Despite its tragic 
encounters with the 
British prior to Colo - 
nial pacification, 
Onitsha remained a 
strategic, dynamic and 
regenerative melting 
pot of peoples and 
cultures, with an 
aggressive commercial 
inclination as well as 
an eye for the innovative, 
the progressive, 1 
even the eccentric. 
- Olu Oguibe1 
A commercial City 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Vol 2/hln. 1
HE kilometre-long Head Bridge 
graffiti mural stretching from the spectacular 
Niger bridge to the precincts of Premier Brewery, 
is perhaps the first thing anyone coming into 
Onitsha from the West of Nigeria would notice, 
apart from the dizzying mass of humanity lost in 
existential flux. The graffiti is an integral part of 
the Head Bridge landscape and has been since 
the period after the Biafran War. The artist, 
Stephen Nwokedi, belongs to that class of people 
who, among the Igbo, are said to be caught in the 
stranglehold of that powerful creative destructive 
force, Agwu. He is a mystic, sane, mad, artist, 
and the mural is his sole life work. 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Vol. 2/No. 1 GLENDORAr.
The mural has a life of its own which in turn 
depends on the moods and needs of the property 
developers in the area, plus those of the artist. He is 
never commissioned to paint his graffiti on the stretch 
of walls on both sides of the road, but the owners of 
the graffitied walls do not seem to mind, for Onitsha, 
among its many other virtues, accommodates even 
the eccentric. The artist constantly revises the mural by 
painting over older sections and in this way he 
updates his work to reflect his current mental preoccupation. 
Nwokedi may not be terribly literate but in his 
work there are quotations, allusions, and direct 
references to personages, events and ideas from 
sources as diverse as Greek mythology, the Sudanic 
empires, Chinese or Japanese history, Twentieth 
century international politics, contemporary mysticism, 
and occult philosophies. There are of course 
scores of countless images. The artist claims that the 
images he inscribes on the walls are constitutive of the 
many screams he ^ears from deep inside his head.2 
e is never commissioned to paint 
his graffiti on the stretch of walls 
on both sides of the road, but the owners 
of the graffitied walls do not seem to 
mind, for Onitsha, among its many other 
-virtues, accommodates even tike eccentric 
So the act of painting for him is a therapeutic affair 
that defuses explosive tensions within. 
The beauty of the Onitsha Head Bridge graffiti 
derives from its organic formlessness, its apparent 
lack of holistic design, its multiplex allusions and 
references to many literary, historical, and contemporary 
traditions, its powerful images, its ability to 
survive countless transgressions from builders, house 
painters and government agents. In a way it announces 
to a first-time visitor that Onitsha is doggedly 
drawn to that which Achebe calls the uli that never 
fades, the written text, but in a manner that defies 
conventional logic. More importantly, the graffiti 
mural is a monument to the arts of Onitsha-the literary 
tradition that once was, and the popular arts that still 
thrive - in which are encoded the story of the encounter 
between Onitsha and the European traders and 
missionaries in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth 
centuries, as well as the cultural dynamics responsible 
for the evolution of the city from a small trading town 
GLENDORA ,.v,.w 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Vol. 2/No. 1 
in the last century to the sprawling metropolis it is 
today.
Onitsha was the place European missionaries in 
the Nineteenth century began the evangelical 
proselytization of eastern Nigeria - a business they 
pursued with as much passion as they had, also, for the 
commercial exploitation of the native and their environment. 
The river Niger was very important in the 
story of Onitsha. It was through the Niger that missionaries 
and traders from the Delta arrived what was then 
a small riverine town, and having settled there, began 
with zeal the binary business of religion and commerce. 
But the tenuous cordiality between the foreigners 
and the natives, whom earlier expeditionists had 
noted for their intelligence and business acumen, did 
not last long. 
