The exchange agreement between UWParkside 
and Obafemi Awolowo University 
in lle-lfe, Nigeria, is being funded by both 
institutions and the U.S. Information Agency. 
The programme was established through the 
connections of Lillian Traeger, professor of 
anthropology who has researched in Nigeria 
for years and travelled extensively in the 
BACK IN IFE: THE SCULPTOR-STORYThe 
campus of Obafemi Awolowo University, 
Ile-Ife is well regarded among Africa's 
most beautiful campuses. It derives its beauty 
not only from the serene driveway that ushers 
the visitor through a distance of about two 
kilometres from the gate to the main campus. 
The buildings still stand as masterpieces of 
modern architectural design. Above all, there 
are the sculptural works and murals found all 
over the campus which make a statement 
about the tastes of the founding fathers of this 
monumental community. 
We drove into the campus on a sunny day, 
late for our appointment with Agbo Folarin. 
The appointment had been booked by Lillian 
Traeger, a lecturer from the University of 
Wisconsin - Parkside. 
country. 
Obafemi Awolowo University, a 25,000- 
student campus on the western edge of Nigeria, 
is situated on a large parcel between a 
rain forest and a savannah. Agbo Folarin is 
the second Nigerian faculty member to visit 
UW-Parkside. No UW-Parkside faculty have 
taken part in the exchange yet but several 
TAI ADE FATO 
TELLER BACK AT HIS BASE. 
We had to pay a price for coming late, thanks 
to a flat tyre in the course of the Lagos-Ife 
trip. After a long wait, we finally located 
him; it was as if he was the one that had been 
late for the appointment. He fussed over us, 
sympathising with us overthejourney's slight 
misfortune. 
Then Agbo Folarin insisted we must have 
something to eat. The pounded yam at the 
buka (bamboo-shed restaurant) just behind 
the Fine and Applied Arts Department building 
was a finger-licking affair. Then we got 
down to business. 
This was not to be another long session of 
interview discussing the theory and practice 
of arts. It was a tour session in which Agbo 
Folarin took us round the campus showing us 
his works which constitute a large portion of 
the monuments that make the campus a vast 
permanent exhibition ground. 
The first was in 1973. It is a metal mural in 
front of the Students' Union Building. It is a 
melange of themes, a trend we were to find in 
a lot of Agbo Folarin's works. The mural is 
about protest, which symbolises students' 
unionism. As Agbo Folarin put it, 'Unionism 
is always about protesting about treatment of 
students by the government or by the university 
authorities.' 
There are representations of different sports. 
The building also houses the administrative 
offices of the sports complex of the university. 
There are the footballer, the netballer, 
weight-lifter and people in different forms of 
have expressed interest. Traeger said the 
exchange will have benefits for faculty and 
students. 
'They have a highly qualified set of faculty,' 
she said. The exchange gives students exposure 
to different perspectives and benefits 
the University 'just in terms of expanding 
our knowledge.' GR 
78
physical exercises all built into Folarin's work 
here. 
An observable tendency in Folarin (all his 
works are sculptures) is a bent towards storytelling. 
An aspect of history is more often 
chronicled. 
From Left, John Picton, reporter & Agbo Folarin 
1 
At the University Hall, a gigantic mural is 
titled The Ife Story. It portrays the Yoruba 
creation myth with focus on the cradle of a 
race in the historical city of Ile-Ife. The 
individuals who migrated to found the Yoruba 
nation are the heroes of this work. This is the 
work that New Currents, Ancient Rivers, a 
book published by the Smithsonian Foundation 
on contemporary African art exhibited. 
A visit to the University Conference Centre 
is effectively an entrance into the world of 
Agbo Folarin's creativity. There we encountered 
such works as Faces at the Conference. 
This procession of about twenty faces 
has something to say about an average conference. 
'It tries to satirise conference goers,' 
as Folarin put it. 'Conference goers always 
wear masks - an invisible mask though,' he 
remarked. 
Doning a wig is an overbearing image which 
we are told represents the Nigerian aristocracy. 
He is flanked by two intellectuals. The 
generalisimo at the centre also has another 
follower behind him, a praise-singer archetype. 
He is the proverbial paid piper imbibing 
the tunes of his payer. 
And there is the ever-present bored Jonah 
who is dosing away a little distance from all 
the surrounding hullabaloo. 
Also on doors at the Centre are The Story of 
Iyamopo which presents the Yoruba mythological 
spirit behind the success of women's 
This was not to be 
another long session 
of interview discussing 
the theory and practice 
of arts. It was a 
tour session in which 
Agbo Folarin took us 
round the campus 
showing us his works 
which constitute a 
large portion of the 
monuments that make 
the campus a vast permanent 
exhibition 
ground. 
79
commercial endeavours and The Story of 
Ibeji. The latter presents one of the most 
popular of Yoruba beliefs which is that twins 
are special spiritual beings that must be revered. 
