US based Nigerian art historian Dr Moyo Okediji writes on the life and times of one of the Zaria Rebels, Prof Uche Okeke, who passed on last week.
It was a humid afternoon in May 1979 when I knocked, unannounced and uninvited, on Uche Okeke’s office at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. I expected no response. But, an authoritative voice from the room yelled, “Come in.”
Heaving a sigh of relief I gingerly opened the door. I had been worried he was not in his office—maybe not even in Nsukka, or outside Nigeria, in Europe or America, or some other distant parts of the huge art world. He was certainly the most prominent artist in Nigeria at that time, and his schedule was tight, I imagined. To a kid like me, I was paying a visit to the ‘god’ of art in Nigeria.
I had been on the road for several days and would have been disappointed if he was not in his office. Zaria, in those days, was a couple of days away by road from Nsukka where Uche Okeke was professor of art, and head of the Fine Arts Department at the university. And I was driving straight from Zaria, via Ilorin, Ibadan, Benin, Onitsha to Nsukka.
The road was simply perilous. I had several narrow escapes between Ilorin and Kaduna, where my tiny Volkswagon Beetle almost got crushed by 16 wheeler trailer trucks, deadly contraptions loaded to the brim with all various goods moving between the north and south of Nigeria.
Near the town of Kutuwenji, I packed the car by the side of the road to calm my shattered nerves, after a huge trailer shot past me, edging me off the tarmac. The truck then plunged directly into an oncoming truck. Both trucks exploded all over my Beetle; but somehow the collision did not scratch my car, as I held tight to the steering wheel, my heart nearly jumping out of my agape jaws. It was about 8pm and I was too scared to stop by the scene of the accident. I drove to the outskirt of Kutuwenji before stopping to calm my nerves.
Two days later, I was standing before the legendary Okeke in his office. I looked dirty and unkempt. I had not washed for two or three days. But I had a chewing stick stuck permanently in my mouth to prevent me from falling asleep behind the wheel.
I snatched the chewing stick from my mouth and said, “Good day, sir.”
He was behind his desk working on a piece of paper—perhaps he was writing or drawing. As he surveyed me, I felt shamed because I was conscious of my disgusting appearance.
He did not seem bothered that I looked so grimy. “How can I help you, young man,” he said. “You have been long on the road?”
“Yes sir,” I said. “Drove down from Zaria, sir.”
He pointed to the seat before his desk.
“That road … Dangerous,” he said. “Why are you here?”
“Actually, sir, I am from Ife. The University of Ife,” I explained. “But I drove to Zaria from Ife, and straight here from Zaria.”
He kept surveying me. Then abruptly, he got up and sauntered from his chair to a couch in the office. He fell into the couch. I noticed that he was built like Pablo Picasso: solid, short, in perfect control of his environment. In front of the couch was a large unfinished wooden sculpture. It seemed long abandoned, as there was no fresh cut on it.
“How is Ife—at the university?” he asked.
“Very well sir.”
“Rowland Abiodun, Agbo Folarin, Tunde Lawal…?”
“They are all doing well, sir.”
Slightly, he turned, looked behind him, reached out and grabbed an object from a shelf. It was an adze, a carving tool. Lightly, he struck the unfinished wooden sculpture in front of him. It was a totally carefree strike, almost without any effort, as if he was playing around. A tiny chip dropped from the sculpture. He kept working. For some five minutes we did not utter a word. He continued coaxing the wood, and soon, a fresh angle appeared from the wood.
“You are hungry,” he remarked. “And thirsty.” I did not respond. He looked up, and stopped sculpting.
“We will go to the staff club for a bite,” he announced.
He returned to the wood. “They listen to me,” he said, not looking at me, keeping his gaze on the evolving wooden object. “Woods. They obey me. Whatever I tell them they do. And don’t think the wood is dead. Things don’t die. They just transform. Things are spirits.”
His statement struck me with a sense of deja vu. Where did I hear that statement before? Then I recalled my first visit to Demas Nwoko at his New Cultures Studios in Ibadan in 1974, when I went to him looking for a “vacation job,” or work for an undergraduate during the summer.
I recalled Nwoko saying something about wood being “spirits” that do his bidding. “There is no such thing as an ordinary wood,” Demas Nwoko told me. “Trees talk to you if you are sculpting them. They tell you exactly where to cut when you listen to them.”