Once the British traders established their factories, 
the struggle between them and the Onitsha 
commercial and cultural institutions for the control of 
the purse and soul of the town began. The high point 
of this struggle was in 1 879 when David Mclntosh, the 
General Manager of West African Company (which 
later became United African Company or UAC for 
short) in order to silence and subdue the intractable 
native, carried out the historic naval bombardment of 
the town. That was on October 26, 1879.3 The 
'punitive' expedition (as all such acts of British aggression 
during the pre-colonial era were termed) authorized 
by the War Office, was eventuated by, as 
Mclntosh claimed, the failure of the Onitsha king to 
hand over two people alleged to have robbed British 
factories in Onitsha. A year later also, the British 
traders blockaded the town when, to their frustration, 
the Onitsha people responded to the earlier bombardment 
in the form of a communally enforced trade 
embargo against the British companies, rather than a 
military campaign. In addition, Onitsha embarked on 
a revanchist programme of de-christianization since to 
them, there was hardly any difference between British 
trading and the missionary activities. But if, as happened, 
Anglican Christianity survived those heady 
days, it was perhaps due to what Ekechi calls the 
'incurable optimism' of Bishop Ajayi Crowther, and 
the brinkmanship of the church authorities. The Anglican, 
and later Roman Catholic church got a large part 
of the soul of Onitsha; the European traders and, later, 
colonial officers controlled the town's body and purse 
but never won its confidence. 
And the Niger? Onitsha seems to have edited 
the river out of its psyche. It flows quietly past Onitsha 
carrying with it only flotsam of a (pre)colonial past. It
is in that past that the Niger 
was the artery through which 
the nutrients, and occasional 
pathogens, reached the town. 
The days of canoes, steamboats 
and barges bearing 
wealth from Igala country and 
the Delta. The days of gunboats 
from England bearing 
scourges. Today, the wealth 
that sustains Onitsha never 
touches the vast waters of the 
Niger. The Niger is history. It 
bears only memory on its 
course to the Ocean. 
Onitsha was a place of 
schools -day schools and 
night schools, mission 
schools and private 
schools, grammar schools 
and commercial institutes, a city of one-room academics and 
backyard colleges. It had the best, the indifferent and deplorable. 
Its major industry was retail trading and the next was education, 
On top Niger Bridge, Onitsha 
Above 'A story of Rose and Chulcwuma', 
Enamel of board 
Africap Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Vol. 2/No. 1 GLENDORAr
and the two sometimes got mixed up. 
Chinua Achebe. " 
Onitsha does not have any university or even a 
reputable tertiary institution (except perhaps, the pioneer 
St. Charles Teachers Training College) but as 
Stephen Nwokedi's graffiti mural evidences, the city 
has a near occult relationship with the written word for 
which it attained considerable fame by the middle of 
the Twentieth century. That literary tradition known as 
Onitsha Market Literature was spawned by the twin 
factors of Christianity and commerce. 
The European missionaries brought Western 
education, and built schools while they preached the 
gospel. The schools not only became sites for teaching 
the natives the ways of Europe and the Enlightenment 
Project, they were also necessary for the training of 
catechists, interpreters and clerks for the church and 
the imperial administration. However, as the urban 
population of Onitsha grew, its needs became more 
complex, more schools came up to train more hands 
for the widening secular and religious institutions and 
businesses. By the middle of the century, Onitsha had 
an impressive number of schools, and a growing 
population of college students whose preoccupation 
with the mastery and control of the English language, 
and the display of same to the rest of the population 
was phenomenal. To these new 'men of letters', the 
acquisition of the power of the written word yielded 
limitless freedom of expression, which was necessary 
for the interrogation of the new, overwhelming urban 
realities. Besides writing letters for the less or non 
literate friends and relatives, the emergent literati 
began to make tentative efforts at creative and didactic 
literature. 
Also at the same time, bookshop owners and 
printers saw a great investment potential in the growing 
romance with writing. They imported Second 
World War-era printing presses in addition to existing 
ones that published religious literature. By the late 
1940s a great number of printers had turned to 
publishing all manner of literature, especially those 
from the young men of letters who were still experimenting 
with the new, powerful language. And Onitsha 
Market Literature was born. 
