OZIOMA ONUZULIKE

Professor Ola Oloidi

Next week Thursday, April 28th 2011, Ola Oloidi, professor of Art History at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, will be delivering his inaugural lecture titled, “The Rejected Stone: Visual Arts in an Artistically Uninformed Nigerian Society at the Princess Alexandria Auditorium, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. In this interview, Dr. Ozioma Onuzulike, Nsukka-based ceramic artist, poet and art historian spoke to the eminent scholar about his training and practice, and about the inaugural lecture. Excerpts:

You will be delivering your inaugural lecture as a professor of art history of the University of Nigeria on the 28th of April 2011. It will be nice if you provide the art community and the general public a background account to the historical build up for the lecture that you have entitled “The Rejected Stone: Visual Arts in an Artistically Uninformed Nigerian Society”. To begin with, what is your background as an art teacher?

I was trained at the Yaba College of Technology where I received OND in 1969. Earlier in 1968, I won the LINTAS scholarship as the best art student of the year. I also graduated the following year as the best all-round student. That was why Mr. Oshiga (now late) recommended me to Bariga Girls’ Secondary School to be the pioneer full-time art teacher in 1969. At the time, students snubbed art and the society was completely illiterate and uninformed about fine arts. I joined the school only to be challenged consciously and unconsciously by that societal mood. Students and teachers had no respect for the visual arts. But the principal, Mrs. Victoria Onofowokan, was about the only staff interested in art and she helped me to help the situation as regards making the school understand and appreciate art. Immediately I got there, I was not influenced by any negative complex. I was equipped and prepared since I already knew what to expect. I usually dressed very well, putting on tie, unfortunately, and ensured that my English was well structured. I made sure that I included the theoretical or art historical aspects in my teaching of art, not just ‘hand work’. I taught both brain and hand exercises. I requested for an art studio from the principal, arguing that the biology, physics and chemistry teachers had their teaching laboratories. Home Economics also had one. The principal agreed and my own space turned out to be the biggest of all, and it was also equipped. I later requested to have a Signboard near the school’s Signboard, and the principal agreed. And I made sure that mine was three times larger than the school’s Signboard. What were the words there? “ART IS THE BASIS OF EDUCATION”. The Signboard was colourfully written and ‘intimidating’. I was consciously doing things that would attract them to appreciate art, and, by implication, appreciate me.

T hey used to have an assembly every morning. I discovered that many of the teachers did not speak English better than myself and were not as handsome as myself (laughs). I was once asked to address the students. I have forgotten the occasion; as if the person probably wanted to test me. That was the mistake made. I began to display English. I knew how we challenged the situation at YABATECH when we used to ‘cram’ all those ‘big’ words in the Readers’ Digest’s “Increase Your Language Power”. We were using it to react naturally, not artificially. When I started addressing the students, they could not believe what they heard and saw, because I combined gesticulation, elocution or lips’ elasticity with audibility to beautifully project my address. They were very impressed. However, I gave a list of what we needed in the Art Room and the Principal bought everything. That gave me a sense of pride.

By the time I left Bariga, after one and a half years, many of the students were interested in Fine Arts. The principle said that Art had eventually become the most popular subject in the school. All my students who graduated in 1970 passed art and some of them took to art, I was later told. When I resigned to go for further studies at Howard University, the principal pleaded with me to spend one more year with them but I told her that I had already collected my visa. They organised a send-forth where they made me cry. I owe my performance at Bariga Girls to Yusuf Grillo’s tutelage. Grillo was an art image. I cannot forget him.

Please let me add this . It was only two weeks ago that I got a call from one Tosin Fagbemi, now Dr. (Mrs.) Ojemuyiwa who introduced herself as my student 41 years ago at Bariga. Now a Medical Doctor, my name is the only one she can now remember, of all her teachers at Bariga, according to her. She accidentally got this link with me through a Youth Corper serving in her area. This is great. Sele Eradiri of NTA who was in Class Four when I left Bariga was also my student. I knew her as Seledegha Eradiri. Other students of mine there were daughters of Bobby Benson, Bola and Baby, Olumegbon, the daughter of LAI TAILOR, Sawyer, Ajenifuja, Tayo Ogunlesi and Tony Wey.

Sam Amuka, who was that time the Editor of Sunday Times was one of the few Nigerians who really encouraged and understood what art was. That time, he was living at Rotimi Street, Yaba, where I was also residing, of course as a small boy, he used to buy art, paintings, from us, particularly from now Architect Bili Koleosho, Adjunct Professor of Architecture at UNILAG. He was an inspiration to me as a teacher at “Bariga Girls”.

