy as it were, in ancient Greek philosophy before the evolution of the rest namely, religion, history, language, poetry, music and later the independence of physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics, and much later law, political sciences, sociology, geography and so on.
Ladies and gentlemen, the subjects of arts and humanities which we are discussing not only their relevance but specifically their role in peace initiatives are philosophy as an autonomous discipline, history, religion, language, music, poetry, theatre and to some extent, anthropology.
The concept of peace
Peace is a life experience which is bound up within the life-wire or the web of conscience of an individual or the society, lived and acted out by every generation of a society, articulated and interpreted by every generation of poets, artists, humanists, musicians and minstrels. To prove that philosophy is the gladiator of peace, Socrates in one of his Dialogues says, “Give me philosophy or dearth” (Sacrates, 399BC). Shakespeare in his poem says, “ if music be the food of love, play on” (Shakespeare, 2004). Indeed the entire gamut of his plays and poems are the lubricating oil of peace in the society and Chinua Achebe, world celebrated novelist and 14th among the 100 celebrated individual in Africa, in his master piece novel “Things Fall Apart” rekindles the flame of muse and riddle as peace initiators when he says, ‘proverbs are like oil with which words are eaten” (Achebe, 1956). Therefore, Arts and Humanities are the goose that lays the golden egg of peace with its interface and intellection of nature and consciousness in a subliminal pattern or method which is called phenomenology.
The chambers 20th century Dictionary defines “peace” as “a state of quiet, freedom from disturbance, from near cessation of war, a treaty that ends a war, freedom from contention, ease of mind, or conscience, tranquility: quiet…”. Plato, in his Republic argues that the peace within his tripartite components of the soul is analogous to the peace within his three categories of individual in the society. Great philosophers, or contractarians, as they are often called, like Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean- Jacques Rousseau, postulated peace as the reason for the emergence of civil society. Statesmen, diplomats, Imams, clergymen and even security men preach about peace as the sin-qua-non for the progress of the society (Dukor, 2005). Peace has been expressed in different ways by different cultures.
The Igbo call the concept of peace Udo, the Yoruba call it Alafia and the Hausa call it Samalafia. All these indicate and emphasize a state of mind in the society, one that is serene, clement, in other words, peaceful. Peace is a concept that is all pervading in all cultures. The gospel book of Saint Luke, says, “Glory to God in the highest, and earth peace to people of good will”(Luke, 2:14). In its turn the Holy Quran says, “those who believe and mix not up their belief with injustice it is they who shall have peace and who are rightly guided”(Holy Quran, 6:83). Benedict de Spinoza asserted that “peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from force of character” (Spinoza, 1997). Therefore, peace is a function of mind, culture and society.
Arts and Humanities as history, language, philosophy and religion from the ancient to contemporary times, as earlier alluded, excogitate, interrogate, inspire and preserve human rights as natural laws for the sustenance of peace in the society. Law as a discipline is axiologically under the umbrella of humanities but as an autonomous discipline, its common stratosphere of interest with arts and humanities is “peace” and “peace in the society” through the preservation and application of the natural law.
The arts and humanities as initiators of peace produced men and women of conscience immediately after the Second World War following the destruction of the fabrics of peace and order by the atrocities of the Nazi regime and “the ravages of the war”.
The revival of the natural law, so to say, years after the end of the 2nd world war was given impetus by the records of history, the wisom of philosophy and the precepts of religion in the passionate appeal of great philosophers like George W. Constable who ask: “was it not natural law theory that inspired the guarantee of inalienable rights in our constitution: that called kings and emperors to account for the rights of the people…”(Omoregbe, 1994). And a legal philosopher George Del Vecchio in similar tone asserted thus: “we would like to appeal for a return to the eternal idea of natural law, to that pure principle of justice which arises above the contingent vicissitude of positive legislation as a permanent criterion, which alone if it is respected, can lead to a true and lasting peace” (Omoregbe, 1994). Indeed, it is the theoretical, practical and conscionable ballast of the Arts and Humanities, after the atrocities, genocide, war crimes in the ‘Nazi’ Germany that propelled the revival of the natural law and then its subsequent expression in the German and French constitutions as well as the declaration of fundamental human rights in the United Nation’s chatter for peace of nations and the world.
Eclipse of Arts and Humanities, the rise of Science and the escalation of wars
The 16th and 17th centuries enlightenment period in Europe was a decisive time for scientific thinking and growth which even though was the handmaid of philosophy and by implication arts and humanities led to major technological break-throughs and provision of most utilities to the satisfaction of mans scarce commodities and wants. Although philosophy in this epoch provided the theoretical knowledge or theoretical science the natural sciences supplemented the former fully with the empirical knowledge. There is element philosophy in the sciences and there is the element of the sciences in philosophy.
That is why there was admixture of philosophers and scientists like Frances Bacon, Isaac Newton, Leibniz, Spinoza and Rene Descartes in that period. The first two were scientists and the last three were philosophers. Experimentations on the forces of gravity and atoms, though with tap-roots in philosophy, ostensibly displaced the later and allied humanistic discipline in providing the much needed succor and food on the table, as some would argue.
With greater emphasis, and results, on the sciences and nuclear physics contemporary philosophy in the 18th and 19th centuries embraced the former for a synthetic rapprochement in the common goal of serving the epistemic and empirical needs of humanity; that means off-shore theoretical knowledge of philosophy qua arts and humanities overflowing with the downstream empirical sciences and physics. This epoch therefore gave birth to a sense of reconfigurations and re-conceptualizations which lead to the emergence of social sciences which rediscovered its root, instead of in the arts and humanities, in the physical science, hence the need for the much advertized unity of the sciences which include physical, biological and social sciences. Yet the natural science as the science of physics and biology continues to isolate themselves as the sciences proper to the chagrin of the social sciences.
Against its background of atomization and exploitation of nature, like a whirl wind, the sciences overwhelmed man’s capricious, whimsical desire to ravishly and rapaciously follow the biblical injunction in Genesis thus: “Let man have dominion over it… that moveth upon the earth” (Gen.1:26),
This phenomenological mindset inevitably led to scientific discoveries, inventions, food productions, manufacturing of small and heavy arms, weapons of mass destruction and greedy exploitation of human and natural resources. The economic component of this experimental and epistemic growth of contemporary philosophy and science were the Adams Smiths treatise on the wealth of nations and the Malthus theory of demand and supply while the political component was the revival of the social contract theory of Thomas Hobbes, John Lock and J.J. Rousseau of the enlightenment period with political liberalism.
Above all, on the basis of the above existential premises, competition benefited from the prevailing scientific, economic and political assumptions by mankind and created theatres of wars and struggles in which weapons of mass destruction were experimented, tested and used. War scenarios emerged on the planet earth more than ever; the World I (1914-1981) and the World War II (1939-1945). Albert Einstein, the greatest scientist that over lived and greatest mind after Jesus Christ produced the atomic bomb that was used to destroy Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Ever since the synthesis of philosophy and science in the concept of contemporary philosophy and the rise of mercantilism and liberal market individualism and competition the world lost peace and caved into the cocoon of theatres of wars from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Tunisia, Israel – Palestine, to Ethiopia, Nigeria and Sudan to mention just a few.
The eclipse of arts and humanities by the sciences and the rise of conflicts and wars have gingered strident call for a renewed interest in arts and social sciences. This gesture was amplified by the American academy of arts and social sciences in June, 2013 when it called for a renewed commitment to humanities and social sciences after decades of the renascence of science and technology with its attendant harmful and hazardous side effects on food and weapons of mass destructions. This is where the role of arts and humanities in the global peace initiatives are pivoted. Scholars of various studies and even political and professional opinion leaders have been ambivalent about the idea of defending the Artistic and Humanities enterprises in terms of social utility or even initiating a global peace. But an argument or advocacy to the contrary has become absurd in the context of absence of peace in the contemporary world characterized by “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”, reminiscent of the “state of nature” (Hobbies, Leviathan) an arcane animalistic condition to which only a return to varieties of human and artistic cultural expressions as in the U.N charter of fundamental human rights can resolve.
