Category: Life – The Midweek Magazine

Former Lagos State Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode’s official photographer Ope Adeniyi, in this interview with KUNLE AKINRINADE, speaks on his life and works, among others.

Five years ago when he walked into the campaign office of former Governor Akinwunmi Ambode at Gbagada, Lagos, he had no inkling that he would become his official photographer.

But today, Opeoluwa Adeniyi, a freelance photographer at wedding parties and other social gatherings, has reason to smile, when he recalls the miraculous way God turned his life around.

“It’s been four years since I started working with Governor Akinwunmi Ambode as his official photographer. I did not know him from Adam, but I came in contact with him five years ago through his campaign office at Gbagada, a stone throw from my home then.

“At the start of the governorship campaigns in 2015, I approached the office as a volunteer photographer. I was employed without salary. Up till the time they embarked on local government campaigns, I was part of the team. One of his personal assistants was magnanimous enough to give me some money, having seen my dedication to duty.”

Adeniyi recalled that he was earlier introduced to Ambode, who was the governorship candidate of the All Progressives’ Congress (APC), but that he became the official photographer to the governor by providence, two months after Ambode assumed office.

“I met one Alhaji Anifowoshe, a chieftain of APC, who was the chairman of the chairmen of APC local government chapters in Lagos State at a function organised by the governor in his hometown, Epe. Alhaji Anifowoshe introduced me to Governor Ambode as a graduate photographer and asked that the governor should help me. Governor Ambode replied him that there was no problem and that once he won the election, he would surely look into my case, joking: “Ah, koni ya photo mo niyen (If he’s a graduate, that means he would no longer be taking photographs). I was happy on hearing his response because I was not the only photographer on his team. There was a photographer from the United Kingdom who was also part of the team.

“We were taking photographs and putting them on the social media space. After he was sworn in as  governor, I was not appointed his official photographer. There was a man working with him until he left because of an unresolved misunderstanding and I was asked to replace him in July 2015. It was actually one of his aides who reminded him that I had worked with his campaign team without collecting pay, hence, he asked that I should be called to replace the other photographer who had just left.

“My job entailed the documentation of his official engagements. When I took the photographs of his official engagements, they were posted on his social media accounts, including Twitter, and Facebook. I also archived the photographs for him to see.”

 

How his job affected

his family life

The father of two recalled how the job  affected his family life, noting that despite  being arduous, it was rewarding.

“Life as the governor’s photographer was tough. It involved working round the clock. My wife and my children, though, understood the nature of my job. It affected my health as I took ill on many occasions.

“There was a day we returned from an official engagement at about 4 am and by 7 am, we were up again. At a point, I had to take injections on the job because I was ill, but could not stay in the hospital. But I could not quit because I was enjoying the job. It was not that I was not used to working long hours as a freelance photographer, but you know that parties are held mainly at weekends. We rested during the week, unlike my work with the governor where you could not rest until he said so. But Governor Ambode is a very generous man. He rewards hard work and has done a lot for me in terms of rewarding my service to him.”

Asked what encouraged him to work in the campaign team of a man he did not know, he said: “Aside the monetary gain, I had been a wedding and freelance photographer, but I was looking for an opportunity to earn better appreciation for my work and I felt that that could be achieved by documenting a public figure like him, and that it would give me the opportunity to do more work. You know, as wedding photographer, there were times that you might not have work to do during the year, especially during the rainy season until October and the Yuletide. But as the governor’s photographer, there won’t be a day without assignments to cover and that was what encouraged me to volunteer to work for him.”

 

His perception of

his principal

Adeniyi described Ambode as an achiever, whose giant strides would speak for him.

“What I noticed about Gov Ambode was his peculiar lifestyle. He had a way of bringing his lifestyle to bear on his work. He’s a workaholic. He believes his work would speak for him, rather than flashing his achievements to people all the time. He is a silent achiever. He has done so much, but only about 60 per cent of what he has done is in the public domain. I believe that people would get to know more of what he had been able to do or achieve as governor after leaving office.

“Gov Ambode believes that when you work hard, you will be  rewarded. I learnt that from him and that has made me to be very hard working. He’s a wonderful person and despite what happened to him politically, we all are not perfect. Gov Ambode told us his aides that whatever we did would speak for us.Whenever we wanted to post the pictures of his achievements on the social media, he would stop us and say that his works should speak for him. He said those plying the roads he built would pray for him, knowing full well that he built the roads for them.

“I remember that during the inauguration of the Abule Egba flyover, Gov Ambode overheard a man in the crowd shouting: ‘’My tax is working’. He said he didn’t need to go to the media to make a noise about his achievements and asked us to interview the man who made the remarks.