Tell me about your training at Howard University in the USA.

I enrolled at Howard University in 1971. There, I majored in Painting and took a minor in Art History. I did not go there to play. I was lucky to enter a university that was ideologically sound. It was a predominantly black institution. When they saw my records, they removed one year from my period of study. So, I graduated in 1973. I, thereafter, completed my Master’s degree in art history within one year in 1974. There, I was one of the best students of art criticism. I almost had my first degree in Art Criticism. I studied under Prof. Jeff Donaldson who was the first to get a Ph.D. in African-American art history. He studied at Northwestern University under Frank Willett, which was why I also later went to the University.

What did you do in your master’s degree and who was your project advisor?

I did my Master’s degree under Kojo Fosu Baden, who later became Professor Kojo Fosu. He was the one who supervised my project, which was anthropological. It was ethnographic: “Aesthetics and Symbolism of Yoruba Sango Staff”. It has nothing to do with art history. I am sorry to say that. After my M.A. degree in 1974, I began my Ph.D. at Northwestern University under Frank Willett, the first archaeologist to the Federal Government of Nigeria. At that time, the black population there was only 2% and the university was very expensive, which was why I could not finish there after a session. I withdrew officially and ceased the opportunity to come and work here (at Nsukka) as Lecturer II in 1976.

How did it happen that you joined the faculty at Nsukka?

I saw the advert for the position of an art historian in the early 1976. I just applied and was employed automatically without an interview.

What was the Nsukka art department like when you arrived there in 1976?

I arrived at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka only to start regretting. This was because I found myself in an environment that was physically tortured, environmentally foggy and infrastructurally unappealing, if not deficient, as a result of the Civil War. I found a heavily pre-fabricated institution. One of our colleagues in the sciences left within two weeks, another went back straight to the US. I was there physically but spiritually my mind had left Nsukka. However, immediately I started discussing with some of the staff on ground, the intellectual facility and energy, the elastic creativity and the acknowledgment of African tradition in the art department, were such that arrested me without mercy. Uche Okeke was talking in a revolutionary manner, the way I was taught at Howard University, to ‘be yourself’, to ‘liberate yourself’, intellectually, morally, academically, socially and culturally. I immediately said ‘this is my institution’. In fact, when I came here, I thought I would leave after two or three years. But the more I stayed… it is just like a Yoruba proverb which says that “the leaf used to wrap a black soap eventually becomes part of the soap”. I relaxed when I discovered that the type of art they were creating at Nsukka acknowledged the philosophy of AfriCobra (the African Commune of Bad Relevant Art) – the Black-American art that was unique, art that was rebellious without the people being rebels, art that talked about the people, art that people see and react in a way that they can’t even understand themselves, art that accommodates and vibrates, art that annoys in a way that will be consoling to the other party. I saw the Uli art at Nsukka, which I later began to fertilize, by writing about the intellectual facilities it naturally accommodated.

What were the historical circumstances surrounding your decision to transit from Traditional African Art under Frank Willett to Modern African Art under Uche Okeke?

Uche Okeke, supported by Demas Nwoko, was the only person who encouraged writing on modern Nigerian art. I was to return to Northwestern to complete my Ph.D. but Uche Okeke refused. He said, “by the way, you want to go back and continue writing about antiquities? Why should you continue to live in the 16th and 17th Centuries?” He said: “I want you to continue here and change to contemporary African art”. At that time, Uche Okeke had started writing The History of Modern Nigerian Art, a small pamphlet. He exposed me to the field. He said there was nobody in that area. That was why I chose to leave studies in traditional African art which was anthropological.

When I enrolled for the programme here, some people within the Department petitioned the authorities that a staff was admitted for Ph.D. when there was no Ph.D. programme in the Department. This is life! This made me closer to God, because they tortured me. There was truly no record in the Department. But Uche Okeke said that the first Ph.D. student was one Mrs. Salmon, who was supervised by himself, Afigbo and another academic in the Faculty of Arts. The record was eventually found in the office of the Dean of Faculty of Arts. That was how I started. Again, when I finished writing, they petitioned again that my project was not supervised. Irien Wangboje was attached to Uche Okeke as my co-supervisor. I finished and defended it in the 1980/1981 session.

Were you the first Ph.D. art history graduate at Nsukka?

I was not the first Ph.D. art history graduate at Nsukka, but I was the first Ph.D. graduate in modern African art. In fact I was the first to defend a Ph.D. in modern African art in Nigeria. There was one Umoetuk who was admitted along with me for art history, but his focus seemed to be far removed from art history proper.