Whatever onslaught the science and technology has caused mankind, behind the veneer of our mind is that arts and humanities sustain and preserve the heart and soul of our civilization by teaching us to engage with ideas critically and independently through life-changing personal development that eschews conflicts that lead to wars. It “transforms the experience of individuals, enabling them to understand their place in the world with deeper understanding and humanity” (Nigel Shardlow, 2011) . David Blenkett argues that understanding language and history underpins any effective political and social policy (David Blenkett, 2011) and Peter Hitchens would want “humanities subjects to return to absolute qualities in the form of the literary canon and narrative history” (Peter Hitchens, 2011)
Inspiring peace through Arts and Humanities
Arts and humanities can be used to protect the future of humanity from, extinction and, the hazards of nature and social diplomatic relations among nations that often lead to cataclysm, catastrophe and conflagrations. In the build-up to the reminiscences of the first and second world wars the appreciation of arts and humanities got a boost with the emphasis on the teaching of humanities in higher education curriculum and the emergence of artists, artisans and curators who not only identify beautiful works of arts commemorative of the idyllic in concept but also identify talents who need to be promoted on appropriate platforms.
In teaching and pedagogy, arts and humanities have been of use as a powerful foil to project culture, peace, history and political and economic stability as well as the voice of the populace. Arts, as the engine, propeller and ballast of peace initiative, is used to tell the stories of today and how they give a sense of who the people of the present are and how they ought to manage and cope with life ethically, socially, economically and politically while humanities’ disciplines as Courses in the tertiary institutions build capacities through teaching of the subjects and training of professional artisans as artists and curators. It is also at the same time imbibing in the younger generation the emotional and cognitive prerequisites or psychological values and emotions necessary for their personality and social development.
It is, therefore, imperative to periscope arts and humanities’ peace initiative in the 21st century from the prism of the promotion of culture qua cultural studies, cultural excellence and human amity and development in general. It is also important to view it from the foil of technical and scientific artistry of creating visual, auditory and performing arts and artifacts within which the brain is stimulated from sounds movements, colors and sizes; in its various forms the aim is to promote culture, peace and human development.
Adaora Mbelu – Dania interlocuted this as a canon for individual development thus: “arts is a language that allows us to express and develop our ideas and emotions (Adaora., 2016). Within it are process that cannot only help children to grow but also guide them to being limitless in their thoughts and aspire to becoming the very things that solve challenges they see around them”. This in conjunction with a curriculum of humanistic disciplines like philosophy, language, religion and history in the higher education in the world would impact positively on confidence, self-esteem, behavioural health and breaking down language barriers and cultural prejudices that often lead to extremisms and genocide.
The portrait of God as the artist and humanist
Arts and humanities inspire peace and shape the future advertently. To appreciate this we have to look at their diachronic and synchronic significance, how the visual arts, sculptures, folk arts, drama, poetry and the whole of creative arts are peace gladiators in their several and collective transformations and modulations of human existential and psychological morphology. There is a sync between, on the one hand, philosophy, history and languages, and on the other hand, visual arts, drama, poetry and sculpture in the propagation of human heritage, subliminal consciousness and historical artifacts ,of peace. While the former is in the form of philosophy, narratives and prose, the later is in the form of impressionism, surrealism, drama and poetry. The former in symbolic representation is a humanist and the former is similarly an artist. Both have the portraits of the other. Above all both the humanist and the arts have the portrait of God because God is a humanist and an artist as well as the maker of peace.
The portrait of God, the creator, as an artist and humanist is best told by the story of creation in the Bible. Genesis opens the creation saga as follows: “In the beginning God created the heaven and earth”(Gen. 1:1) whence he created the light, day, firmament , water, whales, man and other things. After creating man in his composite forms, male and female ,he blessed them and gave them dominion over every living and non-living things. Interestingly again Genesis affirmed God as a supra-anesthetist and artist in the recognition of the goodness of all the things he created thus: “And God saw everything that He had made, and behold it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day” Gen 1:31). As an artist, He symbolized knowledge of good and evil with a tree and commanded not to eat of it “for in the day that thou eateth thereof thou shall die” (Gen. 2:17) God is an artist, sculpturer, designer, aesthetician and philosopher in the totality of the way he had found the earth “upon the sea, and established it upon the flood” {Psalm 24:2). The same God called His begotten son, the prince of peace. This means that the portrait of God of peace as an artist and humanist logically implies that the artist and the humanist is an agent of peace. It also follows logically that God is peace, meaning “the portrait of God as peace” and “the artist and the humanist as God meaning” the portrait of the artist and humanist as agent of peace and this point had been validly and syllogistically symbolized.
With the metaphysical, phenomenological and logical analysis of peace, we certainly have been able to adduce the portrait of God as the maker of peace and the portrait of the artist and humanist as God, then portrait of the artist and the humanist as agent or gladiator of peace.
The artist as the agent of peace
Before we proceed it is imperative to denote a special and practical sense in which the scientist also is an artist and humanist and in the secondary sense in which the scientist too is also an agent of peace, though his works and creative out puts are convertible to agents of wars and conflicts. Great scientists like Galileo, Newton, Bacon and Albert Einstein were not only humanists but also great artists in imitating God in His creative process without which they would not have discovered the science of nature. As cosmologists they were artists and as ontologists they were inventors. This is not accidental in history because in the pre-Socratic period of the ancient Greece and in the primeval civilizations in ancient Africa the scientists were all artists and humanists and vice-verse.
There is the need, therefore, for a proclamation of the unity of all sciences in the arts and humanities, as it were, in this 21st century for the initiation and promotion of peace in the world and avoidance of conflicts and wars. Accordingly, the stake for peace is high and the stakes for peace are varied in this 21st century. In other words, scholars and students of philosophy ,religion, history, languages and arts are as committed to the building of capacities for peace as the ecologists, the environmentalists, the physicists and so on.
In initiating peace in the 21st century, the ecologist, the environmentalist, the physicists or any of the practitioners in the special sciences first configures artistically the forms of scientific artifacts in their immutable, impressionable and peaceful substantiality before translating them into spacio-temporal reality. Phenomenologically the more accurate the scientists’ observations and projections of the firmament are the more peaceful the world would be. In other words, the history of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the history of oil spillage and gas flaring in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria are predicated on wrong artistic analysis.
The moral values, apart from their economic values, of visual art, graphic, design, printing, photography, painting, sculpture, textile and fashion and ceramics, can be better appreciated through their imaginative and aesthetic impact on the consciousness of humanity in its sublime tranquility and university. Visual arts provide and initiate peace in the private and public, individual and society’s consciousness which all together could be elevated to a cosmopolitan and universal peace. This is a psychological peace which upon an intersubjective simulation, social praxis and political participation will build capacities and modulations for peace in and among nations. It is said that health is wealth wherein the substance of health is the peace of mind without which there will be no wealth, therefore, we advisedly seek first the peace and health of the mind, and afterwards, every material thing comes.
On the other hand the condiment of the moral peace is the much often appreciated ‘in-thing’ in creative arts, poetry, drama, theatre arts and literature (fiction and non-fiction). In all, the imaginative succor is the food for a healthy living and the precursor, embellisher and edifier of peace in the offshore and downstream planks of human consciousness.
The guitarist as much as the drummer scintillates the canal mind into sense of unflinching possibilities of aesthetic satisfactions totally independent of material and sensual satisfactions. Traditional music in every art and culture, Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Fulani, Idoma, Tiv, Edo, Isoko and so on have much in abundance to offer in the production and sustenance of peace. There is none of the above cultural musical tapestry that does not have praise and peace songs for the unities of each and every one of the ethnic groups, which if globalised would become a global peace gladiator and initiator. The 21st century has more than enough historical heritage, artistic and humanistic cultural poetry, drama, music and culture extolling the intrinsic and extrinsic capacities for global propagation and promotion of peace. The portrait of God as an artist and humanist and vice versa have symbolic and ritualistic expressions in African arts, culture, religion and philosophy which I called Theistic Humanism severally as a concept, philosophy, theory and magnum opus. In other words, Theistic Humanism can pass as the philosophy of African arts, culture and humanism (Dukor, 2010).The history of poetry, music and drama cannot separated from the history of peace initiatives and there are innumerable poetic and musical peace initiatives from both the West and the African continent. Modern and contemporary creative writers, poets and musicians are peace interlocutors.
From the flipside, arts and culture as components of humanities, if globalised, will become an industry capable of raising the standard of living and revenue of nations. It is an avenue of self employment and self reliance through visual arts and tourist attractions and destinations as well as through drama, music and poetry as forms of entertainments and tourism. All these will result to peace and harmony in the societies and among the nations.