There is an extent to which this Market Literature 
was a continuation of the Christian evangelization 
project, bv other means. The scholar Ernest Emenyeonu5 
posits that the work of the first Igbo writer, Equiano's 
Travels (by Olaudah Equiano), was an interrogation 
of the wanton immorality and corruption that pervaded 
the slave owning Western societies. Equiano 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
GLENDORA .»..» Vol. 2/No. 1 
win one d< 
N.O. Njoku 
and Co., 
'Life Turns 
Man Up 
and Down' 
a day and cannot pass 
ie does not care for any 
; home town aeai.i. He 
didthatbyusingtheirown very Christian Bible against 
them. This literary style passed onto the subsequent 
Igbo writers and as Obiechina writes, these 'Christian 
attitudes and principles provided one of the major 
inspirations for the pamphlet literature.'6 
Much of the Market Literature, which was 
usually didactic, dwelt on the new phenomena of 
urban love affairs, prostitution, marriage and the 
pursuit of wealth. A few discussed pre/post-independence 
politics in Africa. But it would appear that the 
popularity of the literature was not so much for its 
educative, moralizing posturing as its romantic, showy, 
terribly impressive command of the English language. 
This reading makes sense for it was also at this period 
in the national polity that Zik, the enigmatic Onitsha 
son, in contemporary mythology, was threatening to 
overthrow the Queen of England with his fantastic 
English. Even if many of the authors claimed the
UP AND DOWN 
OCNT LET MUSIC DESTROY 
"THERE IS A NEW POISON IN AFRICA 
' TODAY! Ciashy, frash music and obscene songs 
in the Streets, in Bars, Hotels and Homes are running' 
a countless number of live* both young and old. 
Bad music that stairs up animal lust in men and 
respect is becoming more popular every day. 
mastery of the landscape of urban life, and as such 
ought to educate the underprivileged, less literate 
masses, their methods of delivery verged on showmanship. 
However, the entertainment value of the literature 
was important to an urban population that had little 
time for the few recreational facilities the city provided. 
The traders attended their new businesses with so 
much passion that only such forms of entertainment that 
did not take them away from their stalls and shops 
were acceptable, even patronized. The Market Literature 
also lightened the burdens of those periods of lull 
in the market. In the same manner too, the primary and 
college students, who with the traders formed the bulk 
of the readership, found in the pamphlets an escape 
route from the drudgery and boredom of their school 
texts. 
The Market Literature was a cultural expression 
of Onitsha's youth, for as the city matured, as its 
J.O. 
Nnadozie, 
'Beware of 
Harlots and 
Many 
Friends: the 
World is 
Hard' 
populace came to terms with its modern/urban realities, 
it shed off the literature. A few factors account for 
this. The first is that most of the authors with maturity, 
developed a more sophisticated craft and thus became 
involved in other forms of serious writing. For 
instance Cyprian Ekwensi, who was a pioneer in the 
pamphlet tradition (his When Love Whispers appeared 
in 1 947) evolved into a first generation modern 
novelist in West Africa. Also Tagbo Nzeakor 
would later becomtf a major Igbo language novelist. 
The second factor, which is related to the first is the 
indifference show by later generations of traders on 
the one hand, and the quest for more engaging, better 
written and more entertaining literature by school 
students, on the other. The reading traders soon found 
that their erstwhile pastime did not improve their 
businesses, nor minds. Nor did it bring them anywhere 
closer to Zik. On the part of the students, there were 
such vastly popular books as Ekwesi's Passport of 
Mallam llya, Drummer Boy, African Night's Entertainment, 
Ene Henshaw's This is Our Chance, and 
Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist: all of which also 
doubled as school texts. The third factor may well be 
the awareness, on the part of the investor/publishers, 
ofthegrosslyunlucrative nature of book publishing. As 
this runs counter to the morals of commerce, the Market 
Literature soon won for itself the scorn of publishers 
most of whom returned to printing labels, pirated 
school texts, and commercially viable designs. Thus, 
Onitsha Market Literature passed on. 