This myth is. skilfully depicted in a 
brass work of many faces. There is also The 
Story of the Sango Priest, a devotee of the 
Yoruba deity of thunder and lightening. 
illustrated tueaklu 
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ferentiate it from the scores of ragsheets with adverts because I was not getting the 
type of advertisers I need to help the newslet- churned out from obscure presses secreted in 
equally obscure corners of Lagos. 
But what it lacked in size, the Arts Illustrated 
Weekly, a publication devoted exclusively to 
chronicling events in the culture sector and 
beaming the limelight on artists, made up for 
in aspirations and philosophy. 
First published on Thursday May 4, 1989, 
Arts Illustrated Weekly was a welcome drop 
of moisture in a terrain surfeited with all sorts 
of magazines and newspapers giving all the 
attention to politics but precious little to the 
arts, as is pretty much the case these days. 
The anxiety over what appeared to be its 
demise with its last outing on Thursday March 
24,1994, after almost five years of gallantly 
braving the challenge of publishing, prompted 
not a few questions from those concerned. 
Long published as a solo effort, its publisher, 
Hakeem Shitta, a photojournalist who operates 
from his two-bedroom apartment in the 
Amuwo Odofin Housing Estate says that 
Arts Illustrated Weekly is not dead but temporarily 
stalled. 'I have to be dead before the 
publication can die,' he adds defiantly. 
'I had to go to hospital for surgery and it was 
getting from one to two and so on. So it 
naturally got stalled; that's how much the 
surgery has taken.' The sessions with surthe 
attention and funds that should have 
sustained it for the period. 
But Shitta holds stubbornly to the original 
purpose and philosophy of Arts Illustrated 
Weekly, which was, as he puts it, 'to mould 
the arts and artists within my own kind of 
small resources, to celebrate the artist. It 
occurred to me that if the artist can't make as 
much money as his counterparts elsewhere 
maybe he'll get as much celebration as he got 
elsewhere. It's part of the arts to make the 
limelight and not only money in those other 
parts of the world.' 
In what appears to be its first phase of existence, 
the publication carried a major cover 
story surrounded by news from the Nigerian 
cultural sphere, a column featuring the birthdays 
of artists, titbits on prominent cultural 
personalities, notices and advertisements. 
'It was originally designed for contributions, 
artists telling their story, critiques, an open 
gate meant to publish the writer as he writes. 
That's why there's noeditor,'explains Shitta. 
Presented in this way, Shitta necessarily had 
a one-on-one relationship with such contributors, 
who were given a predetermined 
space to fill beyond which they had to do 
their own editing. 'I always find it distasteful, 
except for obvious grammatical errors, 
to tamper with a contribution because I know 
that the way a person writes, the kind of 
words he uses and the way he uses them 
There are others of the sculptor's works all 
over the campus of Obafemi Awolowo University 
such as a larger-than-life metal sculpture 
of Hezekiah Oluwasanmi, the university's 
second vice-chancellor mounted in front 
of the University Library named after him. 
If going through the campus says something 
about Folarin's prolificity, what about visiting 
his home at the University Quarters? 
Chairs are hewn out of wood trunks, stools 
are made of teaks, all over shelves and book 
stands are sculptures not to talk of the walls. 
He has an impressive collection of other 
artists' works too, C1R 
explain his style and character and make him 
different. So, what I always do is send the 
material back to the contributor and tell him, 
"your material is over-spilling",' 
Another quality of the newsletter which he 
was determined to retain was its editorial 
independence. As if to repudiate the suspicion 
that could be harboured that the publication 
went off the streets due to financial 
problems, Shitta says he never had real financial 
problems publishing it. Rather, the only 
problem he had was with editorial matter, 
which did not always come in from contributer. 
Since editorial materials were not coming 
in as scheduled and as advertisers wanted 
to see the publication on its publishing date, 
I needed advertisers who were patient enough 
to tolerate the shifts we sometimes had to 
make and who really cared for their corporate 
image.' he explains. 
According to Shitta, direct financial assistance 
in the form of grants or monetary gifts 
from companies or individuals would compromise 
his editorial independence and put 
him under obligation to such 'sponsors'. 'I 
don't need that sort of 'assistance' beyond 
advertisements that would appear in the paper 
and leave no weight on my conscience.' 
Shitta plans to re-launch the publication 
'within a month,' after re-adjusting to the arts 
scene. But not before fulfilling a condition, 
which is the concurrent publishing of a directory 
on Nigerian artists, adocument which he 
has long planned and is almost ready for 
publishing. 
He looks forward to the launch with optimism 
as the climate in which he used to 
publish has changed considerably from the 
days he used to encounter problems with 
typesetting. He now sets the pages on a 
personal computer he recently purchased for 
the purpose. But he hints that the cover price, 
which had changed from an initial 50 kobo in 
80