The range and scope of what constitutes arts and humanities need to be articulated in theory and practice with the objective of formalizing and institutionalizing a culture of peace at individual, community, national and global space. It is important to evolve the teaching of the significance of arts and humanities to human development in primary and tertiary institutions and it is equally important to have these cultures of peace in the lived or living experiences of human beings in the creative industry, entertainment, fiestas, recreation clubs, sports, Nollywoods, Hollywoods and cinemas, poetry, drama and dance.
In this age of globalised world, peace initiatives from arts and cultures of different nations and countries must come to the centre stage of global cognition and recognition as this is the way nations and people would imaginatively and culturally come to agreement in one voice on multilateral and bilateral differences bordering mankind. If nationalities and ethnic groups could speak in one voice in Sports, that is what has been demonstrated in various world Sports fiestas including the Olympic games. Therefore as arts and culture become instrument for world peace in the 21st century, the more it is conceptualized, formalized and practiced as an art of peace the more peaceful the world would be.
Also the entertainment industry of each locale as indicator of peace at micro-level should be globalised with the objective of embedding cosmopolitan peace. Radio and television art listeners and watchers can attest to the potentials of this electronic media in imbibing or desiminating peace: the entertainment industries including the Nigerian Nollywood movie or film industry and the U.S. Hollywood movie or film industry are prime time and television programmes whose message of peace or otherwise have captivated emotional and rational audience of different people, races and nations. In this 21st century their scripts, plays and verses must re-invent their age long mission as touch bearers of peace.
The 21st century poetry and drama should emphasize peace in both their normative and ontological foundations and in their process and praxis in the society. As many of the poetries and dramas in the schools and in the public forum should be made compulsory so long as they are focused on propagating peace.
Accordingly, dancing, proverbs, wise sayings, music and any art and culture of any people must be oriented to inaugurate the message of peace onto the impressionable and natural minds in the 21st century. Equally, painting, designand sculpture in the visual arts categories have been and should continue to reflect ideas and concepts of national, domestic and international peace.
Finally, scientists and artists of local and international environments, ecosystem, nature, physics and engineering have it as a duty to promote peace in the material extractions and use in the world. Global peace is also a function of averting wars through environmental protection and alleviation of poverty and instrument of mass destruction of life and properties.
• Entitled The Portrait Of God As An Artist And Humanist: The Artist And Humanist As The Agent Of Peace In The 21st Century, Prof. Dukor presented this paper at the Faculty of Arts Conference of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University on November 24, 2016
Artists, David Akinola, Blessing Ibie and Chima Enwezor during the opening of Revolving Art Incubator at Silverbird Galleria
For the dual factors of contemporary expression and growing number of artists in need of art exhibition space, alternative outlets outside the traditional gallery facilities are most likely to be on the increase in the year 2017. Last year – strangely – the volume of art exhibitions in Lagos was shared almost equally between the regular art galleries and alternative outlets.
Non-regular art gallery space for art exhibition is not exactly new on the Nigerian art landscape, except that the last few years exposed a gradual increase. The non-art gallery space for exhibitions such as hotel lobby or reception, have been as old as the business of art. But in recent years, The Wheatbaker Hotel, Ikoyi, art exhibition space under the curator, Sandra Mbanefo Obiago, seems to have elevated alternative space for art to a new high. Also, Moorehouse, Ikoyi, joined the trend a few years ago and has been consistent with as many as three or more exhibitions in a year.
“The quality of traffic, particularly of foreign visitors that see our art exhibitions has been amazing,” Obiago discloses during a chat about alternative spaces last year. When the hotel opened for business in 2011, it made a debut with a presentation that was as formal as that of traditional gallery space. In fact, the quality of exhibition catalogue was commendable. But the sustainability wasn’t exactly clear to many observers.
About six years after – over 12 art exhibitions recorded – consistency has been established as The Wheatbaker is now seen as a “luxury boutique hotel.” While marking the fifth anniversary of the hotel last year with a solo exhibition of Gbenga Offo’s new body of work titled Freedom was an opportunity to stress its commitment in adding art content to the hotel’s luxury service.
“We are proud to have created a dynamic platform for international and local artists to experiment and present new creative expressions,” a director at the hotel Mosun, Ogunbanjo, stated. “We will continue to ensure that despite Nigeria’s current economic recession, The Wheatbaker provides quality services and strengthens creativity and innovation.”
Currently, the space’s first exhibition of the year, Permutations by Tayo Olayode, which opened a few weeks ago, is showing till March.Also, during the same period of approximately five years, a moving space art exhibition, Bloomart, led by Ugoma Adegoke, has been doting the Lagos art landscape with shows. Currently preparing to show a U.S.-based Nigerian artist, Marcia Kure, from February 17 through 19 at Cape Town Art Fair, Convention Centre, South Africa, Adegoke had shown quite a number of artists at different spaces in Lagos.
For example, under Life House and Bloom Gallery, she showed designer, Ghariokwu Lemi’s solo Own Kind at Didi Museum in 2013; and several others in different spots in Lagos.
With two spaces, The Wheatbaker and Temple Muse, Victoria Island, Obiago appears to be giving alternative space a new life. The Temple Muse, a designs and accessories shop managed by Avinash Wadhwani, has been exhibiting at least three times a year in the past three years under Obiago’s curatorial supervision.
Over the past 10 years, artists have been more expressive beyond the traditional confines of regular art galleries. Coupled with increase in the number of artists, particularly from formal training, there is no doubt that the existing art galleries couldn’t accommodate the plethora of expressions on display. Given the cost of sustaining the facilities, which are mostly located in prime areas or central business districts, very few artists fit into the cost texture of the galleries anyway.
“The galleries are doing their best, but we must not always wait for them to give us space for exhibition,” Jumoke Sanwo, a new entrant into alternative space, noted when she opened her Revolving Art Incubator (RAI) late last year at Silverbird Galleria, Victoria Island. With three artists – David Akinola, Chima Enwezor and Blessing Ibie – Sanwo has given Lagos contemporary art space a fresh texture.
INTERESTINGLY, the 2017 Lagos art scene actually opened with RAI, when the space showed Visual Representations: Past and Present, a photography exhibition that featured Matiu Idang, Bernard Kalu, Aderemi Adegbite and ASIRI magazine. And less than two months into the year, RAI is already adding its second exhibition with installation and ceramic by May Okafor in the artist’s first solo titled Of Consummates And Cannibalism.
When RAI opened last year, Sanwo assured: “The initiative is a partnership with the Silverbird Group in setting the pace for subsequent art interventions in public spaces all across the country.”
Arthouse -The-Space, a non-gallery, but moving exhibition sister company of auction house, Arthouse Contemporary Limited, is another outlet to watch in 2017. Since it opened at former Renault Show Room, Victoria Island, with photographer, George Osodi’s solo titled TransgreXion in 2014, the space has shown quite a number of other artists, including modernist master, Yusuf Grillo at Kia Showroom, Victoria. Island. And with more artists being “represented” by Arthouse –The Space, as well as those scheduled for Arthouse Foundation’s residency, there is no doubt that the alternative art space of Lagos in 2017 promises to exhale a lot of energy.
However, in a rare situation, an artist could also sometimes search for an alternative space without a promoter attached. That was what Polly Alakija did when she showed Art With A Social Conscience at Foreshore Harbours, Osborne Estate, Phase 2, Jetty Club, Ikoyi.
For over a year, Alakija, who shares her studio base between Lagos and Gloucestershire, U.K., has been using art to engage communities in select Nigerian urban and rural spots. Some of the works, produced from her Artist-in-Residence, form the bulk of the display. In 2017, the Lagos alternative art space would most likely see more of Alakija’s art of social conscience, particularly in public spaces.
Tomoloju, Playwright, Theatre Director and Culture Communicator is a member of the Board of CORA<br />
Ben Tomoloju is a seasoned art critic, a dramatist, a playwright and a folk musician. The multi-talented writer, generally called ‘Uncle Ben’ in the entertainment sector, was the former Arts Editor and the founding father of the National Association of Nigerian Theatre Arts Practitioners (NANTAP). He spoke with OMIKO AWA on theatre practice in Nigeria, cottage theatres and the need to enliven the stage through engagements.
How do you see Nigerian theatre practice at the moment?
Nigeria theatre as a discipline, as a practice, is vibrant. The only thing wrong so far is the propagation of the ideas of the profession. Theatre needs quite a lot of economic resources to stand like other sectors. It is a mobile endeavour and should move from place to place and across time. Theatre can be stationed at one place as a repertory theatre and be staged and restaged over time. In both cases, theatre structure is very important, especially in consonance with the volume of human resources that are available.