“The governor appreciates good work. There was a particular photograph of a steel bridge at Ojota, which I took at nightfall. The governor saw it on the government’s website when we were in Abuja for official engagement. He liked it. So, he sent for me and applauded my artistry. He ordered that the photograph be framed and used to decorate offices. Another one was that of a picture he took with visiting French President. He also commended it.

“If God gives him another opportunity to serve again, I wouldn’t mind working for him. He was the one who made me train in videography, so I could transmit events he attends outside Lagos directly and live.”

 

His love for photography

He said he took to photography shortly after he left secondary school, through a family friend. Adeniyi recalled how the job sustained his studies at the University of Lagos, where he studied Educational Psychology.

“I studied Educational Psychology at the University of Lagos (UNILAG) and graduated in 2008. It was my older brother, Femi Adeniyi, who made me fall in love with photography in 1999, shortly after I completed my secondary school education. He had a friend who was living in our house. The man later got employment with Fototeck, a photo processing company with headquarters in Opebi, Ikeja, Lagos. He was a manager of one of the company’s outlets in Surulere. My brother asked him to get a job for me in his office. He replied that I could only be trained as a photographer.

“At first, I declined the offer because I felt that I should not be subjected to apprentice-ship, which I considered belittling. But I  accepted the offer and mastered the art two years later. I was transferred to  Opebi, from where the manager of the Bayelsa State branch spotted a photograph I took and asked the General Manager to transfer me to Bayelsa State. In Bayelsa, I wrote the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), scored 256 and got admission into UNILAG. While I was in school, I worked as papapa (quick) photographer at parties in Lagos metropolis to sustain myself in school.”

 

Life after serving Ambode

On his life after office, Adeniyi said he would be executing a lot of projects, including establishing a studio, training young photographers and holding an exhibition of his works based on the achievements of his principal.

“In a couple of months, I will be opening my studio. I will train young photographers. I will showcase some of former governor Ambode’s achievements in form of an exhibition. Then, I will move on,” he said.

A global environmental advocacy organisation, 350Africa.org, has raised fears over the state of the continent, demanding a fossil-free environment through its continental campaigns to mark Africa Day, reports EVELYN OSAGIE

As the world, particularly Africa, continues to experience the impact of climate change, an environmental advocacy organisation, 350Africa.org, has raised the alarm over the environmental state of the continent, demanding a fossil-free environment.

While seeking new way of working, travelling, growing   food and producing its energy, the group observed that the world has the means to reverse the rising Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and temperatures.

“What’s missing is the political will, which in turn can only be activated by a momentous growth of movements for climate action and social change,” the  organisation stated.

Penultimate Saturday, the group held  campaigns across Africa and in 20 countries to mark the Africa Day, which had as theme: “Healthy lifestyle prolongs life”.

Tagged #AfrikaVuka, the  Regional Team Leader of 350Africa.org,  Landry Ninteretse, said over 30 events were held across the continent, demanding real climate action for a fossil-free Africa. Nigeria was one of the participating countries, which includeed Ghana, Tanzania, South Africa, Ivory Coast, Kenya and DRC, Senegal. They organised walks for renewable energy, mini-summits, concerts, women’s dialogues and youth festivals addressing issues of fossil fuels and the role of African leadership in this critical time

“In the last few months, we’ve seen the climate impacts of Cyclone Idai and Kenneth in Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, droughts and floods in KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape. With the exception of South Africa, African countries have done relatively little to contribute to climate change, yet are being severely impacted and have little to no resources to cope with the aftermath. Less developed African countries are a natural disaster away from sinking into a negative loop of poverty and lack of access to social and economic opportunities, exacerbated by climate change.

“Participants from oil and coal affected communities including fishing and farming communities; women and youth renewable energy clubs; civil society actors; district leaders including environmental officers, community development officers and forestry officials; local government officials; cultural and religious leaders have all taken part in various activities to send a strong message that Africa doesn’t have to rely on fossil fuels to satisfy its energy demand, but rather lead the world in the just energy transition powered by low-cost renewable resources,” Ninteretse said.

“The mobilisation”, according to the Communications Coordinator of the 350Africa.org, Lerato Ngakane, “was aimed at sending a powerful and necessary message to African leaders that communities are rising up everywhere to stop fossil fuels and demand true climate action.

“Africa doesn’t need fossil fuels to reach its development. The activists and communities involved in the continental campaigns were calling for more African governments to follow upon the Climate Vulnerable Forum pledge made by 16 African governments in November 2016 to accelerate the transition towards an economy powered by 100 per cent renewables.”

It was gathered that to mark the day in Benin City, Nigeria, some students  showcased the solution to climate change.

