Peju Layiwola Quotes

If education should be salvaged in this country we cannot leave it to the government alone. There has to be an inclusion of the private sector.

For example, the visual arts which is my own forte, has been totally ignored in Nigeria.

But my teaching is not limited to university students. I have straddled different categories and classes of people within the society. I have taught pupils and secondary school students, illiterates, barbers, mechanics, tailors, petty traders and welders, masons who need rudimentary skills in the arts to earn a decent living at community based workshops. In both spaces, I have had great fulfilment.

My lectures and engagement in the last two months have helped foster better understanding of art from a non-European background. It has also expanded my understanding of knowledge practices in the arts. Next year promises better opportunities. As a recipient of the Raw Residency at Rhodes University in South Africa, I will be involved with creating a new body of art works. I am excited about this residency because of its unique structure. I will be working with a writer who would engage my artistic production in a literary form, while I do my own work.

My interest in art derived from the great influences that Benin art, culture, festivals and history presented growing up in the city. My mother also had a strong influence on me. I not only learnt art from her at home, she was also my art teacher at the Federal Government Girls’ College, Benin. My principal, Josephine Ifueko Omigie, was an art graduate of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. The cultural events organised by the school helped stimulate interest in arts and culture. We had an annual week-long competition on cultural activities that engaged every student in one creative activity or the other. I was also a member of the school choir and played the piano.

At Uniben, the university employed guild casters from Igun street as studio hands to assist students with bronze casting projects. Establishing an art school requires a whole lot of equipment and facilities, purpose built studios with proper ventilation, proper staffing and lots of space. In many of the art schools I have been to in the West, they constantly change their equipment to the most up-to-date facilities to catch up with modern trends in the world of art. The availability of materials and opportunities that their students have sometimes makes one green with envy. I look forward to such a time.

Rising to become a full professor of the visual arts at the University of Lagos bestows upon me added responsibilities. It has given me the unique opportunity of shaping lives. Many of my students have become really successful artists, some now professors in their various institutions and are able to hold their own – a few of them whom I am very proud of, and taught at either undergraduate and post graduate levels are Jude Anogwih, Tobenna Okwuosa, Nelson Edewor, George Edozie, Jelili Atiku, Bolaji Ogunwo, Ganiyu Jimoh and Alao Lukman.

The University of Lagos administration has been very receptive to suggestions. My proposal for the establishment of an arts and crafts Centre funded by TETFund was given priority by the university management. This concept when accomplished will invariably bring together students of different departments to learn skills that interface with the arts and help with job creation after school.

Students of art are so engrossed in practical work to the detriment of research. Art books no longer have the appeal they had. The Internet seems to have replaced books as students prefer to cut and paste information gathered from Wikipedia and dictionaries. Hardly do they have critical engagement with resources that would help them develop a language of their own. The craze to acquire degrees without the attendant rigour is overwhelming. The few students that excel by trying to beat these odds give us hope to remain in this profession.

First of all, it is one thing to identify a problem. Secondly, it is another to have the power to effect those changes. Poor funding of universities is a key problem. It also seems to me that there is an unspoken practice of privileging the sciences over the humanities.

In developing the psychomotor and entrepreneurial skills of the youth in Lagos State schools, we will work with animal bones, coconut shells, animal horns, and shells in making a variety of aesthetic and functional objects. We have evolved a system where secondary school students, university students and local artisans in Surulere can learn and share skills with one another with the purpose of enhancing tourism potentials in Lagos State.

Funding is a major issue for every artist; people want to watch a good play; people want to get entertained and they don’t want to pay for it.

I am grateful to the Almighty God for all he has made possible in the last 50 years. That I am alive today is the sheer miracle of God. Being 50 is a milestone in an individual’s life, particularly for those living in Nigeria with all its challenges. I am grateful for the kind of support I have received from my family, particularly my husband. It is also a time of stocktaking.

In terms of my career, I will focus more on my studio practice and consolidate on helping to build a stronger community of creative thinkers amongst the youth. To mark our 13th anniversary of community service a lot of free art workshops in tie-dye, silk-painting and ceramics were held at the Women and Youth Art Centre. I have a couple of international engagement. I have just concluded a prestigious artist residency in the Kunstsammlung Northrein Westfalen, the Museum of the State of North Rhine Westfalia, in Dusseldorf.

In 2003, we recorded a set of art based DVDs inspired by the culture of watching home videos. Through this, I developed a strategy which makes knowledge about the arts available to a large number of people. The adoption of this model for teaching art (a widely undersubscribed subject in many schools) has made knowledge readily available in a relatively attractive manner.