Let us use Nigeria, as an example. The contemporary Nigerian theatre is traced back to Hubert Ogunde’s ascension on stage in the early 1940s and, without looking back, the old man, who was then in his 30s created the new travelling theatre. He was moving from one location to the other to stage his plays. By then, there was no competition from the social media and television. Television in Nigeria came in 1959 over 15 years after Ogunde started his contemporary theatre. Even when television was established, there was an adaptation of dramatic acts into TV drama, while the live theatre was also playing simultaneously through the efforts of Ogunde and those he later called his contemporaries, but they were not. They were his younger colleagues. These younger colleagues of Ogunde were Duro Ladipo, Moses Olaiya, Kola Ogunmola and others. Ogunde travelled to the West Coast of Africa, Mid West, Northern Nigeria and different places in the west.
Now that we have a whole population of talents graduating from theatre schools and also theatre companies under certain masters, we find out that there is an opportunity for job-creation concerning this mass talent. We have to design strategies with which these young ones have to be fulfilled. This is why I advocated for the establishment of cottage theatres in our localities.
I derived this from the Cultural Policy of Nigeria promulgated in 1988. As one of those who drafted the policy, we said Federal Government should have its presence in terms of cultural policy on all the states of the federation, building cultural centres and that the states should have presence in their individual local governments and the local governments to look into the wards and establish cultural centres. I adopted this and applied it to the theatre. Along the line, some of our colleagues, like Professor Ayo Akinwale promoted the idea in one of his papers.
In my paper published in an academic journal, The Constitution by the Centre For Constitutionalism And Demilitarization (CENCOD), I make a hypothetical projection that if Lagos, with 20 Local Governments (LGA) and 37 Local Council Development Areas (LCDA), has 57 cottage theatres, you will find out that a single play that was a hit – well-written, well-directed and well-conceptualised – will move for a whole year from one LGA/LCDA to another if they are performed on a weekly basis. This means young people will make some money from one point to the other. It also means they may not need to rehearse more than one play in a year and the system is such that when one play leaves, say Isolo, and goes to Agege or Mushin, another starting at Agege or Mushin will come to Isolo. It would be in a revolving pattern and there will be job and wealth-creation for all, including small-scale businesses that operate around the theatre.
So, on this basis, I find it salutary the plan by Lagos State Government’s plan to build theatres in five locations across the state. I also find it salutary that the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, is ready to collaborate with Lagos State to bring into realisation the original idea that Federal Government should have its presence in every state of the federation.
What would be the effect of this on the National Theatre in Lagos?
We have concentrated so much attention on the National Theatre. This will reduced the attention, but it does not mean plays and other things will not take place there. In fact, National Theatre would be used for the bigger shows. There was a stop at the use of the main bowl, but at a time we galvanised efforts with the then sole administrator for culture, Dan Awodoyin and his colleagues. We connected to Ogunde, who used his charisma to compel the Lagos audience to come and view theatre performance at the National Theatre. So, there was resurgence and a boom to the extent that when Ogunde was performing Ayanmo, people queued from the main gate to the Costain Bridge to obtain tickets. The new Director of National Theatre, George Ufot, is a living witness to this. Once there is the right incentive people will embrace theatre.
Do you think that period when theatre had such queues would ever return?
It will, depending on the power of appeal of the play and also on the individual talents behind it. It must also be noted that generally, we do not have enough human resources manifesting on that magnitude. One needs to be a colossal talent to attract audience of such magnitude. The idea of approving the National Troupe of Nigeria by the then Head of State, Ibrahim Babaginda, came through when Ogunde performed Ayanmo. We can still get there, but we should not forget the socialistic strategy of making people from the neighbourhood stroll from their houses with their family members to any of the cottage theatres, no matter how small they may be.
Are the masters still there to pull this type of audience?
Masters produce masters. In the theatre of English production, the masters are still there. But I cannot say theatre still has the potentials in public space; I cannot be overtly optimistic about this. However, I have done a few things that show that people gravitate around the theatre. It was when my Askaris in 1997 toured 20 states in Nigeria. I was the playwright/director, while Jahman Anikulapo was the associate director. There was a robust presence of members of the public, even in the most supposedly conservative parts of Northern Nigeria. We had 3,000 in the open-air theatre of Sokoto and almost the same number outside waiting to come in. The same thing happened in Bauchi and Maiduguri; people were struggling to come in, although the show was free and well publicised. So, if we have to re-enact that we have to re-strategise with the public.
With many theatres springing up in the urban centres, would it not be right to regulate it, as a way of standardising and shutting out quacks?
I have had an experience in recent times that made me believe that theatre profession has to be regulated. I always like going back to history because if there were any resistant voice I would be the first to be listed in terms of the foundation of the Association of Nigerian Theatre. I was literally dragged to establish a formal association of theatre practitioners; they call me founding father. What we embarked on at that time was to ensure that professionalism was developed to a point that a talent that represents the theatre would be credible before the public. And we said that no one must be admitted into the National Association of Nigerian Theatre Arts Practitioners (NANTAP) if he or she is not trained professionally, either with the university department of theatre/dramatic arts or through a highly recognised master. And by master, we meant people like Hubert Ogunde, Duro Ladipo, Kola Ogunmola and others. Dramatists of this level would issue certificates to endorse students and they would be recognised by NANTAP even with or without further university training.
I am sorry that NANTAP did not pursue this since the vanguards of the association stepped aside to allow the other generation. Now, we have situations where people just claim titles randomly without due respect to conventions. Even if we do not have constitutions or directory regulations, we have conventions. We now have a situation where the executive director of a repertory theatre would suddenly claim to be the artistic director and one begins to wonder how, ‘can theatre come to this level?’
And not only that; you forget that the production is a repertory production made and conceived in terms of artistic setting and design by a particular director and that if you are restaging the play 10,000 times, for as long as you maintain the concepts and designs of the artistic director, he will continue to take his credit. But this is not the case. It is unfortunate that we have a situation where those operating a repertory theatre do not know that they are operating it and do not know the conventions. There is even a belief that if one puts money in production that he or she can be the all in all. There are different roles in the line of communication among the artistic director, producer, technical director, costumier, choreography and others and none should take the place of the other.
The repertory theatre is just one aspect of theatre organisation. It is the theatre where you have stocks of plays you can perform at anytime. Apart from this, there are other seasonal plays that can run on the Broadway for weeks or months, but once these plays are stocked and acted again, then they would be referred to as repertory theatre. These are things we must learn and then talk about professionalism. There is a difference between a trainee and an intern, for instance. A trainee is student in the drama school and passing out, you become an intern and can do your I.T. with any of the troupes, including National Troupe. It is after this you become a professional. All these must be regulated. I regret that I have been part of the evolution and probably an oversight, yet we do not emphasise this; but at our level with over 40 years on this job, we should not keep quiet. NANTAP and other societies of the Nigerian artists should come together and ensure that there is regulation. The movie sector has their own regulation; they are the sub-sector of the theatre.
And that being said, with Lagos building five art theatres to start with, I suggest that the governor should ensure that professionals with verse knowledge and practice manage the theatres. There should be no political consideration, kinship, or sentiments. Core professionals should handle the theatres and I suggest Theatre Arts graduates.
But there must be the business angle to it, which is often lacking…
Yes, there must be and that is what the Theatre Arts graduate would do. This is so because his training includes such aspects. The theatre manager is crucial in terms of programming and the salability of programmes and the coordination of the various troupes that would come around. Take, for instance, when we will be having 57 cottage theatres, he would coordinate the management of the troupes. So, it is not a job for anybody. If I have my way, I would make five big plays to tour the theatres after completion; they would revolve the theatres and this will impact on other theatres in the state.
To solve the challenge of funding, some dramatists call for cutting of cast and crew, or at best, performing plays with solo roles. How effective are these suggestions?
One of my colleagues, a professor in Canada, wrote a paper on this and her research included Canada, U.S., South Africa, Nigeria and other countries across the globe. I do agree that this is a challenge, but we also need epic and historical theatres. We need robust theatres; theatres that are gargantuan, total and with finesse. It is part of our tradition and we cannot just dump it out of the fear of the unknown.