Ulli Beier, in his pioneering work on Onitsha 
Market Literature7 saw a connectivity between the 
'Onitsha Writers' and self-taught highlife musicians 
who played in the bars and nightclubs of Onitsha and 
other major towns in Eastern Nigeria. They were part 
of the urban culture in which we find also, self-taught 
artists, usually called 'Sign Writers', who made rubber 
cut illustrations for the pamphlets. In all, the three art 
forms were essentially products of a society caught in 
the gossamer web of change; a society in which its 
people were grappling, experimenting with new, 
received media with which to express, internalize, and 
interrogate realities of modern urban life. 
The Nigerian signwriters.are literally pop artists. 
They have primary school education, that hardly 
qualifies them for any job. From remote Ibo (sic) 
villages they often come to are trading centres like 
Onitsha...here people get rich quickly. 
-Ulli Beier8 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Vol. 2/No. 1 GLENDORA ...-,
and Co., 
'Life Turns 
Man Up 
and Down' 
These foolish men engaged themselves 
this hariot. One of them iaid she is m> 
said shte is my friend and not yonn. It 
to exchange hot blows. Very unfortunate 
advji ced at the spot and marched then 
reporter told me that they were later tri< 
and *e ' *-r.t?nced to six months irr 
Onitsha is an intensely colourful city and this N.O. Njoku 
trait stretches back to the colonial days when it was 
a melting pot for the sane, the vain, the missionary 
and visionary. And the ambitious. The colour of 
Onitsha is both metaphoric and literal. Apart from the 
dense population of similar, three-storied, 
multicoloured apartment blocks that is typical of 
Onitsha architecture, the streets are kept colourfully 
alive by sign writers and popular painters. These 
artists, as noted earlier, carried on their trade in 
tandem with the pamphlet writers, but unlike the 
latter, they have survived, even thrive in current 
Onitsha socio-economics. Where the writers left the 
art and their print/publishers changed the topic due 
to exigent needs, the popular artists never quite left 
their trade. This is because the city relies intensely on 
the artists for advertising signs, billboards, labels and 
decorative sculptures and paintings for interior/ 
GLENPORA . 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Vol. 2/No. 1 
exterior spaces. 
Many a local manufacturer would be content 
with labels and packages that clearly announce the 
name and location of the business, for the products; 
they bother less about the visual aesthetics of product 
packaging and presentation. On the other hand the 
patron of decorative paintings, sculpture and craft 
items prefer directly humoristic, stress-relieving subjectmatter 
which to a certain extent are visual analogues 
of the erstwhile chapbooks. 
Onitsha needs colourful advertising and directional 
signs to the myraid of business in the city. This 
need is stoked by the chaotic layout which turns street 
numbers and names in the city into useless symbols. So 
any business outfit that does not come out to the nearest 
road junction to scream in the din of shouting signs 
does not exist and may never be located by its 
customers. At these street corners the advertising signs 
that seem to elbow each other out of stasis, replicate the 
pervasive jostling for space by apartment blocks and 
people. Watch repairers, barbers, publishers, 
bookshops, retailers, medicinemen, fancy-stores, indeed 
every other businesses that can not find space 
inside the world famous Main Market, or Ochanga 
Relief Market and other specialised markets, fight for 
advert spaces out in the streets. It is on the basis of all 
these that the art of Augustine Okoye, and the likes of 
him find nourishment, in Onitsha. 
