F 1995 WAS AN 
onnui tristitia for 
Nigeria, it wai an 
unusual year of sadness 
for members of the art 
community. Last year 
was one year that most 
Nigerian artists and 
collectors would rather 
not remember, because 
it left some important members 
of the Society of Nigerian Artists 
(SNA) as worms on a desert of 
salt. 
Besides the not-so-famous, who went 
'beyond the point of no return', death also 
encircled, in its extracting embrace, three 
outstanding Nigerian artists. 
Still mourning the demise of Sina 
Yussuph, art teacher at the Yaba College 
of Technology, the artists hardly recovered 
from the transition of Abdul Ganiu 
Odutokun which occurred in a ghastly 
auto-mishap February 15. As if the loss of 
Odutokun, until then the Vice President of A SCULPTOR'S 
Home Lonely Journe 
Maurice 
Archibong Tribute to Okpu Eze 
the SNA, was not enough, the society 
was to lose its head (no pun intended) 
with the death, on October 1, of Okpu 
Eze, president SNA. 
Death joked uncannily by snatching 
Eze on the National Day. Moreover, 
since the country's political considerations 
are often based on an East, West, North 
tripod, death itself refused to be appeased 
without this reflection. Thus from the West 
went Yussuph of the Yaba School; Gani 
Odutokun, head of ArtattheZaria School; 
and Okpu Eze who lived and worked 
most of his life in the East. 
Not much was known of Okpu Eze 
the man, but of Okpu Eze the sculptor. 
'The King's cup1, as his name literally 
translates, was not the crown of the SNA 
for nothing. Whilst many would remember 
him for his tempestuous temperament, his 
works will remain a more permanent 
source of insight into the life assisting in 
a balanced future judgement of his life 
and period. 
In life Eze may have been as cutting 
as a chisel and this adversely affects his 
relationship with some people but does 
not detract from the wholesomeness of his 
works.
Not many admirers remember that 
Eze, who is best known for his sculptors, 
actually started out as a painter. 
Born November 1, 1934, in 
Umuobiala-lsikwuator, now in Abia State, 
he attended the Technical Institute and 
Trade Centre, Enugu from 1950 to 1955 
and later studied (for one year (1963/ 
1964) Technology and Technique of 
Materials at West Hampshire Technical 
College, England. 
In four years (1960 - 1964) Eze 
had mounted up to fourteen solo 
exhibitions of 
his paintings: 
an almost 
inconceivable 
feat at that 
time. 
T h e 
n o v e l i s t 
Cy p r i a n 
Ekwensi who later described him as 'a 
very honest artist1 would be proven right, 
for not long after this he called off all 
public activity and retreated into the 
privacy of his studio. 
Okpu Eze complained that art was 
'not complete unless such issues as potency 
of theme, subject matter and formalistic 
excellence were addressed'. 
In his critique of some Nigerian 
artists whose works fell short of his 
standards and drew his impatience he 
declared: 'this kind of art is like algebra: 
non-functional.' 
To his critics who recently protested 
his favour of Italian art above Nigerian 
his defence was in a similar vein: 'as 
African Quarterly 
en thtArts 
V.L1IN03
though there can be Nigerian science or 
Nigerian mathematics', Eze told me 
before his death that he demurred attempts 
to compartmentalise art 
Throughout the period of his retreat 
Okpu Eze remained on his job in the 
public service as Works Manager, Federal 
Ministry of works and Housing, Lagos. 
This offered the artist much insight into 
bureaucracy which would prove useful 
when Eze returned to the art circuit in the 
late 1970s. In the intervening period, 
during which he withdrew, his fame had 
waned somewhat in comparison with 
some of his professional peers who waxed 
stronger in those years. 
