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“There was an
Independence Trade Fair held on the grounds of what is now Bonny Camp
in Victoria Island and there was a pavilion for Art,” Bruce
Onobrakpeya, the doyen of the Nigerian art scene, recalls with
nostalgia. “Uche Okeke, Demas Nwoko and I decorated some of the other
pavilions,” he continues “and the works of the older artists like Ben
Enwonwu and Aina Onabolu were shown as well as those of us younger
artists.” Onobrakpeya was speaking to me a day after his 78th birthday
and at the National Museum, Onikan, Lagos, after the re-commissioning
of a new Murtala Mohammed Gallery in the Museum complex.

Interestingly, a
photography exhibition, ‘Nigeria Yesterday and Today’, made up of black
and white photographs of past leaders; traditional, civilian and
military, was hung on the walls surrounding the bullet-ridden black
Mercedes Benz car in which General Mohammed,then military Head of
State, was assassinated on his way to work in 1976.

For a National
Museum, the quality of most of the photographs displayed was
embarrassingly poor. Some of them had been digitally-treated and
re-copied; but all the same, this display speaks volumes of our lack of
depth in preserving and respecting our national archives. There were a
few excellently-conceived portraits; particularly from the military
regime eras; taken by the great photographer Peter Obe. By some quirk
of coincidence, the first photograph in the exhibition was that of a
distraught Oba Ovonramwen of Benin on a ship on his way to a
British-imposed exile in Calabar. This historic and world famous
photograph was taken in 1897 by Nigeria’s first master photographer,
Jonathan Adagogo Green of Bonny in now Rivers State. It is a shame that
the supposed custodians of our national archives do not know this fact.
Yet, it took two American Art-History professors, Anderson and Aronson,
to discover and identify Green’s body of extraordinary photographs in
the nineties!

Pockets of celebration

In Onobrakpeya’s view, the bullet-ridden car is not an appropriate commemoration of Murtala Mohammed as a leader.

“That car reminds
us of violence. There should be a more befitting monument to him like
they have done for leaders in Asia, Kenya and Ghana.”

How are we using
Art to celebrate Nigeria at 50, I ask him? “Whatever we are celebrating
in the Arts now has its beginnings in the Independence Art Exhibition,”
he explains. “Art in Nigeria has grown and developed because of the
resilience of the artists, sponsorship of patrons, emergence of Art
galleries, Art workshops like the annual Harmattan workshop and
government’s efforts like FESTAC ‘77 and more recently, ARESUVA. For
Nigeria at 50 there are pockets of celebration. The exhibitions of old
pottery and the re-commissioning of the Murtala Mohammed Gallery at the
National Museum Lagos is part of it. One would have wanted a central
focus that would be spread for a whole year. I suppose if you put all
the pockets of celebration together we will have a great celebration,”
he concludes.

Bolanle
Austen-Peters, MD of Terra Kulture, believes that Art is gaining more
relevance and the industry is vibrant. “We still need additional
government sponsorship and visibility. For all the money voted for the
celebration of Nigeria at 50, how much was allocated for the Arts? At
the last minute, a lot of charlatans will be used instead of creative
people with experience and know-how, so we will not have a meaningful
and significant input from the Arts in celebrating Nigeria at 50,”
Austen-Peters predicts.

Arinze, a
celebrated ceramics artist is emphatic. “I am not sure we are doing it
rightly,” he says. “There should have been an Art competition that is
juried after which there would be one big Art Exhibition opened by the
President. Artists were invited by the Nigerian government to hold an
Independence Art Exhibition in 1960. From this Exhibition came the
Society of Nigerian Artists (SNA) which has been in the forefront of
developing Art and artists in Nigeria.” Arinze, the Director of ArtZero
– a collective of artists that hold yearly exhibitions and participate
in group exhibitions and the Art Expo – knows the dynamics of the
present Art scene in Nigeria quite well.

It is heartening
that the Art community and artists are not waiting for government to
set the tune or show the direction in using the Arts to prominently
celebrate Nigeria at 50. In fact, evidence that government had no
clear-cut policy strategy for the role of the Arts in celebrating
Nigeria at 50 had been obvious for quite some time. As many artists
point out, plans for involving the Arts in celebrating Nigeria at 50
should have been rolled out more than a year ago.

Last minute efforts

There are ad hoc
and last minute official efforts to integrate the Arts into the huge,
planned celebrations. The idea of building a commemorative tower was
muted and unresolved. Various art groups and associations have been
asked to submit artworks, at their own expense and as late as
September, for an exhibition to be mounted at the National Stadium,
Abuja.

President of the
Guild of Fine Artists and a much respected painter, Efosa Oguigo is of
the opinion that the lack of commitment from government agencies in
planning a huge contribution from the Art community and artists, “will
make the forefathers of the SNA unhappy.” “Immediately after
Independence,” he points out, “the SNA was formed and the government
started to court them. That is why we have so much great art by
Nigeria’s best artists in our public spaces, government buildings and
government galleries.” He laments that plans to involve the Arts in
celebrating Nigeria at 50, “are disjointed because we just see concerts
of efforts. I would have thought that there would be a streamlined
thing that would have the punch it should have.”

It’s not that Nigeria at 50 just crept up unexpectedly and took
everyone unawares. We are notorious as a country for not planning well
ahead and being meticulous about detail. Amazingly, the Presidency and
the chambers and committee rooms of the National Assembly have many Art
works on their walls. Are we to believe that other more important
aspects of the celebration distracted the decision makers from seeing
these Art works on their walls and deem them fit to be part of
celebrating Nigeria at 50? Or is it just a subtle way of telling the
nation that Nigerian Art has not inspired them to greater levels of
appreciation? But then how many of our fifty-odd political parties have
policies for Arts and Culture in Nigeria?