By Godwin Oritse
In the aftermath of Nigeria clocking 100 years last year, Mr. Archibald Etikerentse, an artist, has concluded plans to celebrate some Nigerian families and organisations which contributed to the making of the nation. In this interview,   Etikenretse says every Nigerian and organization that have been part of the growth of the country will be showcased at an award ceremony. Excerpts:

WHAT informed your decision to embark on the Centenary project ?

Nigeria is a country in a hurry, we are competing on the internet with America and Britain, we put the best cars in the world on the worst roads.

We travelled all over the world but we have refused to understand that culture has no replacement. These cultures we try to emulate came to Africa, studied our culture, transformed it into modern technology and exported it back to us. The Yoruba would tell you today that there is a correlation between the Odu-Ifa and computer. That is how far we can go.

Archibald Etikerentse

The Egyptian Pyramids remain one of the wonders of the world, the stale of Punt, the Moroes, the Cushites today form the basis of some of the comics our children watch because we have abandoned our history. Today, there is so much information on the internet but our minds are still empty, because we do not know who we are.

Tourism industry

My project, therefore, is to try and build a foundation for the Tourism Industry, create avenues for people to learn about their past, know their family members in order to form a bond in our society.

How do you intend to achieve this, considering the financial implication of such a huge project ?

A journey of a thousand miles starts with a step. The project is expansive and started about 15 years ago, so I decided to narrow it to my locality Warri Kingdom project which is greatly appreciated by the Itsekiris. The project is to give back to our background as well bring up people in the society to save for future generation what use to be in Nigeria’s first centenary.

As a Nigerian citizen, who worked at the top of the culture ministry, who is privileged to know that in some parts of the world, record keeping is good for future generations, I am looking for like minds to synergize with so that we can build on our present using our past as a guide. Nigerian’s are hardworking, creative and industrious. All these should be shown in places called “Centenary Unity Gallery”. These Unity galleries are not there now, so what do we do? We would study every ethnic group/families in Nigeria and document them in books titled “Who is Who in Nigeria” fragmented into various states. Apart from the books, we would now use our research finding to establish the first centenary tourism centres for development and history.

How do you intend to raise money for this project?

Everybody or family who takes part in this project would contribute a promotional fee, because there are millions of families. So, we cannot possibly record all, but those who feel they have prominent people to showcase, and know that their progenitors sustained them to have been part of the building of Nigeria’s first centenary and hope to be around for the second centenary. Families who hope to produce children who would carry their family names into the third centenary would be asked to pay the fees.

There are of course many other persons or companies who share the goodness and wellness of Nigerians, such companies would be approached to participate as part of their corporate social responsibility and also advertise their products in the books.

Itsekiri history

We shall also approach local, state and Federal Government agencies to support the project.

Can you briefly summarize your input into this aspect of Itsekiri history? Why do you think this book makes your style unique?

What I brought into Itsekiri history were illustrated in pictures. Like they say, necessity is the mother of inventions. As you would know, Itsekiri history is one of the oldest histories around, no body alive today can claim to know how long the Itsekiri people have lived on surface of the earth except from histories written down by those who first knew how to read and write. These writers were not artistes, they could not put down pictorial interpretation, and that’s where I come in. I studied Fine Art, and by God’s Grace, have experience as a theatre artist because I started as a theatre artist. I have therefore brought to bear the dramatic personae involved in the histories and further than that I travelled far and wide to do consultation for eleven (11) years before I published my first book.

I traced the origin of the Itsekiri and went to places hitherto mentioned in history books but were unknown to people in Warri Kingdom. I travelled and compared ancient and contemporary history and then backed them up with pictures and illustrations. People were able to see for the first time Kings that lived long ago and were able to associate themselves with their forbearers. If they were real, I think that is novel and today people, students in Europe are using the book for Ph.D studies because they are able to match pictures and letters.

For instance, I travelled to Ode-Omi in Ijebu waterside of Ogun State and established the fact that the present King/Oba there goes by the name Lenuwa and corroborated the story of Omadino people who have Lenuwa Hall as a tribute to the founder of their community. Lenuwa’s according to oral history who migrated from Ode over 900 years ago, today studies are on going to trace Itsekiri history to the Atlantic civilization.

Atlantic civilisation

African history has been left at a point where the colonial masters stopped writing. There are of course a few writers who took it upon themselves to write but there is no encouragement.

So what I do is to try and teach with pictures because from explanations offered earlier, pictures appeal better to human minds. Concisely, my contribution to Warri Kingdom history is the reinvention of the history to explore areas hitherto forgotten. I have also connected it with Ijebu, Benin, Portuguese and British cultures by using pictures to teach.

What is your own corporate responsibility since you are expecting companies and families to contribute?

Collating information and documentation is not an easy task, but I am giving all the information gathered for this project to local, state and federal Government agencies in the Tourism sector to form the basis for a genuine tourism development policy for the country. We travel to South Africa, East Africa, Britain, America etc, to see museums, we should build such for others to come and see.

So, how have you managed since you left paid employment these past 24 years?

I took God’s words from my literal understanding that he would cater for me if I left everything I was doing and joined his team and to the glory of God, I have not been disappointed. I would not say I am a rich man or pastor or anything like that but God has always raised help for me at distress points. People have stood up for me and taken my most heavy burdens. I take everyday like it comes, listen to my inner mind and take decisions which I think was God.

Original profession

In 1997 when the Warri crisis began, I saw reasons to go back to my original profession (Fine Art) but this time doing works that would expose things hitherto covered in ignorance because I reasoned that Nigerians can easily be deceived by people who have their own hidden agenda but hide under ethnicity, blowing up situations to illiterate minds, fueling situations, hiring thugs in the name of militancy, buying ammunition, killing and destroying government properties, siphoning oil from pipeline to enrich their pockets. I started therefore to study history of the people of Warri area and found out that there was a gap between what was written down as history and what was seen or what was on ground. Unfortunately, Nigerians don’t read.

As humans, we are more interested in seeing pictures, children are thought with pictures, films are made of pictures, football matches are pictures so there must be something about pictures that speaks more to the human minds.

As you know life is full of chances, so I took my chance, I decided to channel my talents to putting in histories of various cultures of the country and the world in books as my contribution to mankind, after all, why should a man come to this world, walk the earth and just leave like that.

That was what informed my first book ( Quincentenary Souvenirs from Warri Kingdom) 1480 – 2012.