Before postmodernism unleashed itself on late 
Twentieth century theory of culture, there was high/ 
fine art. There was craft. Fine artists and art historians 
treated with scorn, and usually discountenanced, the 
lowly efforts of craftsmen and craftswomen, especially 
(as feminist theorists have opened our scaled eyes) the 
latter. In Western societies, and other societies that 
have fallen into the snares of the West, fine artists 
cater(ed) for the rarefied, often decadent whims of the 
elites; craftspeople produced 'functional art' for the 
rest of the human society. In Africa everyone who 
created visual form, whether for the king or the housewife, 
or the community, was a craftsperson, according 
to Western(ist) art history. There were no 'fine' artists 
to be found among the natives. Then Postmodernism 
intervened. It collapsed the boundary between fine art 
and craft; between 'high art' and 'low art'. It left in its 
wake a grey middle in which 'high art' intercoursed 
with 'low art'. The 'carver' who makes /be/7 figures in 
Ibadan now defines the frontiers of fine art in a gallery 
in, say, New York. It is this tribe of artists who thread 
the middle course that found favour in the eyes of 
Onitsha
Augustine Okoye may have anticipated the 
emergence of this art as far back as the early 1 960s, 
in Onitsha. He reasoned then that his art was neither 
high, nor low. It belonged in that comfortable space 
between the two extremes. In the middle. So he took on 
the professional name, Middle Art. He creates craftthat-
is-art or the other way round. From the beginning 
he painted barber signs as well as allegorical pictures 
of the politicians of the day. He also painted visual 
analogues of the Market Literature, such as his masterpiece, 
The Story of Rose and Chukwuma. Even today, 
due to interminable demands from indigenous and 
expatriate clients, he paints variants of The Story of 
Rose, or scenes of the Biafran War. He also produces 
printed labels and packages for local manufacturers, 
as well as license plates for vehicles which is about all 
Onitsha expects from any confessed artist. 
It is perhaps due to this passionate attraction 
between Onitsha and the 'middle arts' that the city 
never attracted nor sustained the creators of the 'high 
'A\ s this runs counter to the morals of 
commerce, the Market Literature 
soon won for itself the scorn of publishers 
most of whom returned to printing labels, 
pirated school texts, and commercially 
viable designs. Thus, Onitsha Market 
Literature passed on 
arts'. Ekwensi published his pamphlets there but 
moved to Lagos as his art sought high goals. For Ben 
Enwonwu and Uzo Egonu who were native sons, their 
careers sought refuge in Lagos and London, respectively. 
Similarly, Ben Osawe who grew up in Onitsha, 
practices in Benin. 
However, it is surprising reading history and 
looking at present day Onitsha, that in spite of its 
being the major foothold of the early missionaries, that 
education (as an industry) never succeeded in the 
manner of commerce. (This is without prejudice to H.R. 
Collins' observation in the 1 960s that the city had the 
largest concentration of secondary and commercial 
schools in Nigeria),9 
The reason is simple. Onitsha is a fiercely 
independent, individualist city. It regards institutions 
of government or anything that signifies mass control 
with overt indifference. In this, it would appear that its 
disdain for the foreign traders-that-became-colonial 
government which led to the 1 879 bombardment is 
fossilired in the city's memory. To Onitsha, the government 
establishments, higher education, or the 'high' 
arts are at best circuitous routes, at worst diversionary 
paths to acquisition of wealth which is the raison d' 
etre of the city and its people. It is for this reason 
perhaps, that the city never became a seat of government 
nor did it attract any respectable tertiary institution 
that could have stimulated the people to appreciate 
literature beyond the erstwhile Market Literature, 
or art that did not strive toward the scope and depth 
of the middle arts. 
In spite of the oppressively dysfunctional infrastructure 
and public amenities, and the chaotic disposition 
of Onitsha, there is a contrastive feeling of 
relative calm.and order in the Main Market itself. And 
this is in spite of the great mass of human traffic, as well 
as tightly spaced stalls stocked to the rafters with 
goods. It is within the market that vast amounts of cash 
change hands. There is also a pervasive sense of 
security within the perimeters of the Market. Many a 
first-time visitor would be puzzled, even shocked, by 
the intense movement of cash here without state 
security operatives. But there is hardly to be gleaned 
from the faces of both traders and their customers, any 
anxieties about robberies which ordinarily are part of 
the reality of Onitsha. This is mainly due to the 
confidence everyone involved in the Market reposes in 
the Onitsha Market Amalgamated Traders Association 
(OMATA). The power of the OMATA is proportional 
to the wealth of Onitsha, and its security network 
is, to say the least, immense. It's reputation for hunting 
down transgressors is legendary. Also its headquarters, 
appropriately called 'The Whitehouse', is the 
place from where the association's president, easily 
the most powerful man in Onitsha, controls the affairs 
of the OMATA and its members. More than anything 
else, it is because of the association's independent 
means and methods of security enforcement that the 
Main Market still remains one great, successful commercial 
'institution'. 