Yes, two, three-man or solo theatre in the old apartheid regime of South Africa had its own purposes. It allows for easy escape of the cast and crew in case they were to be arrested. It has mobility and could be moved from one locate to the other with ease, but we must tell our stories the way they are. These suggestions are part of the solutions, but it must be a thing of choice. In Germany, there is a theatre that is meant for 99 people and the artistic director; it is not taxed. The 100th seat is for the artistic director and the moment he or she commercialises it, the whole theatre would be taxed. This goes to tell the importance of the artistic director; he is the generalissimo of creative concept and actualization.
There is also the Café Theatre with a minimal cast; they are ways of saving cost and they all depend on what you want, what you can manage to get a good production.
But if you are ambitious and want to produce an epic production because it has its verve, then you can go for a large cast and crew. Source the fund and put up a very good production. There are plays that cannot be done with such small cast. Performances such as the Nativity and festival plays, which are done in the open space need large cast to bring out the beauty. I do not think we have that kind of presentations here, except for the masquerade, which are also drama on their own right. Our classics must be performed the way they should. We cannot throw them away because we do not want to spend money and this where I call on corporate organisations to come in and partner with theatre practitioners in their presentations because a nation without theatre tradition is lost. Whenever, we travel to Europe, especially Germany, we are always asked if we want to visit the theatre. The people have a very strong theatre culture, and there are plays in their theatre every day for 365 days that make a year.
And I think we abandoned our theatre tradition, when we began to see it as fetish. The passion with which members of our traditional community embraced the Alarinjo theatre, masquerade dance, royal performance and others is the same way the western nations, Japanese, Chinese embrace theirs and today, it has become a tradition. And I want to educate all of us, who are Christians or Muslims – that there is no more mystery in the pot of groundnut. If anybody says there is, let him or her bring it out.
Why do we not have festival plays and others here? Is it as a result of lack of playwrights or the skills to perform them?
We have the skills and dramatists to write this kind of plays. We have people that can present plays in stadia and any given space, but the question is, do we have people who appreciate theatre to that quintessential level in Nigeria? Would the celebration of Lagos@50, which we are hoping for in the creative industry, accommodate such gargantuan activities to impact strongly in the consciousness of the people in the magnitude of experience that the Lagos State governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, has brought to Lagos? The professionals are there, but the resources are lacking.
What is the way forward for Nigerian Theatre?
There should be professionalism, standardization and deliberate campaign to foster growth in the sector. All stakeholders, government inclusive, should provide the structure that would accommodate talents that are being produced in the various Schools of Drama. Funding should also be made available, while theatre should stand up and make statement of what theatre is all about. They should engage the public the more through their activities.
Jowhor Ile
Debut novels are not the easiest to write. What with the issues of harmonizing theme and style, managing and sustaining mood and narrative points of view and moderating all these to yield a unified whole for the sheer pleasure of reading? It is never easy, but Jowhor Ile has managed these disparate aspects admirably in his debut novel, And After Many Days, a family narrative that has a resonance and echo of 1980s and 1990s Nigeria, with its history of military jackboots, students unrest, academic disruptions, communal agitations as a result of the activities of oil companies and the fatalities inflicted on local communities and the brutal murder of environmental rights activist and writer, Kenule Saro-Wiwa.
But it is a tale of police brutality, told in non-hysterical manner, of the brutal murder of a youth and how it knits the story together. Like its Lagos counterpart story and Toni Kan’s The Carnivorous City, Jowhor Ile’s And After Many Days is the story of a missing boy, set in Port Harcourt, Rivers State. The Itu family is a middle class one, which is staggered by the tragedy of its lost first son, Paul, who strolled out one day and never returns. However, one of the men who witnessed how Paul was hit with a riffle butt walks into their living room, after many years, when the family has dispersed, and it heightens the sense of loss, of a young life senselessly cut short at its prime. And the family, now without the father, finds redemption in the exhumation and final burial of a member lost at his prime.
“Paul floundered by door as though he had changed his mind; then he bent to buckle his sandals, slung on his backpack, left the house, and did not return.
“At least that is one way to begin to tell this story.”That is how Ile starts the story and he introduces the Itu family: the father, Bendic, a lawyer, whom the children call by name; the mother, Ma, the only daughter, Bibi, and the last son, Ajie. Ile’s family portrait is so realistically rendered that he takes the reader into the living room of the Itus to experience firsthand the siblings’ rivalry between Bibi and Ajie, Paul’s leadership as first child, Ajie’s attachment to his elder brother, Paul, Benedict’s disciplinary measures, the children’s pranks and everything that goes with family. It is a happy family, the Itus, until the tragedy of Paul’s disappearance hits it, and the family begins to reel from the strangeness of the situation. For Bendict, Ma, Ajie and Bibi, a new, surrealistic world dawns on them and they are least prepared to cope with it. But cope they must.
But until Paul disappears, the Itu family is a model one. They live in Port Harcourt, but like most city dwellers, they regularly visit their hometown, Ogibah. Ile illustrates the link between city dwellers and their remote villages, how Bendic, the city man is easily the mediator in disputes whenever he visited with his family that takes part in all the village rituals and customs. Ile’s portraiture of Ogibah gives readers a village’s slice of life, the joys and the disputes that sometimes flare out of hand to consume everyone. Bendic finds himself always intervening on behalf of Ogibah in court to ask for compensations from the recalcitrant oil company and fencing off police and military assault on his community for affronting the oil company.
Like most local communities in the Niger Delta, Ogibah is an oil-producing community. Thus the stage is set for a great showdown with the oil company operating in the town and government. It soon happens and lives are inevitably lost. Ogibah is a ghost town after the soldiers take it over to usher in a reign of terror. The oil company’s style is to stoke conflict with its divide and rule tactics that set the people against themselves. Ile has an eye for the local politics of oil operations in communities so blessed and its disruptive power to corrupt an innocent community into needless conflict that leaves it drained and prostrate.
Bibi and Ajie grow up under the shadow of a lost brother looming over them. When he comes of age, Ajie is whisked abroad to study; having lost the first son, the Itus do not want to risk the only son left. Bibi studies at home to become a doctor. It is also at this stage that a policeman walks into their living room and announces the evil deed of years ago to reawaken an old, unhealed wound.
A policeman, who witnessed Paul’s death years ago in the hands of his colleague, is now a repented man, a man of god, and has come to atone for his sin. “It is not enough to confess your sins and receive forgiveness from God,” the man sitting before Ma began. “Even though the blood of Jesus washes away your slate of sins clean, you have to go back to the people you’ve wronged in the past and try to make things right.”
Ile’s narrative has silent power behind it. Unhurried, powerful and incisive, And After Many Days sheds quiet illumination on what is an ordinary story and elevates it to a height unbelievable and unimaginable. Like Lagos, Port Harcourt has a new book that maps its streets and intimate contours in a warm way. This is a novel of quiet beauty and power. Ile’s And After Many Days is a lush addition to the supple narratives of the Niger Delta region in its subtle tracking of the region’s socio-political undercurrents. Through Ile’s rehash, the reader is able to relive the 1980s through the 1990s’ Port Harcourt and Nigeria’s harsh socio-political history. This book has haunting, even if memorable, resonance.
Gerald Chukwuma
Gerald Chukwuma is an artist, but a first class graduate of Applied Science from University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Gerald believes he was born an artist, as everything he did as a child pointed to art.
“I just have this uncanny belief that every artist could have been born an artist,” he said. “I grew up discovering I was made like that and I have come to accept that how one becomes an artist may not really matter.”
Although his parents did not support his idea of becoming an artist, he did not relent in his quest, noting, “I only had an option to study courses like medicine, law, engineering, and accounting. My love for art was considered illicit and unacceptable. I later did an OND in marketing at Federal Polytechnic, Nekede, where I graduated as second best, but I was far from being fulfilled. My father could not allow me become the man of my dreams – an artist.
“For this reason, it took me about 10 years to enter University of Nigeria, Nsukka. I had to come to terms with the reality of my parents’ refusal to pay my school fees should I remain recalcitrant about my burning desire. Rather than return to Nekede to complete my HND, I secretly enrolled to study art at Nsukka, where I graduated cum laude in 2002.”
At some point, Chukwuma turned to making cards and posters and painted portraits to survive through school. “I remember how I left school a number of times to hawk my art in Enugu and Port Harcourt. It was a tough one but I was living my dream. Art has been a fantasy and everyone, who knew me, saw how much I loved and enjoyed what I was doing. Perhaps, the man I have become today may just be an unconcealed reflection of how far I have sacrificed for a cause I have greatly lived and adored.”
