Category: Life – The Midweek Magazine

The United Nations Information Centre (UNIC) Lagos with the Netherlands Embassy Office in Lagos received two Dutch cyclists of the Building Bridges team who had embarked on a 17,000 kilometres journey on their bicycles from Amsterdam in the Netherlands to Cape Town in South Africa.

The cyclists, Jilt van Schayik, and Teun Meulepas, who stopped over in Lagos, took off four months ago from Amsterdam through 12 countries and two continents so far. They still have eight more countries, including Nigeria to reach their Cape Town destination.

The cyclists, which are of the Building Bridges cycling team that is part of the Building Bridges Project, connects, shares and inspires youths in Africa and Europe through youth consultations, debates and conferences to raise awareness for the urgent challenges that exist around the United Nations’ post-2015 development agenda and gender equality.

A briefing and a youth consultative forum was held in their honour at UNIC Lagos. The team of cyclists joined by their Nigerian counterparts later proceeded to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Iganmu Lagos.

According to UNIC Lagos the Building Bridges Project is an international youth initiative, seeking to promote the United Nations post-2015 agenda from a youth-led perspective and seeks to improve the relationship between young people on the ground and decision makers at the United Nations. The project also draws attention to priorities of youth through constructive engagement with a view to strengthening their development.

Founded by two young Dutch men, the Building Bridges Project has rapidly evolved into an international foundation supported by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the United Nations Focal Point on Youth, United Nations Women and Youth Ambassadors in 17 countries along the west coast of Africa.

Compared to men, women’s access to Internet is low. A report commissioned by Intel on the access to, and use of the Internet in low and middle income countries indicated women are at a disadvantage.

The report shows 25 per cent fewer women than men are online in developing countries. Intel has emphasised its commitment to bridging this gap with its Intel She Will Connect Programme.

The programme has been in the forefront of educating young girls and women on maximum contributions toward economic and social development across the world. According to Intel, the programme is a model that incorporates digital literacy with gender and development programming targeting women and girls, adding that it gives social networking and socio-economic opportunities for young women.

At the concluded capacity building workshop on ICT for women journalists in Lagos, Nigeria, the country Managing Director, Intel West Africa, Mr Olubunmi Ekundare said Intel’s dedication to bring about positive change in the African Girl Child.

Stressing the importance of educating the girl child, he said: “Here at Intel, we believe, and I’m sure we all agree, that smart girls are the equivalent of a smart world. What we seek to do, more than encouraging you all; is to do your best in school and seize the opportunity to build a world where youth are inspired to be advocates for change.”

The Corporate Affairs Manager, Mr Babatunde Akinola, explained that She Will Connect programme aims to close the gap for girls in terms of access to the internet and digital literacy. He reiterated that the company will provide technical resources and expertise to deliver digital literacy training, online peer networks and gender relevant content to empower young girls and women in Nigeria.

“Technology and access to the internet is essential to women’s empowerment across the continent, and it is key to overcoming barriers such as poverty, illiteracy, and discrimination. She Will Connect hopes to have reached five million women and girls across Africa by 2020, empowering them to get and stay online and help others like them, thereby reducing the gender gap by 50%.

“It enjoys the support of NGO’s and organisations like; Zonta International Clubs in Nigeria, Kudirat Initiative for Democracy, Nigerians Report Online and the United Nations Informations Centre, among others,” he said.

Something fresh would hit Lagos art space this June. It’s Lagos-inspired “Studio of Mode”.

Art enthusiasts would find Studio of Mode a refreshing addition to the robust and thrilling Lagos city art scene. The gallery, which derived its building’s main character from the city, is stirred by Yoruba culture and aesthetic.

Determined to arrest the senses of sight and touch, the contrast between the outer white walls and the inner mud walls is sure to draw you in. The divergence epitomises the brash boldness and unpredictability that is Lagos.

Studio of Mode is the company gallery of a multidimensional artist, Mode Aderinokun. Like her father, the late Mr Olutayo Aderinokun, who was a philanthropist and patron of the arts, Mode is set to invigorate the art scene with her talent and experiences. She would be unveiling the gallery alongside an art store.

