Art critic, culture activist, publisher and geologist, Toyin Akinosho clocked 60 last month. Though the COVID-19 pandemic prevented a physical celebration, there was a two-day virtual event for the co-founder of Committee for Relevant Art on Zoom. Arts writers engaged the man fondly called ‘Poblishaa’ in an intensive interaction about his life, passions and others at one of the sessions. Excerpts:
WHAT should be the role of government in promoting our arts and culture?
The country has evolved significantly. 10 years after the Committee for Relevant Art (CORA) was founded, Nigeria opened up its telecoms market, and the economy exploded. So, you have a kind of scope in the economy for the sponsorship of the arts that you have today. You didn’t have it at that time.
You can imagine that a significant TV producer like Lola Fani-Kayode would be struggling with the sponsorship of whatever programme she was doing at the time for a long time before anyone would support and that would be just one bank or something. But if you sit down this evening to watch ‘Unbroken’ or ‘Brethren’, you will find that Access Bank would say they are the sponsor. After Access Bank says they are the sponsors, you will find an Airtel one-minute advert, and as you’re watching, you find other adverts. That wasn’t there then
At that time, we thought that if the government didn’t put money, it wouldn’t happen. When I was leaving Ife, the kind of plays that were happening at the National Theatre; when they say National Theatre production, that meant the federal government funding. There was so much that we were putting on the government; we didn’t have this structure that we are getting now. I mean, where the government can back you in the sense that, this is a good idea, we are interested. Mostly, you source your sponsorships everywhere.
I think that we should sit together to construct another framework for how the government intervenes in the affairs of culture production, culture propagation and presentation. Not that narrow sense that we had in 1991, where we felt that the most crucial individual in the culture circuit was the Sole Administrator of Culture. You know that no longer happens now. There are several layers now; it’s diverse. What the government does now is different. While we have broken the old mould; nobody cares for instance, who is the General Manager of the National Theatre? Nobody is going there, anyway.
We have moved ahead, so I don’t base my discussion around such things anymore. It is essential to state that I’m speaking as Toyin Akinosho; this is not a CORA statement. CORA hasn’t taken the decision. Again, CORA’s structure has left that one-person dictatorial way of 1991. It’s a more structured organisation now.
You’re a scientist by being a geologist and an artist by inclination. Why did you pick a profession in the sciences when your inclination is in the Arts?
I was inclined to sciences in Baptist Academy. I went for my Higher School Certificate (HSC), in Federal School of Science, Lagos and then Federal School of Science in Ogoja, Cross River State to read maths, physics and chemistry. I was going to do engineering. At the end of the Higher School Certificate, I didn’t make maths. I had two subjects, physics and chemistry.
The closest applied science I could get in any university was geology. They could take that in Ife, and I wanted to go to Ife. It’s a long story. The same year that I went to Ife to start geology, I was offered electrical engineering at the University of Ilorin, but that was for the prelim. Ilorin was not an exciting place, everyone that I knew as an exciting person in Lagos was in Ife; I wanted to go and meet the same guys that we were going to parties in FSS Lagos. I was not going to study. I wanted to hang out.
So, I ended up in a place where there was all that fun. Ask anybody who went to school between 1978 and 82, look at them, they are either Lagbaja or Falana. Lagbaja was my set. That essentially was the atmosphere in Ife. It was fun; it was exciting. It wasn’t that I wanted to read anything per se; it was what was available.
I got into Ife. I was never an art person really; I had an A in English; had A in History. I think I had C 4 in Literature. It wasn’t something that I was necessarily looking at until UlliBeier came to Ife in 1981 to discuss Duro Ladipo. I was fascinated by his presentation, and I wrote a short essay, or a brief report and sent it to the National Concord, which was the most important newspaper at the time.
They published that report on UlliBeier, and so I looked at what else to do, and I started writing for Lagos Weekend because National Concord didn’t pay. I heard people telling me that some people might pay. So, if I could write something serious and National Concord published, why won’t I write the relatively light material that Lagos Weekend would publish.
They were paying N25 per article and don’t forget in my time, N45 was all you needed to feed in a month. You just pay that, and you got your ticket, 50 kobo per meal. My father sent N60 every month; the remaining N15 was for upkeep. So, to be earning N25 from 1981, I was already a rich student. I mean Weekend Concord could publish like thrice.
That was how I got into journalism. I wasn’t planning anything. No, I’m not that organised. I was never that kind of person. I went to school because my age mates were going. I mean when you are 17, you are enjoying FESTAC; you’re going to the National Theatre; you are living in the neighbourhood of the National Theatre. It’s just like all those small Lagos boys that go to Freedom Park, that was me in 1977.
My set who thought we owned the National Theatre, we would go there. We would watch films without paying; that was my exposure. But I wasn’t necessarily an arts person. So, I went to university, discovered Oduduwa Hall in Ife. I enjoyed UlliBeier and Jazz. Ife provided all that atmosphere. That was it.
When are you going to write your social history of Lagos or even your times and life? A sort of loitering with the tent kind of book. When can we expect such a book?
There’s been so much pressure for some kind of book. I had always had several books in my head, and someone resolved it for me, finally. Ayo Arigbabu, he called me and said just write something. So, I just started writing. It would be closer to ‘Vaughn Street.’ I’ve told this story before: ‘Miguel Street’, I read that in Ife, and I told myself I would write ‘Vaughn Street’, and I’ve never done it. I’ve completed a chapter. It’s going to be several chapters. The thing is that as pictures leap at me, I will, but you are not going to get a magisterial work like Kaye Whiteman’s.
From what I’ve seen of Keith Richards book, some of those things can be quite challenging. Keith Richards doing part of what you are trying to say and part business book. I realised that whenever he paid much attention to the social component, he was much fun and whenever he tried to throw in our faces what achievements Guinness had over Star, he struggled. That means I have what we call in exploration drilling, Offset Wells. When you want to drill a well, you say that’s an offset well. You are looking for the same kind of sand formations that you had in that particular wall if they are not looking promising, then your prospect looks challenging.
Give me a year and a half. If I don’t deliver in 2022, you should beat me up. From the way I’m doing it, Artsville can provide a guide because there’s a lot of material in Artsville that can be developed into chapters of their own. If you read Book ArtVille today, an idea of what a chapter would look like is in the list of stories that are there. It’s what a quarter of a chapter would look like.
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