Eze was undaunted; he 'was able 
to recognise that life is a complex 
confusion, a methodical or systematic 
gamble but fertile rendezvous for the 
bold, the determined, the dreamer and 
the intelligent' according to art historian 
Ola Oloidi, a close companion of Eze 
This consciousness propelled the 
artist in life. Far from appearing to be 
living on the fringes of existence like a lot 
of artists, Okpu Eze believed in the good 
life and lived it. He refused to be shrivelled 
by frugality, nor accepted to pound the 
streets in pecuniary pursuits. 
On a second visit to Eze's Enugu 
home in December 1 994 in company of 
the sculptor Chris Afuba, we were received 
by a graceful woman to whom we felt 
sure age had been kind. Mrs. (Lolo) Jun*, 
Nwadiobinma Okpu Eze did not look 
like a mother of six, not to talk of her being 
a grand-mother. 
Of all the genres of visual art, it is 
perhaps only in sculpture that the West 
admits to having borrowed a leaf or two 
from Africa: Okpu Eze will be remembered 
as one germination of the seeds from that 
ancienttree of artistic flory. His disposition 
was cosmopolitan, an embodiment of 
synthesis; Eze's is a melting pot of 
creativity, ideology, cultural relevance 
and a free spirit. Which probably is the 
explanation for why his works were 
always life-size, often grandiose. 
It is more of a compliment to his 
intellect also to say that Okpu Eze was a 
African Quarterly 
on the Am 
Vol.1/NO 3 
Mathematics of the Cosmos 
mystic. On August 14, 1 992 he led this 
writer by the hand during a preview of his 
last major exhibition in Nigeria and 
predicted that the massive 
democratisation process that was being 
vaunted in Nigeria was only a mirage 
This hollow promise of a return to civilian 
rulewascapturedin'ParableofTransition' 
a 1992 wood and metal sculpture 
bedecked with chains. Democracy was 
depicted as a mouse in shackles chained 
to two poles. 
There was also the 'parable of the 
Seed' produced the same year. Eze 
echoed the biblical axion that as a man 
sows, so shall he reap, advising that 
some Nigerians should not sow the seems 
of violence. Addressing Nigeria's political 
class, he produced a masquerade, the 
'Illusion of Power' which portrayed power 
in all its hollowness. 
However, in the 'mathematics of 
the cosmos' a confluence of borrowed 
forms and rhythms of world symbolisms 
Eze relies more on the Nsibidi 
(ancient Efik mode of writing). 
Here the watchful eye denotes 
vigilance, a mathematical sign 
stands for infinity, sharing the 
same world with Nsibidi 
symbols in harmonious coexistence. 
These v^rks were in 
the processio"1 of ,iis sculpture 
exhibited at the National 
Museum from August 15 to 
29, 1992 tagged 'New 
Dimensions: present of the 
past'. 
September 18, 1995 
was to be the last time I would 
see him We had run into 
each other at the National 
Gallery of Art, Lagos. As 
president of the SNA he was 
busy preparing for Nigeria's 
participation in the World 
Intellectual Property 
Organisation (WIPO) 
exhibition in Geneva, 
Switzerland. A very successful 
outing for Nigeria, it was here 
that the president of Nigeria 
Copywright Council, Moses 
Ekpo got elected WIPO president. 
On September 29, Chief Okpu 
Eze and other delegates returned to 
Nigeria; within forty-eight hours of their 
arrival, Okpu deceased. 
The body of the late Okpu Eze, 
president SNA, 1990 recipient of 
Economic Community of West Africa 
States (ECOWAS) prize for sculpture, 
and member, Society of British Artists 
was committed to mother earth within his 
Institute of Contemporary Arts compound 
at Umuobiala, Abia State on November 
4, 1995. 
I felt that the poster which 
announced the transition and funeral 
ceremony did little justice to the immense 
statur^of Okpu Eze who departs as one 
of Nigeria's most talented sculptors. So 
to some extent was the wrangling within 
the SNA itself. The SNA should otherwise 
have given its erstwhile general a more 
resounding final gun salute. GR.