First of all, teachers were very poorly paid just as they are today. As the best graduating student in 1988, the University of Benin retained me. So … - Peju Layiwola

People do not recognise that there’s a lot of talent; a lot of energy that go into putting up a production.

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.

As an artist and academic, I believe one’s work should impact the community. I have found an avenue for exploring this notion through the art based, not-for-profit platform known as the Women and Youth Art Foundation which I founded in 2004. The impetus for this began in Benin. As a young girl, I would tag along with my mother to several community based programmes and workshops organised by the then Bendel State government on poverty alleviation. Much later at Ibadan in 1995, I started a small women’s group comprising a few unemployed nursing mothers. We discussed how we could help ourselves by sharing skills amongst ourselves. So we shared tips on culinary skills, childcare and arts within the group. Much later this group grew into a more structured platform with a wider outreach, engaging youth, women and disadvantaged groups in various arts and crafts for the purpose of economic empowerment.