However, the artist lamented the low level of art appreciation in Nigeria, adding, “In pristine Nigeria, like in virtually all of Africa, art was life and life itself was art. There truly may not have been any questions about its appreciation since it was naturally participatory and revolved around all facets of life. Colonialism later baited us with commerce and the new religions, turned us to strangers within our homesteads and art was later to abruptly become an esoteric exercise.
According to him, “There is obviously a bit of disconnect between today’s artists and the general public and the reason may not be far-fetched. The average Nigerian may have to grapple with the exigencies of life’s basics – food, shelter, clothing – before getting excited about the rejuvenating values embedded in the art of his beleaguered society.”
Although he said he has enjoyed a certain amount of patronage from Nigeria, it is a far cry from what it should be.“I recently read a line from Tokeni Peterside, founder of Art-X Lagos, where she expressed her disbelief that Nigerians do not appreciate art because by nature, we are a bunch of art-loving audience. I agree, there are sweeping opportunities of appreciating art in Nigeria,” he added.
A few years ago, Chukwuma and a group of artists, after a group exhibition, agreed to start a gathering of artists with focus on international exhibition. On whether his upcoming exhibition with a Ghanaian artist is in line with that agenda, Chukwuma said, “There is this flush of enthusiasm that comes with knowing that you could be a critical actor in a creative process. The gush gets even more intense when you encounter other young, seemingly undeterred ‘creators’ who just want to explore explosively. We have straddled a mélange of dreams in the past but art lances from imagination to internalisation and thereafter, execution gives it the voice that it craves.
“I have participated in a number of international shows since then, although they may not have been borne out of the same measure of bias or energy that buoyed our decision from the outset. Certain opportunities have sprouted out of appreciation or sheer awe from enthusiasts and art lovers and as an artist, it is important to key into some of these looming interests and tactfully embrace the pivotal ideals.
“I would not easily say that this show is not a brainchild of that agenda. The manifestation may have been betrayed, as it were, but the core of that hunger to speak to the international audience remains the same.”
Chukwuma, whose works are mostly known as panels with burnt parts and paintings of motifs, said his upcoming exhibition is likely to take a different form because art is evolving and there is need for a paradigm shift.
“I just love to work the way I do but I understand the values embedded in flexibility,” he said. “This show is expected to clearly manifest an embroidery of what I have done in the past with fibre glass and ink drawings, metal pelletes mangled in earth colours, audacious textures, intruding hues and sacrosanct creative presence. Expect a mixed grill of the old and new.”
On a lighter note, the artist said if he were not an artist, he would have been a cook, saying, “I just love food, food, and more food and the poetic kind of nuances and measures that surround it’s processing. Whatever transpires between the assemblage of recipes and utensils and the actual cooking reminds me of the artistic pleasure of planting a seed and watching it blossom. A cook, like the artist is a therapist, an intermediary whose role takes full shape after the interspaces between soul-stirring and quintessence has been wholly filled.”
Dr. Wale Okediran
The Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Ekiti State Chapter, in conjunction with the Federal University, Oye Ekiti, has set aside Thursday, February 16, 2017 to host former ANA National President, Dr. Wale Okediran, as Guest Writer for its February 2017 Monthly Book Reading. According to the State Coordinator and the Scribe of ANA Ekiti Chapter, Akogun Tai Oguntayo and Dr. Olumide Ogunrotimi respectively, the event will take place in the University Auditorium at 2pm.
The reading takes place immediately after the state’s first ANA convention, where new leaders will emerge to steer the state chapter for the next two years. It is expected to attract writers, scholars and literary enthusiasts within and outside Ekiti State. Chief host will be the Vice Chancellor of the university, Prof. Kayode Soremekun, while the current ANA National President, Mr. Denja Abdullahi, will be chief guest of honour.
Dr. Wale Okediran, a multiple award-winning author of many novels, is also the founder of Ebedi International Writers Residency, Iseyin, Oyo State. His highly acclaimed novel, Tenants of the House was co-winner of Wole Soyinka African Literature Prize 2012, while his latest short story collection, Keepers of the Tribe, was recently released by Nelson Publishers Plc.
While speaking on the decision of Federal University, Oye Ekiti, to host the author-politician, Prof Soremekun, said, “Apart from our resolve to encourage the dwindling reading culture among our students, it is also our determination to put FUOYE on the front-burner of academic excellence in Nigeria. One of the ways to achieve this is to collaborate with a viable and educative organisation such as ANA, which is a non-political and non-religious organisation.”
In recent newspaper articles, which resulted from disputes about kingship in Yorubaland, Ife and Benin, it was stated by a royal contributor to the debate that the practice of burying the bodies of the Obas of Benin at Ile Ife stopped in 1914 – a statement which has raised questions about its author’s familiarity and accuracy with the issues raised.
This is because the Benin historian, Jacob Egharevba, in his description of the ritual involved had written: ‘The head of the royal corpse was exhumed and taken to the royal ancestral grave in Ife, but this was done every third reign.’
Oba Ovonramwen, the king involved in the 1914 incident was not buried in Benin. He was buried in Calabar, where he had died in exile after the British Expedition of 1897 and a trial. The possibility of a burial of the royal corpse at Ile Ife was, however, remote for other reasons.
The Orun Oba Ado at Ile Ife (where-it is claimed that the Obas of Benin are buried after death), when excavated, had produced no skull, The excuse for the absence of a skull given by Frank Willett, the British archaeologist who had worked and lived in Nigeria in the 1960s and 1970s, was that only the hair and fingernails of the deceased were buried as a token in lieu of his body. It is however clear from our experience that the contradictions and incongruities encountered in historical reconstruction in Nigeria were self-inflicted and stemmed from a tendency by both indigenous and expatriate historians responsible for them to ignore documentary and archaeological evidence, which best accord with existing knowledge.
In Professor Thurstan Shaw’s essay on radiocarbon dating in Nigeria, charcoal from burial pits 11 and six at Orun Oba Ado was dated A.D. 560 and A.D. 900 respectively. These dates conflict with the date in Egharevba’s book of Oranmiyan’s arrival in Benin from Ife. According to the radiocarbon dating of pit 6, this pit would have been functioning as the burial place of Benin kings two hundred and seventy years before Orun Oba Ado came into being and three hundred years before the first king of Benin to qualify for burial there, Oba Eweka I, was crowned!
As regards pit 11, its A.D. 560 dating means that the burial place of Benin Obas at Ile-Ife was already in existence before even Oduduwa, Oba Eweka’s grandfather or great grandfather himself was born! Even more astounding, this would have been 240 years before the 800 A.D. dating by Frank Willett for Ile Ife itself!!!
The experience, which the archaeologist had had with Orun Oba Ado, was repeated with the Opa Oranyan. (Oranyan staff whose physical reconstruction in 1953 had been preceded by a thorough excavation of the area around its new and older sites. This excavation has disproved the tradition that the Opa Oranyan monolith at Ile-Ife marks the site of Oranmiyan’s grave.
According to Professor Fela Sowande, Ile Ife is not the Ife to which Yoruba oral traditions refer. Also in the words of Professor Wande Abimbola, the seven sites of Ife mentioned by Ifa are Ife Oodaye, the first and possibly the original one, Ife Nleere, Ife Ooyelagbomoro, Ife Wara, Otu Ife, Ife Oore and Ife Oojo’.
In Benin tradition, Oranmiyan’s route from Ife to Benin in 1170 A. D had taken him via the Osse River (known as the Ovia in Benin) to Ughoton (referred to in many maps as Gwato) where a traveller to Benin City disembarked and completed his journey on foot. In this tradition, Oranmiyan had been preceded by two brothers who had each been drowned at the Ughoton crossing where the ferrymen had been bribed and instructed by the opposition in Benin to prevent visitors from Ife from getting to Benin.
Ife’s site in 1485, according to d’Aveiro in Portuguese accounts of the 15th century (Ryder 1965) lay north of Benin City and was the seat of Ogane, the spiritual suzerain of the Oba of Benin said to be the Ooni of Ife. His emissary or messenger was represented in Benin brass casting with cat’s whiskers facial marks and wore a cross round his neck. The Igala, who also had cat’s whiskers facial marks, also lived to Benin’s north as did the Yagba and Ijumu who also had the same facial marks.
The Portuguese priests who, according to the late Chief Fabunmi of Ile Ife had come from Benin in the 16th century to convert Ife to Christianity and had baptized its Ooni and built a Cathedral at a place called Oke Ileri, had also used this route which was the route to the Ife of Oranmiyan and the Ogane referred to in d’Aveiro’s accounts.
