The Nation Newspaper

Tag: graffiti

  • Govt apprehends six for graffiti on public walls

    Officials of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Administration have apprehended six persons for  putting  graffiti on the walls of public buildings and infrastructure in Abuja.

    The six persons apprehended are to face the full wrath of the law because the Administration would not allow the defacing of the Federal Capital City.

    The FCT administration said Abuja remains the window through which the world sees Nigeria and therefore, must be maintained with high sense of commitment and responsibility.

    According to a statement by the Deputy Director / Chief Press Secretary, to the FCT Minister, Muhammad Sule, the Administration warns that security agents are now maintaining 24-hour surveillance to ensure that those engaging in the act of graffiti and the likes are promptly apprehended.

    It may be recalled that the FCT Administration had recently embarked on massive clean up of such writings to give the city a face-lift.

    The Chief Security Officer to the FCT Minister, Deputy Superintendent of Police, Ahmed Rasheed, revealed that the apprehended suspects are  with the security agents and would soon be made to face the full wrath of the law.

  • Offensive graffiti at Osoba’s home

    Unknown persons have defaced former Ogun State Governor Aremo Olusegun Osoba’s Ibara GRA home in Abeokuta with a derogatory graffiti.

    The graffiti, written on the fence in Yoruba Language, urged Osoba to accept Governor Ibikunle Amosun as his governor and leader.

    It reads: “Osoba gba fun Oga e (Osoba accept your boss), Osoba gba fun SIA (Osoba accept Amosun).”

    The graffiti, written in black ink, was noticed at dawn yesterday.

    An observer told The Nation that the perpetrators of the act could be fifth columnists trying to portray Amosun in bad light.

    The observer, who does not want to be named, said Amosun has always referred to Osoba as his leader and could not be a party to the graffiti.

    A security guard at Osoba’s home said the act might have been carried out around 4am because he patrolled the residence around 3am.

    Osoba could not be reached for comments, but while addressing his loyalists at the same residence a few months ago, he said his reputation cannot be soiled or bought.

    One of Amosun’s aides, Mr Shola Balogun, said the governor holds Osoba in high esteem.

  • Get the HIP HOP look

    Get the HIP HOP look

    TO walk the walk, you have to look the part, so as the culture grew a hip hop clothing style was a natural progression. Today, people take their fashion inspiration from many sources then flip it and whilst some feel a need to pigeon-hole things, we don’t, we are happy to sit on the fence and say, yeah we like it, that’s why we wear the clothes we do. Many of the UK clothing brands we deal with feel the same, and although they may have been inspired by hip hop or have a background in that area, they develop their own clothing designs and` style.

    In the late seventies, a new and distinctive sound arose from the streets of New York. The sound was hip-hop, and nearly twenty years later, it has transcended the street parties and music clubs of New York to become a worldwide cultural force.

    Simply put, hip-hop music consists of a DJ mixing rhythmic passages of albums on a turntable while a rapper raps over the beats. But hip-hop is a culture unto itself, equipped with its own language, lyrical style, visual arts (graffiti), dance moves and look.

    ALTHOUGH hip-hop is the musical outgrowth of urban African-American culture, its popularity is not bound by geography or culture.

    Furthermore, more and more suburban teens, taking their cue from their urban counterparts, have adopted the style and the trends of hip-hop’s artists and its adherents. Baggy pants, over-sized athletic jerseys, expensive sneakers – long a fashion standard of the hip-hop community – have become the unofficial uniform of suburban fans Once an underground street culture, hip hop clothing has now acquired a prominent place in the mainstream fashion world. If you want to make a style statement, then you have to include hip hop clothing in your wardrobe. There is an assortment of clothes to choose from to make you stand out. This clothing includes a collection of satin dresses and blouses with cap sleeves, halter dresses, tube dresses and blouses with optical prints. Hoodies and baggy jeans are in style for the men and come in a broad assortment of colours and styles. The appeal of hip hop clothing is attributed to the high quality and vibrant colors that can make any fashion savvy man or woman look good. Accessories that go with these clothes include large ornamental belt buckles, fitted caps, and skull and skeleton decorations. T-shirts are now of shorter length so as to expose decorated belts, belt-buckles and biker chains. Therefore, a lot of hip-hoppers are choosing to forgo the “baggy” style of dressing, although that still remains relevant. They choose to experiment with colourful, fitted, and hipster-inspired clothing. Therefore, though it is still evolving, it is evident that hip-hop fashion will continue to be a major force in designer clothing.