During her time at school and her work experience abroad, the artist has been able to amass enough experience, inspiration, skills, and techniques to prepare her for the journey she is about to embark on with the opening of this gallery and store.

According to Mode, the primary aim of the company, Studio of Mode, is to “create a space where the voice of a creative with various skills can be clearly heard and understood”.

“The gallery would be a place where creativity can connect and integrate into modern day society in an expressive, intellectual manner, without necessarily one’s creative aesthetic,” she says.

Mode believes deeply in creation and not emulation, and in creating and being inspired by what is true to you and not the western adaptation of the way things should be. Ideally, one would expect white walls in a gallery but Studio of Mode dares to be the exception. The terra cotta walls of the arcade are an ode to her Abeokuta roots and are meant to have guests feeling like they are under a rock, while the innermost blue room takes you back to a neutral space.

“The coloured walls with their deep-rooted meanings embrace West-Nigerian culture, giving the native visitors a sense of home while giving the international visitors an education on our culture,” she says.

She dedicates the space which is set to unveil this Sunday to her late father, a patron of the arts and philanthropist.

‘When I was growing up, our house was full of people who came to her because she would listen and she would help. Even though she was threatened and jailed, that didn’t stop her from campaigning. She believed people had a right to democracy and as a wife of the symbol she was bound to speak up’  

On the eve of a film about how she lost both parents in Nigeria’s political turmoil, Hafsat Abiola-Costello tells Margarette Driscoll why she is battling to help women in her homeland. 

By the time she was 23, Hafsat Abiola-Costello had lost both her parents to political violence in Nigeria. Her mother, Kudirat Abiola, was shot in 1996, the day before she was due to fly out to Hafsat’s graduation in America. Two years later Hafsat’s father, Moshood Abiola, died in the prison.

Moshood, a businessman, had won the country’s first democratic election in 1993 but was prevented by the military government from assuming power. Officially, he died of a heart attack but his family never believed it: he collapsed after drinking tea that may have been poisoned. “My father loved people and had faith in people. My mother, too,” says Hafsat.

“She was just the nicest person. She was married to this wealthy, powerful man but she loved her family and she was raised in a culture of sharing, so his wealth was only useful in so far as you could use it to help others…

“When I was growing up, our house was full of people who came to her because she would listen and she would help. Even though she was threatened and jailed, that didn’t stop her from campaigning, she believed people had a right to democracy and as a wife of the symbol she was bound to speak up.”

Nearly 20 years on, Hafsat has taken up her parents’ mantle and is running a campaign to educate and empower women in Nigeria. She is also a member of the Ogun State cabinet, responsible for the fulfilment of millennium goals in education and development in the area. Moving back to Nigeria, four years ago was one of the hardest decision that she has ever had to make as it entailed leaving her two young children – Khali, 8, and Annabella – 6 in Brussels with their father Nick Costello, a British diplomat.

She visits as often as she can and intends to bring the children to Nigeria for a month over the summer, but for the foreseeable future their family life is stretched across two continents.

“Some friends were so shocked, they thought my priority should be my own kids but I thought: if I’m going to be a public servant, I can’t have this traditional mindset,” she says.

“I can only do what I’m doing because I have the nicest husband. When I’m coming back, he starts counting down the days with the children and explaining how long I’ll be around, so they feel ‘Mummy’s around and she’s going to read us bedtime stories and help with dinner.’ Nick creates a stable environment in which we can all be happy. A lot of husbands would set up the guilt trip, making me a villain, but he never does, so I feel very lucky.”

Hafsat’s move into politics, her dramatic family history and the story of Nigeria’s fragile pro-democracy movement are chronicled in ‘The Supreme Price’ a film by the American director Joanna Lipper that opens in Britain tomorrow (thesupremeprice.com). It won the prize for best documentary at the Africa International Film Festival and has been shown at other festivals round the world. The New York Times says it “shapes one country’s recent history into an accessible and tragic family drama.”