“Fossil fuels have been identified as one of the primary drivers of climate change.” said Michael David Terungwa from GISEP, in Nigeria.

“The people who mobilised for AfrikaVuka are demanding a rapid phase-out of fossil fuel energy.

‘’Despite overwhelming evidence that continued fossil fuel use is killing the planet and many of us with it, investors appear dead set on enriching themselves at the expenses of billions of people. Those in power are doing nothing to stop this madness, and are instead adding to it, claiming that more coal-fired power stations in Lamu, an official UNESCO Heritage site, and oil exploration in the DRC’s Virunga National Park, a biodiversity hotspot, to name a few, are going to be good for development. We ask them: ‘Whose development, exactly?’ There is a path for a just development that puts people, their safety and the resilience of the environment we all rely on at the centre”

IT is consecration time. The manifold designs of Tony George Chidi Akudinobi is always capped with deep words that somewhat consecrate the works. It is akin to verbalising magic in the manner that George Thomson writes in his 1946 classic Marxism and Poetry: “from the beginning there was an integral connection between hand and brain.”

The splendid thoughts of Akudinobi are put out in words to lend meaning to the utilitarian art he delivers through furniture, fittings, household goods, effects, sundry designs and the like. The metaphysical mix of the verbal and the product can indeed be spell-binding.

It makes one recall what goes on at the altar during consecration. The sublimity is quite sacred, hallowed. The context determines the design. The priest figure turning the blood of Christ into wine at the point of consecration is the apt depiction of the process.

Akudinobi shines forth in the grand light of the objects of his aesthetic renditions. In the traditional sense, Agwu seizes the ambience.

As Chinua Achebe puts it in Anthills of the Savannah, “Agwu does not call a meeting to choose his seers and diviners and artists; Agwu, the god of healers; Agwu, brother to Madness! But though born from the same womb he and Madness were not created by the same chi. Agwu is the right hand a man extends to his fellows; Madness, the forbidden hand. Madness unleashes and rides his man roughly into the wild savannah. Agwu possesses his own just as securely but has him corralled to serve the compound. Agwu picks his disciple, rings his eye with white chalk and dips his tongue, willing or not, in the brew of prophecy; and right away the man will speak and put head and tail back to the severed trunk of our tale. This miracle-man will amaze us because he may be a fellow of little account, not the bold warrior we neither expect nor even the war-drummer.”

Akudinobi had a grand outing as Nigeria’s representative at the First Intra-African Trade Fair in Cairo, Egypt, organised by Afrexim Bank, last December. Akudinobi set up The Hammerhead Ethnika Exhibition entitled: The Phoenix and The Sphinx, under the sponsorship of the Nigerian Export Promotions Council, which wowed dignitaries, such as former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Like the phoenix rising from the ashes of death to shine with new life, Akudinobi intervolves diverse entities in the mold of the legendary Sphinx. The bends of time and the scrolls of being are ready grist to the mill of Akudinobi’s conversation with woods and the wilds. The context may differ in multiform formulations but the content remains the same. Undaunted in the face of ill-assorted societal challenges, Akudinobi is poised to go the distance in the manner of Allan Sillitoe’s “the loneliness of the long distance runner”.

He readily plucks the leaves and seeds of the cultural irokos in the manner that portrays him as one tree that can make a forest. The flora and fauna grown in the forests of past lifestyles are reprised in tune with the African worldview of the living, the dead and the unborn.  It is through fusion and rebirth that he plants and ploughs the fields to plenitude.  Akudinobi is as relentless as they come, reawakening the undying and deathless Phoenix in a fertile continuum that spells the crystal of creativity. For him, inspiration simply translates to spirit in action.  It takes the deepest spiritual calling to capture the heights and glow of the Sphinx in darkness, as Akudinobi undertakes his unalterable calling.

He crosses ages and geographies by birthing multiple presences through what he depicts as “rivers of Colonisation and Civilisation.”

The writer Obi Egbuna once wondered “If rivers could talk…” The rivers are given voices of thunder and the laughter of lightning in the renditions of Akudinobi. It is only through these accounts that his much-beloved Mother Africa can come to the path of a fuller canvas of light.

The dialogue is never ending, and continues unabated even as time bends. You can always find Akudinobi on sable wings perched on the Eagle’s back while building nests of wonder on the Irokos.

The linkage is the connecting rod of the past, the present and the future in the twice-told fair of the dead, the living and the unborn, thriving on the contemporary African Highway.

The indestructible always resurrects. From the Phoenix to the Sphinx, the essence of being is staying power. Akudinobi as ever refuses to yield ground, determined in his pursuit of putting light aloft on the landscape and dreamscape of Africa.