However, Stephen Nwokedi's mural serves as 
the scenery in front of which the existential drama of 
the rest of the city is played out. In the intervening 
spaces between stretches of the mural, are car parks 
where vehicles leaving Onitsha for the West of the 
country make their final attempts at filling whatever 
available spaces they may still have. There is also the 
'goat station' where trucks from Northern Nigeria 
unload their dirty, often emaciated occupants. Here, a 
mixture of rotten hay, muck, and refuse are flung 
unceasingly on the face of Nwokedi's mural by animals, 
men, and vehicles. Elsewhere in the city there is 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Vol. 2/No. 1 GLEN DORA
an accepted logic that laws are made to be transgressed, 
especially when they are seen to be unsympathetic 
to all ways and means of making money. 
And yet there is no place that epitomizes more 
the chaos which the pursuit of money leaves in its 
wake than the Upper Iweka area of Onitsha. This is 
where the central bus and car park is located and the 
importance of this site is underscored by the absence 
of railway or air transport services in the city. Luxury 
bus transport is a multi-billion naira business and is 
controlled by some of the city's wealthiest businessmen. 
In any given day or night, scores of luxury buses 
move traders and their goods between Onitsha and 
Lagos.
Non resident travellers coming into Onitsha 
hardly leave the city without tales of their encounter 
with Onitsha motorpark touts whose personal incomes 
are directly proportional to the number of 
travellers they bring into any given bus. And that is 
where the maddening hustling comes in leaving the 
intending traveller at the mercy of the touts whose 
coercive aggression is legendary. Two people that 
have yet to decide which line to travel on may for 
instance, soon find that they have been lifted and 
carried to separate buses by touts in spite of any 
protestations. Here also, short duration fights are 
recurrent and provide entertainment to hurriedly 
assembled spectators. To the non-resident these are 
Art appreciation begjhs with Ibxhimii Frames 
The Fcnchurch difference is 
evident in the finest homes, offices, 
museums, and galleries, where 
paintings literally come alive 
No other framing measures up to 
the visual impact. 
The key to it all is the 
Fenchurch framing technique 
which illuminates and provides 
the optimum setting for the art. 
• ••••••••••«••«»»»»»»,,„»»#« 
ike t^mmm mtzngfir the Art* 
Onifcsw. 
some of Onitsha's existential excesses but to the 
hundreds who live and believe in the city, the so-called 
excesses are but a reaffirmation of the two maxims 
favoured by many authors of the market Literature: 
Money is hard, and, Life and money turn man up and 
down. GR 
Notes 
1. Olu Oguibe (1995) Uzo Egonu: An African Artist 
in the West, London: Kala Press, p. 11 
2. See Anthonia Emejulu, (1989) 'The "Bridge- 
Head" Artist - An Appraisal' B.A. Thesis, 
University of Nigeria. 
3. See Felix Ekechi, (1973) 'Traders, Missionaries & 
The Bombardment of Onitsha, 1879-80/ Conch, 
Vol. 5, Nos. 1 and 2, pp.61-8 
4. Chinua Achebe, (1975) 'Onitsha, the Gift of the 
Niger', Morning Yet on Creation Day, London: 
Heinemann, p.92 
5. Ernest Emenyeonu, (1973) 'Igbo Literary 
Backgrounds/ Conch, Vol. 5, Nos. 1 and 2. pp43-60 
6 Quoted from Emenyeonu, Op. cit. p.56 
7. See Ulli Beier, (1976) 'Public Opinion on Lovers' 
in Introduction to African Literature, Ulli Beier(ed), 
Essex: Longman. 
8. Ulli Beier, (1966) 'Naive Nigerian Art,' Black 
Orpheus, No. 19, pp31-39 
9. H.R. Collins, (1968) The New English of the 
Onitsha Chapbooks, Athens (Ohio): Ohio University 
Centre for International Studies, p.2 
eorge V Road, 
1C!/FM: 2646180