The difference between Nwoko and Okeke seems mostly physical, but not aesthetic. Nwoko is tall, dark, ramrod straight, and floats on the air when he moves, like a ballerina. Nwoko is not a spirit of this world. He belongs to another planet, like a visiting butterfly, attentive to petals, pollinating the world, subsisting on nectars. Somewhat nervous, Nwoko stutters when excited, his voice textured and rough with tough grits. Nwoko’s prominent hair shares same grandmother with Wole Soyinka’s Afro. His bulbous eyes and striking mien remind you of James Baldwin.
Okeke? Totally different. Squat, planted deep into the earth, immovable, unperturbed, he reminds me of Igbo male figurative sculpture. His voice is glace, unhurried, almost inaudible, as if forcing you to pay attention to every word. Of this world, he is deeply located in the center of the circle, the magnet that keeps the universe from falling apart into incoherent fragments. He is the rationale behind the folktale, if Nwoko is the song of that folktale.
I kept studying the movement of Okeke’s hands as he sculpted in his office. He steadily struck the wood at a particular angle all the time, as if his hands had a memory keeping them from straying from that particular angle.
But someone knocked on the door and opened it without waiting for a response. Okeke did not look up from the sculpture he was shaping, but it was clear that he discerned his new guest who did not fully enter the office but stood between the open door.
“El, meet my visitor,” Okeke said, still not looking up at the new guest, who then closed the door, moved fully into the room and extended his hand to me.
I quickly sprang up and took his hand in both of mine.
“Moyo Okediji, sir,” I said. I realised that I had not introduced myself to Okeke.
“El is from Ghana,” Okeke said, fully stopping his sculpting to look up to take both of us into his view. “El joined us here four years ago. 1975. Moyo is hungry, El. Will you take him to the staff club?”
“Certainly. I’m El Anatsui,” he said.
Another knock on the door, and a slightly built man entered, again, without waiting for a response. I recognised him immediately: Ola Oloidi. He had just returned from Howard University after earning a Master’s in art history. When he visited Ife, I briefly met him in Rowland Abiodun’s office.
“Hey Moyo, what a surprise” Oloidi said, pumping my hands. “What are you doing here? How is Ife?”
“Ife is fine, Mr. Oloidi,” I responded. “I’m here because of my interest in your graduate programme at Nsukka. I travelled to Zaria (Ahmadu Bello University) and took a look at their programme there. But I didn’t like it. I stayed with Gani Odutokun at Zaria. He is the only graduate student there. I love his work, but he dissuaded me from coming to Zaria. He has problems with his instructors.”
“Moyo,” Okeke said, “you should study art history. You are young. We need art historians.”“True,” Oloidi said. “African art needs art historians so urgently now.”
“In that case, Oloidi,” Okeke said, “you take him to the staff club, and persuade him to study art history.”
I said goodbye to Okeke and El and left with Oloidi. Outside, on our way to the staff club, Oloidi asked, “You want to study art history?”
I shook my head. “Painting,” I said.
“Don’t come to Nsukka, Moyo,” Oloidi said, “unless you want to study Uli art. You know this is what we do here.”
“I have no interest in becoming another Uli painter,” I said.
I shook his hand. Walked to the parking lot in front of the offices, got into my car, turned the engine and drove off. From the rearview mirror, I saw Oloidi transfixed, starring in disbelief at the back of the disappearing car.
As I drove off, my mind focused on just one target: I would drive to Benin and find Prof Solomon Wangboje at the University of Benin. He might be able to help me. At the Nsukka gas station, I filled my car with fuel, bought a loaf of bread and some akara balls. I had Lucozade in the car, as I joined the traffic moving out of the university town.
Everything worked out fine in Benin. I found Prof Wangboje at his Ugbowo campus office. He promised to initiate a graduate programme for me at his university. “You will be our first student, Moyo,” Wangboje said. “I will now contact Madam Ugbodaga-Ngu. You know her? She lives in the Cameroons. She will be your supervisor. Is that okay?”
“Yes sir,” I said.
“I will send you a letter of admission. This meeting is enough as your application. Join us in October next session, okay?”
I shook his hand and left.
Nearly 40 years later, this morning, January 6, 2016, Ijeoma Uche-Okeke sent a note saying her father, Prof Uche Okeke died.
This is not possible, I thought. Uche Okeke cannot die. I remember his words: Things don’t die. Things are spirits. He lives forever in me, and in the rest of us whose lives he has enriched with his talent, dedication and hard work.
Godspeed, laureate, as you transits.