Powers and personages pay lasting homage to the inspired industry of Akudinobi but there is no resting on oars. The mightiness of the encouragement is only matched with the greatest grind of further invention. It is akin to Akudinobi paying into one bank account until the bank honchos beg him to open another account because the first account is full!

The lines of a focused destiny meet on the pathway of work, forging an alliance of legend. There are no ends that cannot be reached through the realms of inspiration manifesting in the objects of Ethnika.

In the end, love binds all. It is through the waves of love in the offerings of Akudinobi that meaning is made. We bear witness to the spark of timely splashes of love turning into a blaze. The love shines to awaken more creation in the march through the bends of time toward the hatching of the Eagle’s Egg.

Akudinobi is indeed deep as he keeps the company of the deepest, especially when one casts the mind back to the event sponsored by Globacom Unlimited at Eko Hotel & Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos billed as “An Evening with Wole Soyinka and Nigeria’s Outstanding Literary Writers”, where Akudinobi stepped forward to present an avant-garde chair to the very grateful Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, and then went ahead to read the poem “Dis Chair” as an accompaniment to the presentation.

Akudinobi has a formidable team backing his African Design Roundtable, notably Prof. E. B. Alagoa (Chairman), Prof Frank Ugiomoh, Prof Alabo, Dere-faka, Chike Amene, Jackie K’obani, Perrin Oglafa, and IB. Erekosima.

His company, Hammerhead Integrated Limited, based in Aba, Abia State has grown into a 10,000 sq. ft. of floor space, engaging very dynamic and resourceful partnership of gifted and skilled craftsmen under concentrated supervision in the creation of sublime designs.

The recently deceased grandpa of poetry, Gabriel Okara, was an ever-present legend of support for Akudinobi. The consecration of Akudinobi’s designs is a noble idea that is lofted to travel.

It was a day of colourful cultural displays and competitions when children were treated to a thrilling experience of music and drama and competition at the National Museum, Onikan Lagos.

The event was the commemoration of the  Children’s Day.

Tagged The role of culture in the rights of the Nigerian child, the event was organised to create a cultural platform for children to  express themselves. It provides the children the opportunity  to awaken and sustain the dwindling cultural orientations in the children, as it  fully recognises the role culture and tradition play in the formative years of children thought it right to play host to students from various schools across the state.

Curator, National Museum, Lagos, Mrs O. M. Adeboye said there was urgent need to invest in youths to guarantee their future. She lamented people’s indifferent attitude to issues bordering on culture and traditions, especially the museum.

She, therefore, highlighted the benefits in public-private partnerships and organisational support to sustain the event, which is in its 10th year. She pointed out the need for the media to positively project the image of the museum and serve as a veritable agent for promoting culture, the primary objective of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments.

The children, who all looked resplendent in their cultural attires, engaged in various competitions, such as the debate and prose competitions, which was won by King’s College Lagos,the cooking competition  which Lekki Peninsula College, Lagos emerged winner, the drama and cultural dance competitions and lots more.

The coordinator of the event, the Assistant Chief Museum Education Officer, Mrs. Elizabeth Membere pointed out the need to keep the museum active and to promote culture among growing children keeps them persistent and also on their toes.

She said the theme of each year’s event was left to the discretion of the coordinator. She  expressed high hopes for more sponsorship from individuals and corporate organisations  to its ensure continuity.

 

A total of N103,775,000 ($288,264) was realised at the 22nd Arthouse Contemporary auction held in Lagos.

It featured 82 lots of leading master works from the modern period to contemporary art from the region’s most celebrated artists.

Ben Enwonwu’s Ogolo, a water-colour on paper (1992) that sold for N 41,125,000 ($114,236) topped the sales. Also, Enwonwu’s 1994 Negritude, another water-colour on paper sold for N9.4milion ($26,111).

Rom Isichei’s Hope Enkindles Her Eyes, (2018) a mixed media on canvas sold for N6,462,000 ($17,951); Ablade Glover’s 2015 Blue Profile, an oil on canvas sold for N5,287,500 ($14,688).

Other top lots included Kolade Oshinowo’s Back Home (2008) oil on canvas that sold for N4,112,500 ($11,424).

The auction also included charity lots in support of the Lagos Biennial, raising N2,020,000 that will support the second edition of the festival taking place later this year.

Founded in 2007, Arthouse Contemporary is an international auction house that specialises in modern and contemporary art from West Africa. With auctions held twice yearly in Lagos, Arthouse Contemporary aims to create awareness of the scope of contemporary art in the region, encourage international recognition towards its talented artists, and strengthen the economy of its art market. Arthouse Contemporary is supported by Kia Showroom, Le Connaisseur, 7UP, Chocolat Royal and The Guardian.