A linguistic and heritage mapping of Nigeria’s cultural space and a rationalization of its myths, legends natural and cultural heritage is of great essence if we must stop the howlers that continue to crop up every time we discuss our past.
Between God and Man: Meaning and Essence in Nigerian Traditional Festivals advocates a multi-dimensional, transdisciplinary approach for dealing with its content to remove the distortions, self-contradiction and deficient ethnography to which it is often subjected.
A thinking, which restricts Igbo existence in Nigeria only to the east of the Niger, is misconceived in the amalgram, which is Nigeria. It will not help us explain how we have for example, nine places called Onicha in a local government of Imo State close to a cluster of six places called ‘Ife’ in the same local government; as well as an Ife close to Eket in Akwa Ibom State and an Onitsha Igo in Kogi State. Such a thinking would not provide answers to our problems of inequity, diversity and peaceful co-existence.
The ichi is a striking feature of Nri life and a mark of distinction associated with the Ozo institution and title – taking. The classical ichi, which according to Jeffereys is known as ‘the wings of the eagle’, stretches across the forehead. According to Shaw, the V-shaped ichi is also classical and found on the forehead ending at the bridge of the nose.
The ‘wings of the eagle’ ichi mark has been found on soapstone figures at Esie in Kwara State west of the Niger. Esie is an Igbomina centre whose name suggests an etimological connection with the Igbo. The v-shaped ichi has also been found at Egbejoda, 38km from Ile Ife in Osun State on terra cotta, which is not naturalistic like the typical Ife sculpture. A full face marking has been found at Esie as well as in a shrine at Ile Ife on a soapstone carving described as a representation of Obatala, the Yoruba creation god, who in otua meji of Ifa is described as Oosa Igbo (the deity of the Igbo).
Benin mythology and history have also had links with the Igbo. For example, Oba Orhogbua of Benin on his return from Lagos (Eko) in the 16th century had sent messengers to an Igbo king near the Niger who killed them and attracted the Oba’s anger and revenge, which were captured on trophy plaques. The Igbo captives in the war which Orhogbua had won are shown in the plaques with what look like the ichi without the forehead marking – slanting marks on the face across the cheek. The Igbo king was on a horse and his facial marks were similar to those on his captured subjects.
Benin also has a myth which features Oghene (God), Olukumi (Yoruba), Idu (Benin), Igbon (Igbo) and Uzon (Ijo). The children of Oghene were let down a chain to a temple, which they built at Uhe (Ife), which the children of Idu who had died, left because they had been ill-treated by Olukumi, their uncle. They had wandered around for two centuries (from 800 A.D) and were ruled by Ogisos (Ogie; king and Iso: from the sky). The last Ogiso was Owodo, whose son Ekaladerhan had left Benin and had found himself in flight from Benin pursuers. He had ended up at Ife, where his name changed to Oduduwa. He dethroned Ife’s king, Obatala and drove the Igbo into the neighbouring forests. This is when the Moremi-Igbo encounter took place. Igbo attackers dressed like supernatural beings had harassed Ife with success until Moremi married their chief to find out their secret, which she passed on to her Ife people who thereafter needed only firebrands to fight and defeat the Igbo. Moremi became an Ife heroine and had since been celebrated in the annual Edi festival of Ile Ife.
Ife was converted to Christianity in the 16th century. Unfortunately, its baptized king, Thomas John, died suddenly and his mysterious death was blamed on Christianity and the Christians who became target of a pogrom which led to Ife’s relocation. This explains why whereas in 1485, Ife was described as lying north or north-east of Benin City, Ile Ife the centre of Ife patrimony today lies west of Benin City.
The classical, naturalistic art associated with it came to an abrupt end and its people moved, so to say, bag and baggage – and bronze and terra cotta (many of which were damaged). They replicated with great skill and ingenuity in their new location their cults, shrines, practices and institutions. But the treasures, which were of great excellence had secrets which must be studied and understood.
According to William Fagg, hardly any of the supposedly ancient shrines from which these treasures were dug up at Ile Ife ‘appeared to have had more than a century or so of age-being secondary sites with all the implications of discontinuities: although found at Ile Ife, they in fact came from elsewhere.
Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, the opportunities and prospects which have been revealed in the books we are presenting today had been made possible by the J. P. Clark Centre of the Faculty of Art, University of Lagos and constitute a wonderful example of collaboration between town and gown which must be sustained.
My appreciation goes to Ford Foundation, which funded the countrywide study tour, which completed my research on the books.My appreciation and gratitude go to Aigboje, my son, Bolaji my son-in-law and Robert Tung of the Wempco Group who provided the funds for printing the books. I am grateful to God for their assistance and support and the wonderful opportunity they have provided me.
Thank you very much.
• Frank Aig-Imuokhuede was a former Federal Director of Culture. He made this address at the presentation of his books: A Calendar of Traditional Nigerian Festivals and Between God and Man: Meaning and Essence in Nigerian Traditional Festivals on Thursday, February 2, 2017 at Julius Berger Hall, University of Lagos.
More than 60 contemporary artists, who are described as of emerging and established profile, will be represented by art galleries from Africa and other parts of the world at 2017 New York edition of 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair, holding from May 5–7.
Each year, 1:54 aims to welcome a carefully selected roster of galleries that are dedicated to promoting a diverse set of African perspectives from across the world. This year, the fair will welcome nine new galleries to further broadening perspectives from and in relation to the continent.
Among the exhibitors are 19 galleries from Angola, Côte d’Ivoire, France, Ghana, Italy, Kenya, Morocco, the UK, the US and South Africa. Participating Galleries include (S)ITOR, Sitor Senghor, Paris, France 50 Golborne, London, U.K. AFRONOVA, Johannesburg, South Africa ARTLabAfrica, Nairobi, Kenya, David Krut Projects, Johannesburg, South Africa and New York, USA
Ed Cross Fine Art, London, U.K., Galerie Cécile Fakhoury, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire Gallery 1957, Accra, Ghana, Jack Bell Gallery, London, U.K., MAGNIN-A, Paris, France, MOV’ART Gallery, Luanda, Angola, Officine dell’Immagine, Milan, Italy, ROOM Gallery & Projects, Johannesburg, South Africa, Rosenfeld Porcini, London, U.K., TAFETA, London, U.K., Taymour Grahne Gallery, New York, U.S., Tyburn Gallery, London, U.K.,Vigo Gallery, London, U.K., VOICE Gallery, Marrakech, Morocco.
The schedule for the year include October 5–8, 2017, Somerset House, London. “For the third year in a row, 1:54 New York will be accompanied by FORUM, the fair’s critical talks and events programme, including artist talks, keynote lectures and panel discussions with international curators, artists, scholars and critics. FORUM is curated by Koyo Kouoh, Artistic Director of RAW Material Company, Dakar. The full FORUM programme will be announced in March.
“This year’s fair will also include an expanded collateral programme of Special Projects, 1:54 non-profit section, with further details to be announced close to 1:54’s opening in Spring.
Mrs. Irene C. Mbanefo<br />
Reading Association of Nigeria (RAN), a literate body, will host 2017 Pan-African Literacy For All (PALFA) conference, scheduled from August 27 through 31, 2017, in Abuja. With the theme ‘Connecting and Engaging with Literacy: Systems and Structures for sustainable Development,’ it comes every two years in countries, where local affiliate organisations are in place in partnership with the International Literacy Association (ILA).
National President of RAN, Mrs. Irene C. Mbanefo, told The Guardian that the biennial literacy conference has assumed an unprecedented scope in bringing together government’s agencies and institutions, researchers and educators.
She also stated, “We are expecting and have invited publishers, librarians, international development workers and donor agencies from across the globe to interface and collaborate on literacy development in Africa. This year’s conference promises to engage Northern Education Initiative, operating under United State of America International Development, which is presenting a colloquium on their educational activities in Bauchi and Sokoto States.”
Mbanefo further explained, “the PALFA conference is an important event for educationists across Africa, providing unique opportunity for teachers and investigators to come together to share and learn from classroom, country, and regional projects. We aim at improving the quality of literacy education on the African continent by adopting multi-stakeholders dimension in sharing ideas, researches, evidence-based best practices in literacy-related instructional.
