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By Toyin Akinosho
My first experience of a Didi Museum outing was an outdoor garden exhibition featuring Sule Asha, Kenny Adamson and Adamu Ajunam, in 1983. It was the Museum’s first outing.
Days before the show, Mike Omoighe, a visual artist then establishing his own practice, had introduced me to the founder, Newton Jibunoh, an urbane, personable, self-assured businessman who was at the time Chairman of the Costain Group, a construction engineering firm in Lagos.
I took to Mr. Jibunoh at terribly short notice, as he allowed me, a 23-year-old youth corper, argue vigorously with him over drinks and hors d’oeuvres that he himself had provided in his own expansive sitting room on Victoria Island. He was 45.
”A legend is someone who everyone in society collectively agrees is a large personage, like a Ben Enwonwu, or a Chinua Achebe”, I insisted.
“Look, Toyin, you can pick your legend,” he responded, apparently taking me seriously. “Kenny Adamson is a legend; he is my own legend as far as I am concerned”.
I knew Kenny Adamson as a newspaper cartoonist at the time and in my amateur, personal ranking, he didn’t come anywhere close to either Jossy Ajiboye or Dele Jegede.
The evening’s banter heartily drifted to other issues. Omoighe wanted to be sure if he could invite his friends to the forthcoming exhibition. Afterall, this was not a regular gallery opening.
Mr Jibunoh dismissed his anxieties with a story about access control at the grand gala for Nigeria’s independence celebrations in Onikan in 1960. The place was crawling with big men and substantial women and the security men looked tough and ready. “There was one of these paramount rulers from my part of the country.”, he recalled. “He was terrified by the tough mien of the high-handed guards. Even though he was holding his invitation card, he felt he had to make a point. He stammered: ‘I swear to God I am a King’! Everyone roared with laughter. “No, we won’t take anyone through that kind of discomfort”, Mr. Jibunoh assured Omoighe.
I was doing my Youth Service around the corner at Elf Nigeria Limited, (now TOTALEnergies) on Kofo Abayomi Street, so it was easy for me to drop by at the Didi Museum grounds in those days.
Mr. Jibunoh was excited about the prospects of Didi Museum, a repository of arts from Africa and the African diaspora, as he described it, named for his late sister. But he was also respectful of the work of a group of eminent Nigerians, like himself, who were building a venue for Classical Music Performances. Mr. Jibunoh spoke about these men with some reverence. He thought that the proposed building was going to be grand. The Muson Centre in the Onikan Culture precinct, was opened a few months after Didi’s launch.
I HAD MET MIKE OMOIGHE, MUCH EARLIER, IN CIRCUMSTANCES ENTIRELY OUT OF SYNC with the one that played out in Newton Jibunoh’s sitting room.
Dateline: June 1983.
Impressed by the breadth of a retrospective exhibition held in the bowels of the newly built National Council for Art and Culture (NCAC) Complex in Iganmu, at the foot of the Eko Bridge, I walked up to the Director of the NCAC, introduced myself, described how intrigued I was by the scope of the show. Then I wondered why there were so few people at an event which gave out so much.
Mr. Frank Aig Imoukhuede was incensed.
“What do you know about art that makes you feel this gathering is a small group?”, the director asked, aloud. “Do you know who and who has attended? And Who are you exactly?” he pursued, threateningly.
His voice was so high above the din of the chatter in the exhibition hall that everyone turned their gaze on us. I didn’t know whether to run or crawl out of sight.
Minutes later, I was standing alone on the pavement leading to the car park, hoping to dust off the embarrassment and quietly disappear, when I noticed a gentleman of about my age, walking up to me.
Mike Omoighe, dressed in white, short sleeved shirt and khaki trousers, extended a hand in greeting, told me what he saw and he became, from that day, my Guide to the Lagos art circuit.
He introduced me to David Dale, the accomplished printmaker with a deep throated, infectious laughter. I learned, first from Omoighe, the creation story of the Zarianist rebellion of 1957, which has determined the evolution of contemporary art practice in Nigeria. Naturally, he introduced me to the man he considered his father: the inimitable Brue Onobrakpeya.
My meetings with people like Omoighe and Jibunoh make the year 1983 to have a particular resonance for me.
It was the year I met J. P Clark, first African born professor of English language, who gave me, free access, to the all-year-round performances at his Pec Repertory Theatre in Onikan, which meant that he handed me the 90 Naira a year subscription ticket for over 10 plays and concerts.
It was the year I met Tunde Kuboye who, like Clark and Jibunoh, played a pivotal role in my life in ways I did not know then.
As I’ve observed elsewhere, Mr Kuboye was who every twenty something year old, fresh University graduate in Lagos in 1983, wanted to be. He was hosting jazz concerts and poetry readings at the National Museum, running a schools’ debate programme on TV, driving around town in a jeep; married to a pretty dental surgeon from the illustrious Kuti family, who was also a great singer, with extensive vocal range.
1983 was the year my father died. It was the year I met Steve Rhodes and I determined that, whatever happened, I was going to attend his October 1, 1983 concert at Pec Theatre where he first sketched out, in songs, the history of Nigerian music, from traditional assemblage of simple instruments to the complicated Afrobeats.
I WAS GOING THROUGH STUFF I RETRIEVED FROM OUR HOUSE IN FESTAC TOWN, following the 2020 death of my Mum who had lived in the house for 44 years, when I chanced on a 1983 calendar of events of the Goethe Institut, the German cultural centre.
Printed on red paper, the document outlines the Institut’s programmes for November and December, the last two months of the year.
It simply reinforced my take on the resonance of 1983. Two particularly signifying events:
- A Jam Session, scheduled for 7pm at the Museum Kitchen (a courtyard at the National Museum), featuring “Members of Tunde Kuboye’s Extended Family Jazz Band, musicians from other African countries and Karl Berger, the German American vibraphone player, having finished their 3-day workshop…”
- An Art Exhibition, slated to run from December 3-17, 1983, displaying recent works of Adeniji Adeyemi, described, on the programme as “one of the younger members of the Osogbo School of Artists”. Adeyemi had participated “in exhibitions in Erlanger and at the Africa Gallery in Frankfurt”.
The Goethe Institut was a key fixture of the Lagos arts scene 40 years ago. It still is. But the discovery of, not a 1995 event listing, not a 2000 calendar of events, but a 1983 programme, in mid -2023, is surreal.
It so happens that it was the same year, the very last day of it actually, that Muhammadu Buhari first intruded into all our lives as the country’s Head of State. In the next 11 days, he leaves that same office for the second time.
BACK TO DIDI-I congratulate Uncle Newton for 40 years of Didi Museum and I personally thank him for his tolerance of dissenting opinions of a lad who was young enough to be his son.
That sort of encounter has allowed me to fledge and hone a voice. The relationship he allowed us to have has helped me frame myself and reduced hints of insecurity. It probably helped guarantee me the space I inhabit in the culture circuit, however ambiguously it is defined.
Thank you, Newton Jibunoh. Long live Didi Museum.