  • A campus covered in graffiti

    A campus covered in graffiti

    In its recent ranking of universities on conduciveness and academics, Cybermetrics Lab, a Spanish research group responsible for ranking of universities, listed the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) as the eighth institution in Africa for excellence, openness and knowledge impact and presence.The honour befits “Africa’s most beautiful campus” as the university is fondly called by students given its aesthetic environment and architectural masterpiece.

    However, a visit to the campus tells another story. Every available space is covered in graffiti. Students indiscriminately paste posters, flyers, stickers and banners on wall surfaces, despite the notice boards provided by the management and students’ associations.

    Such places where posters are haphazardly pasted include toilets, walls, hostel doors, lecture rooms, doors of departments’ offices, faculties’ walkway, reservoirs, barks of trees, incinerators and butteries’ wall. The posters contain mostly upcoming programmes of students’ fellowships, political manifestoes, associations’ week schedules, faculties’ seminar, press releases and business adverts, with motive to gain readership, disseminate information and quick patronage.

    In spite of the school regulation against abuse of school facilities, the campus has been covered with layers of papers and scribbles. The posters remain on the wall for as long as they are covered with other posters.

    The Campus Aesthetics and Trade Regulatory Committee (CATREC) on various instances held awareness programmes to discourage the act. The body had participated in orientations to show students a responsible method of pasting posters without constituting a nuisance on the campus.

    In Students’ Handbook given to freshers, it was comprehensively stated in Article XII Section D on Environmental Issues, that: “A student shall not deface the Halls of Residence by pasting posters, writing on the walls or engaging in any act that may destroy the aesthetics of the halls.”

    The Rain Semester is time when departments, faculties and students’ indigenous associations experience change of guards. During this period, the university walls are covered with all sorts of pictures and programmes of candidates.

    In the hostel, rooms are covered with scribbles such as names of the occupants, quotes of famous people, cleaning schedules and timetable for lecturers.

    Another way students abuse facilities of the school is engraving clubs’ programmes on writing boards with sharp objects. Others use permanent markers to create permanent awareness about themselves or their associations.

    Some students, who spoke to CAMPUSLIFE, condemned the abuse, describing it as sign of bad housekeeping. They blamed the management for its weak enforcement of regulation to stop the abuse.

     

  • God’s graffiti

    God’s graffiti

    If you saw the Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, in 2007, just before he ascended the throne, you need to see him today. Then he was a sprightly young man. Today, he looks like a sprightly young man, if you don’t look higher than his forehead. If you dare into that higher territory, into the forbidden region of his hair, you encounter age.

    Once your eyes fall on the grey hair, you contemplate the contradiction. The hair belongs to another person, a comparative Methuselah, hoary, wizened, frail, going. Not to a 50-year-old, not to his eyes that light up his face like an audacious candle. Not his tongue that weaves through legalese, that cuts through policy like a wonk, that insists on good roads, on rule of law, on the revamped schools, on the Eko oni baje sing song. Not his feet, sometimes too martial for its lankiness, walking though city projects. Not his smile that belies the grit within.

    With eyes dreamy, tongue razor sharp, his feet martial, the governor of example can live with his one handicap: the disappearing youth of the hair. But wait a minute. What does a disappearing hair tell us? That age has happened prematurely? That the eye however dreamy, mind however agile, tongue however sharp and feet however swift, the hair is a signature that the rest of the body is undergoing the same siege. We on the outside may never know.

    But we only have the spirit to tell us. And the spirit, as we all know, is master of the flesh. And that is why, even if the hair tells us that Governor Fashola, is not the 50-year-old he looks, his works reflect the genius of the 50-year-old we expect. Or shall we say, his works are the grey hair. So when we see the massive infrastructure work he has done, the housing projects, the Trojan work on the rule of law, the work on education, it is the hair that tells us of the toll. The eyes lie, the tongues deceive, the feet walk astray, but the hair, in its luminous boldness, tells us that the man Fashola is the toiling governor we see every day.