“We intend to employ assessment delivery processes and the challenges of literacy acquisition and sustainability in Africa nations. So, we recognise that literacy disputes affecting countries are different and context-specific across gender, age, education and socio-economic levels. The extent to which nations are successful or otherwise is a factor of acquisition and application of functional literacy skills by citizenry.”
RAN President noted that the choice of Abuja conference is inspired by the need to interrogate the systems, policies and structures designed to entrench literacy culture for sustainable development in and among Africans within the backdrop of Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs.
To her, SDGs envision a world that is economically empowered, socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable and mandate the provision of lifelong learning opportunities that will help all categories of people to acquire knowledge and skills needed to engage and participate fully in society.
Mbanefo also noted, “This implies questioning some traditional concepts and constructs of reading and literacy and strengthening, and supporting systems and structures, which enhance literature for development in Africa.
“We need to think through holistic approaches to providing inclusive and equitable quality education at all levels, especially for the girl child. This is coming with hindsight that many Africans are still unable to apply critical literacy skills to access information to competently use it to address issues.”
Students of Western Cape Sports School with Alhaji Teju Kareem, Prof Fikeni, Mr. Rotimi Awelewa, Thandi Swaartbooi and their teachers after the show
The 10-day run of Miriam Makeba’s Mama Africa The Musical at Artscape Theatre Centre in Cape Town, South Africa, comes to a glorious close today. Since it opened on February 2 to a full house of enthusiastic audiences, Artscape, with its hundreds of theatre patrons, has indeed been a sort of mecca for patrons, who are genuinely interested in the career and life story of the enigmatic cultural icon and civil rights activist, Miriam Makeba.
The show, which has been adjudged an all-round success by the management of Artscape, is, in a way, an image-repairing project for Nigeria with its sometimes foggy reputations among South Africans, especially in view of recent tension that emerged following the killing of a Nigerian in the hands of some South African security operatives.
The musical is written and directed by a Nigerian, Prof. Niyi Coker (Jr), a University of Ife-trained theatre artiste, who has, however, spent over three decades teaching and practising theatre in the United States of America. And though produced by the United Kingdom office of Zmirage Multimedia Company, the executive producer is Lagos-based renowned theatre technician, Wasee Teju Kareem, who is also its Technical Director, and as well Chief Executive Officer of the production company. Also in the crew are no less than 10 other Nigerians working in various departments of the production from technical to administration and communication.
It was the second time the musical will be berthing in Cape Town. In fact, it had been borne through a collaboration of the University of West Cape and University of Missouri, St. Louis, where Coker Jnr is the Desmond Lee professor of African and African-American Studies. It was realised through the collaboration of the ZM Makeba Trust. After a successful first run in Cape Town, the show had then moved on to the United States, where it had a total of 10 performances in three states.
The current return is through the United kingdom office of the Nigerian company, ZMirage Multimedia Company, led by theatre technician, Kareem, who had secured the franchise for the musical. After Cape Town, the musical will tour the United Kingdom, and later Nigeria before the year ends.
At its opening, which had a ceremonial colouration, the Nigerian professionals were star attractions, as they rubbed shoulders with such distinguished guests as United States Consul-General to Cape Town, Teddy Taylor, the CEO of The Artscape, Marlene LeRoux, Richard T. Moody, Simone Heradien of Artscape amongst others.
On Friday, as the production coasts home to its climatic closing this weekend, the 40-man cast and about 12 intercontinental crew members, were full of pride and joy at the impact their sojourn at Artscape had made, especially as they were visibly satisfied at the impression the daily presentations registered in the minds of the hundreds of patrons that had savoured the rich display of resourceful African music, dance, poetry, acting and so on, amidst sophisticated technical input, supervised by ZMirage.
For one, it was a significant statement made even for Artscape, which usually exhibit 90 per cent western-oriented theatre contents for its mostly African audience consumption. Mama Africa was an eye-opener at the drawing power of an all-African cast performance, especially if it enjoys the right mix of story, performance and direction.
In a post-performance meeting with the cast and crew after Thursday’s show, the CEO of Artscape Theatre Centre, LeRoux, confessed to have seen the show almost every night since it opened and also seen quite a few people, who have seen the show more than once. LeRouz encouraged the actors to emulate the icon Miriam Makeba and continue to use their versatile talents to speak out for social reformation. Also in attendance at the meeting was Prof. Somadoda Fikeni, a member of parliament, an activist and the Chairperson of Artscape’s Board, who said he was excited about the uniqueness of the musical, as he praised and encouraged the cast and crew.
One of the guests on Thursday night, who, on seeing school children who had come to see the play, stated categorically that Mama Africa The Musical is the way to teach history, especially to the younger generation so that they can connect better with their roots.
Several audience members had come out of the hall at the end of each show wiping tears as the performance evoked a lot of emotions and roused in some the will to stand up even more for their rights.
There was a particularly instructive incident on Friday, when some crew members – all wearing the Mama Africa t-shirt – paid a visit to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for most of his 27-year incarceration. An ex-political prisoner, now tour guide at the Robben Island, Mr. Sipho Msomi, on sighting the t-shirts with Miriam Makeba face embossed on them could not help talking about Mama Africa’s exploits as a musician and activist during the Apartheid era. He encouraged other members of the visiting group to see the play to better understand the travails of those who were incarcerated on Robben Island.
THROUGHOUT its run, Mama Africa’s main attraction for most media workers at the opening performance and subsequent shows, and one of their often-repeated question to the producers and director of the show was, “…but what is your interest in honouring Makeba?” Perhaps, the question was motivated by the fact that Makeba, in spite of her global acclaim, did not really enjoy much celebration among her fellow South African countrymen and women, especially the artistic community. In various statements, however, the top production crew members gave reasons why they embarked on the project.
Teju Kareem (Executive Producer): “Undertaking this project that reenacts the life of Miriam Zenzi Makeba cannot be counted or quantified in rands, naira or in dollars and cents. Essentially it was not adopted as a production based on any monetary consideration. It is the kind of social conscious theme we at ZMirage promote. Africa, in particular, needs to tell its own stories. We can no longer leave this assignment to outsiders to define the accomplishment of our own heroes.
True-to-life stories that deal with struggles and overcoming the hurdles and obstacles that have been presented to us as Africans due to history and circumstances must be re-iterated to our people and the next generation. This is even more urgent as the world gets more connected via social media and we witness a cultural colonization in action. We need to have more stories of our people, who have overcome adversity and triumphed with the interest of the African continent at the centre and the core of their thought and actions. More so, this is a musical story centred on an African woman. She is the subject, not the object or the sidekick. To date, there have been no musicals that centre on the power and contributions of African women. Here is one and ZMirage is proud to share it with our youth, so they see and dream about new possibilities, and to share it with the world.
“I joined the creative team of Mama Africa the musical as Associate Lighting Designer/Technical Director in 2016 at the invitation of the director, Niyi Coker Jnr. in furtherance of a technical theatre experiment we started several years earlier. From Cape Town to St. Louis, the production, which was made possible by funding from several organisations, educational and theatrical bodies under the auspices of the University of Western Cape and University of Missouri St. Louis, was a resounding success and it opened my eyes to the genius and humanity of the icon, Miriam Zenzi Makeba, whose life, music and activism it celebrates.
“After the run, we all felt a compulsion to propel the production into a wider international market in order to keep alive the inspirational story of a humble yet world renowned singer, who inspired the revolution that destroyed apartheid and resulted in the release of Nelson Mandela after he served 27 years in prison. Generations yet unborn deserve to know the true story behind the myth of one of South Africa’s most iconic singers and Mama Africa The Musical uses music, dance, chants and other theatrical elements to tell a colourful and impactful story.
“I have always relished a professional challenge. So, when I was given the opportunity to executive produce Mama Africa The Musical, I was exhilarated even knowing that it would be an uphill task to raise the funding required to take the production from its ancestral home in South Africa to Nigeria in West Africa and further to London in Europe. The going is tough, no doubt, but with support from the admirable and hardworking creative team, as well as the immensely talented and dedicated cast, I know that for years to come, Mama Africa The Musical will be in theatres around the world delighting, inspiring and engaging music enthusiasts.”
Niyi Coker Jr (Writer/Director): “Working on this original musical theatre rendition on the life and contributions of this great woman and global icon (not simply South African) has been a thoroughly humbling experience. From the research to the writing and directing, with particular focus on intricate aspects of indigenous South African traditions, has been quite educational. The added gift of exploring her non-western discography in relation to the growth and experiences of Mama Miriam Makeba has been doubly indescribable.