Even today, with a democratic government in place, Nigeria isn’t safe. The Islamist group- Boko Haram has rampaged through the north of the country abducting girls, most notably the 276 schoolgirls who were seized in April last year. Sexism is still rife- only a tiny minority of politicians are women and even Hafsat’s brother regards it as a step too far to imagine a woman president.

“With every step forward that women take, especially if they take many steps forward, some men may feel threatened so there is a backlash,” says Hafsat. “It’s of no surprise that the girls who were abducted were in school preparing to take an exam to go to university in an area where only four per cent of girls go to university. So it’s a backlash, a sense of being threatened, that some men feel and it’s not rational.”

As for danger, she was afraid when she first visited Nigeria after her parents’ deaths – “I didn’t trust the police or the army” – but she has had to take danger in her stride. “Everybody in Nigeria is in danger in one way or another,” she says.

“If you are ill or have an accident and you have to be rushed to the hospital, your life is in danger because you could… find the medicines have not been restocked or there are no doctors or the doctors are on strike.

“Going to work or having a baby in London is not a dangerous activity but because of the dysfunction, these are dangerous things in Nigeria – simple, normal things put people’s lives at risk. It’s no good sitting at home hoping to be safe, we have to go out and change the system. The country want change, the important thing for me is how we give women a voice in that change.”

She named the campaigning group she has founded, The Kudirat Initiative for Democracy, after her mother. Three years after Kudirat was killed, Hafsat was able to visit Nigeria briefly when the military government gave way to democracy. She slept in her mother’s bedroom surrounded by her things. Nothing had been moved, her mothers clothes still hung in the wardrobe.

It was, not surprisingly, an emotional homecoming. “We should have realised her phone was tapped, that she was being tracked,” says her daughter.

“I decided then that if in killing my mother they were trying to silence her, her voice would live through me. Those were giant shoes to fill but her voice would not be silent one more day.”

•Culled from New York Times

Christie’s will offer Chris Ofili’s painting The Holy Virgin Mary (1996) at its upcoming June 30 sale in London with an estimate of about $2.3 million.

According to the artnet price database, this is the first time this work has come to auction.

The painting is being sold by Australian collector David Walsh, owner of the Museum of New and Old Art (MONA) in Tasmania. Walsh purchased the work from British collector Charles Saatchi who bought it directly from the artist. But it is most famous for the furore it incited when it was featured in the 1999 Sensation show at the Brooklyn Museum featuring art from Saatchi’s holdings, when New York’s then-mayor Rudy Guiliani criticised the work as “sick” because of Ofili’s incorporation of elephant dung in a portrait of a holy icon.

Conservative media outlets eagerly followed suit. A Daily News headline at the time stated: ‘B’klyn Gallery of horror. Gruesome museum show stirs controversy.’ The report inaccurately described the painting as being ‘splattered with elephant dung.’ In an act of protest, a retired teacher smeared white paint across the work in 1999, for which he received a $250 penalty.

Giuliani and the City of New York brought a court case against the Brooklyn Museum, threatening to cut city funding, and even threatened the institution with eviction. The museum and its director Arnold Lehman fought back with a First Amendment federal lawsuit, which it eventually won.

‘I don’t feel as though I have to defend it,” Ofili told New York Times reporter Carol Vogel in a 1999 interview. ‘The people who are attacking this painting are attacking their own interpretation, not mine. You never know what’s going to offend people, and I don’t feel it’s my place to say anymore.’

Ofili’s work was the subject of a much-lauded retrospective at the New Museum this past winter (October 29–Februay 1). His   record at auction, according to the artnet price database, is roughly $2.9 million (£1.9 million), which was achieved at a Christie’s London sale, also oddly, on June 30 (the same date as the upcoming sale), though this sale was five years ago in 2010. Given all the hype and controversy surrounding the portrait of the Virgin Mary, the work could potentially sell for far more than the estimate. And despite all the controversy, as for the much lauded recent New Museum show, Ofili has stood the test of time.

Presumably Walsh and Christie’s are not too concerned either way because the New York Times reports that because the painting has a third-party guarantee, there’s no question it will be sold.

*Culled from artnet.com