    His spirit, bubbly as ever, tells that matter is nothing. He works and he works and the body can tell its own story. The work is his spirit, the exertion, the exercise of the power within. It is like the words of Jimmy Carter in his autobiography when he defines old age as when “despair replaces hope.” So the grey hair may well be the liar here. Not the feet, or skin, imperious eyes or leaping feet. Since he hopes all the time, in works and deed, for a better Lagos, the hair is the loser, not him, not Lagosians, not history. Just the hair. When the hair fails, no despair.

    The Bible says “the grey hair is the crown of glory,” but I doubt if it had the age 50 in mind. But if you see it as the crowning glory of a task, then Governor Fashola should feel blessed. His eyes, dreamy and triumphal, are cast on history. He wants it, even if he is coy about talking legacy, to be glorious and kind.

    Winston Churchill, never one to shy from his stature in life, said in his famous growl, “history will be kind to me for I will write it.” Churchill actually put pen to paper and wrote chapter after chapter about his stewardships and others as well. But it is not what Churchill has written that has placed him in the front rank of all statesmen in history, it was what he did. He rejigged pride in his island nation against the superior behemoth of Hitler’s army. He marshaled arms, diplomacy and the English language.

    Fashola has been writing his legacy, and he still is. All over Lagos today, we see the handwriting in motion, in road work, in the trains undergoing tests to decongest commuting. We see it in his search for a decent society. The restriction of Okada was an instance of courage. Many thought it was heartless. Many thought it was elitist. Many thought it would raze down the city. No one countered the view that it saved lives and advanced the stride to a decent society. Governor Fashola, as Professor Itse Sagay noted, is not always about what we see, but the imponderables. What we see can perish, but what we don’t see will endure: rule of law, decency, education standards, simple values like lack of ostentation in office. Roads decay just as integrity decays. Both are called corruption. But the decay of the latter is more damaging. Hence his emphasis on the latter.

    A leader will not bother about his grey hair when his name is becoming an idea rather than a reference to person. So Fashola has become, not only to ACN, but to other parties an instance of what you can do when given an opportunity to serve. He turned 50 to great eclat not because he turned 50 but because he has turned the benefit of his half a century on earth to an eminent account. So his grey hair should be seen as “God’s graffiti,” apologies to Bill Cosby. If that is the story, then we can go back to the Proverbs assertion that it is the “crowning splendour.”

     

  • Fond memories of graffiti artist

    Fond memories of graffiti artist

    The recent screening of The Radiant Child, a 2010 documentary film, brought back fond memories of American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. It was held in Lagos by the African Artists’ Foundation (AAF) as part of its inaugural edition of the AAF Art Salon.

    The film was based on the footage that director Tamra Davis took during her meeting with the artist in 1985, and the documentary includes interviews with people close to Basquiat from the time he discovered himself as a great graffiti artist till his death. The film also shows in details the way of life in New York City in the 80s citing how people got involved with music and arts.

    As a teenager, Basquiat ran away from home to fulfil his dreams and establish himself as a successful individual. He began as an obscure graffiti artist in New York City in the late 70s and evolved into an acclaimed Neo-expressionist and primitivist painter. But by the 80s, his works have had direct and immediate message while his rise to fame was discribed as a ‘hazard of sudden success and fame’

    Basquiat died on August 12, 1988 at 27 leaving behind 1,000 paintings and 1,000 drawings.

    In his short career, Basquiat became internationally celebrated for his graffiti, street art and crudely drawn canvases.

    Nigerian artist, Uche Uzorka whose work has often been compared to the legendary artist was at the presentation. Even if not directly influenced by Basquiat’s work, observers might note a similar radical neo-expressionist and contemporary urban cultural influence in Uzorka’s work.

    Uche presented his past projects and spoke on the art movement in Nigeria today, noting that he drew a lot before painting. He said Basquiat’s art was spontaneous and he expressed a high level of freedom.

    The AAF Art Salon is a platform for informal presentation, discussion, and debate of issues surrounding contemporary art practices in Nigeria. Taking place once a month, the AAF Art Salon will include film screenings, artist talks, portfolio reviews, and panel discussions, allowing artists and cultural practitioners to meet and exchange ideas.

    As a complementary project to AAF’s annual exhibition programme, the AAF Art Salon will act as a forum for community interaction and serve to enrich AAF’s ongoing public programming initiatives.