By JAPHET ALAKAM

Renowned art collector and founder of OYASAF,  Yemisi Shyllon has lampooned Nigeria leaders for their general ineptitude towards the development and growth of visual art in the country.

Shyllon expressed his feelings in a paper he presented at the 2012 AGM of the Society of Nigerian Artists recently held in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State.

Shyllon who started by commending the entire members of the council of the Society of Nigerian Artists for recognizing him and other art connoisseurs , for their roles as collectors in the symbiotic sustenance and growth of Nigerian visual art highlighted some disturbing cases of disregard and devaluation of the creative values in the national development and wealth.

In his paper titled, The general Ineptitude of creativity in Nigeria, the worried art collector pointed out the ugly developments going on in the art sector. First  was the case  of the ongoing renovation of the Murtala Mohammed Airport in Lagos where the works of some of the present and past heroes are being desecrated.

According to him,  “These our artistic heroes include such living legends as Prof Yusuf Grillo and Bruce Onobrakpeya whose works gave commendable value and aesthetics to the airport but are being destroyed without any consultation with, involvement or information to the artists. Other artists, whose works are open to being desecrated at the renovation of the Murtala Mohammed Airport, are the works of late Professor Agbo Folarin, the late Isiaka Osunde and Demas Nwoko.

This kind of disregard to creativity is heartbreaking and I am forced to ask in this circumstance; what the collective mission of the SNA is? What has the SNA done since this anomaly was brought to public attention.”

Continuing he pointed out, “It appears that Nigeria is made up of people, who live in a country where artists are sentenced to marginalization and at which, visual art is at best seen as a feature of mere fancy. In Nigeria, everything points to the fact that our leaders are generally ambivalent towards visual art. Our attitude to art is unfortunately part and parcel a product of our colonial mentality.”

He also criticised the attitude of some individuals and agencies who sell the country out especially on the case of return of looted artefacts.  “Another important case of ineptitude demonstrated by us as a people is typified by our contribution and complacency to the recent insult at our intelligence by the British Museum.

The British Museum in avoiding the consistent and increasing pressure for the return of our looted artworks have of recent past, strategically arranged some assisted, cheap and insulting trips to England for some low and middle level civil servants of the National Commission for Museum and Monuments to carry out some curatorial works for private and public collections in England in exchange for some payment of mere pittance to the Nigerians, when compared to what they would have paid if they had used their own citizens.”

Going down memory lane, Shyllon stated that the Nigerian art works in the collection of the British Museum are mostly the looted works carted away from our country by imperialists from 1897 and during the period of colonisation. “Our collective intelligence has of recent been insulted by a spokesman of the British Museum, when he was asked about what his country was doing about returning the looted works.

In reply, he told us to rather concentrate more on the benefits accruing to us from the on-going human-capacity development programme of the British Museum by their assisted training program in England, of civil servants instead of calling for the return of the looted works.”

Other recent noticeable insult he noted, is the action of the Museum of Art in Vienna through its funding of a widely publicised exhibition of lace textile materials in the Lagos Museum under the pretext of helping us to celebrate lace textiles, as part of our collective heritage. In reality, the whole essence of the funding of that exhibition by the Austrians is to reactivate their dying Austrian lace export trade to Nigeria.

Another painful disturbing experience of recent, is the behaviour of a Vice Chancellor of one of the first five universities in Nigeria. This Vice Chancellor had an “Anyanwu” (a bronze work of about ten feet) by Ben Enwowu uprooted from the living-room of his official residence.

The man also removed works of such great renowned master artists as Akinola Lashekan, Bruce Onobrakpeya and Ben Enwonwu from the walls of the Vice Chancellor’s official quarters as well as a door carved by the late Lamidi Fakeye. The Vice Chancellor has since sent all these great works to the storage section of the institution’s Museum of National History.

Also disturbing according to him, is the fast-declining heritage as a great sculptural nation. “If you recall, our forebears were more celebrated and acclaimed as sculptors than painters. This is more with particular reference to the situation observable at the Yaba College of Technology, which happens to be the first creative art institution in Nigeria.”

According to him, the 2011/ 2012 graduation class has only one sculptor trained by eitht to ten lecturers, while there are 18 painters being trained by the same number of lecturers. The situation in YABATECH is not particularly different from what is happening in other art institutions in Nigeria.”