Nwoko: Progress is not in copying other cultures, be it technology

Octogenarian architect and artist, Demas Nwoko recently gave a rare insight into his work and struggles that have spanned many decades in an exclusive interview with ANOTE AJELUOROU at his Idumuje-Ugboko hometown, Delta State, where he has since relocated after his heydays practising and teaching in Ibadan

So, artists never really retire like you said, do they?
No, nobody employs anybody to be an artist. They are creative people, and they will continue creating until they die. It depends on their physical ability. One is not too young; all of us are above 80. I just turned 80. Wole Soyinka is above 80, but he still working. Bruce Onobrakpeya is above 80, but he is still working in his studio. Lagos is his village and he participates in everything; I can’t do that. I come from time to time when it’s vital for me to come. For us who don’t live there, Lagos is not our village. For me, I live here with nature, quiet; it’s a very comfortable life; very comfortable because you’re not under pressure by anybody. But in the city, you’re seeing what everybody is doing and you try to compete. I’m only competing with the trees and animals around. So, it’s a very conducive atmosphere for me to work.

This is my office. I haven’t finished it; that’s why it’s like this. But again, I’m not under pressure to put carpet or other furnishing. I also don’t see other people’s offices to outdo myself. If I want to do it, I can do it, but I’m not in a hurry. So, that is why it is a relaxed environment.

And you’re still in touch with Ibadan and Lagos, yes?
Of course, all the jobs I do are for people in Lagos, mostly. That is where my works are needed. I do locally here, too, but mostly for people in Lagos. For example, I have just finished doors to replace the ones at Christ Church, Marina, Lagos. The doors have just been sent there, and we’re trying to install them. My son, who lives in Ibadan, is handling that. But one of them, the central one, the sculptural one, is still here. But others have been sent.

So, the sculptural one, who is working on it?
I did it, of course, with the help of my workers!
Well, of course, you’re not retired. So that accounts for it?
Yes. Though, I have problems with my eyes, but my hands are still strong.

Although bare, your office also reflects your architectural philosophy of African airiness in building living spaces. How much of that philosophy has permeated society and been adopted in today’s building designs? Do you feel disappointed?
Well, that is not for me to say o! You know, the work is done. Really, the artist or architect does not work for other artists or architects. We work for the people; we are commissioned. If we do and it’s serving the people well and that includes other architects and those who own it, I suppose if this is good and effective, if it functions very well, I expect it will influence other architects. It should naturally because everybody likes good things. If they are aspiring to be serviceable to their clients, the work that already has served clients and been recognised worldwide will be recommended.

From what we know, missionaries particularly adopted your work, but the government of the day did not. I want to imagine that a building like the National Theatre, which is totally unsuitable for our climate, has its design taken from faraway Bulgaria during your heydays as an indigenous architect. How could that have happened?

Nwoko’s Ibadan mini granite amphi-theatre soon to be roofed

Oh, I fought for it! And I was supported even in the press. It’s still in the archives. I was stoutly supported; we confronted the minister, but that might also be the reason why other local architects haven’t done much for government apart from schools and hospitals, which are really not architectural pieces. Who is the local architect to give jobs to? Anyway, when they want to do big architectural structures, they go for the expatriates. You find that expatriates do most skyscrapers in Lagos and Abuja. But some Nigerians have done a lot for the churches because that is a lot more specialised. Maybe, that was why I could do many church works, but also expatriates ran those churches.

Yet the churches didn’t go for their own people who were the expatriates government officials run to, but chose to work with local architects like you. That was ironic, wasn’t it?
From where they come, they do not discriminate; they have something they are looking for, and when they see somebody who might give it to them, they go to the man. Also, while interacting with them, you deepen them to the angle, cultural angle, which the expatriate architects might never think about. Our designs veered towards cultural aesthetics; then it would be difficult for them to ignore you.

For instance, the politician who might sing by word of mouth, ‘our culture, our culture’ when it comes to doing, something gives and many variables come in. so, you do not blame them too much. Maybe the project is so grand that they want outside loan, and the outsider will bring their own men. Many things come in, but if it is simple, cultural thing for ordinary people, that was why churches were fertile ground for creative architects to work in. But it’s not easy; that is why, though I have created a number of designs, you would have thought I would be inundated, but it doesn’t work out like that.

But this was back in the 1960s/70s with independence still fresh and the ecclesiastical or missions recognising the need for local, cultural aesthetics only local architects could give the churches, yet our government didn’t see the need to look inwards…

It’s a combination of the good and the bad; that shows that our politics is not mature, our leadership is not moving in the right direction that will benefit us. Remember that we were being bombarded from all over the world with acculturation. The outsiders know that they protect their own culture so you don’t come and soil it for them, but they can buy your own and enjoy it. On the other hand, we went out of our way copying and copying. I have written about this; that is not where progress lies. Progress is not in copying other cultures – be it technology; because the people, to achieve their own expected ends, are using technology. Really, technology from the west is meant for those who produce it and we buy; it doesn’t serve us. That is why we are littered with infrastructure that it is not working. They didn’t germinate from here; they are not grounded here.

That is why people like me have been using my work to show that everything should be based on our culture – education, name it, should be based on our culture for it to serve us. It’s a tall order because I have spent 60 years promoting this, but it has not been easy. I will give you an example; I make doors but suddenly Chinese doors flood everywhere. That means our own economic development has been stopped in door building. There were people who were building doors in Lagos and everywhere who have all closed down because Americans and Chinese flood everywhere with doors and our people buy those ones. Even when you try to convince them that they are not as good as mine, they tell you they are in vogue. So, our problem is completely complicated.

Let’s go back to the National Theatre. If you had been allowed to design it, what would you have proposed?
Remember that I’m a theatre person beyond being an architect. I was the first Nigerian staff in the School of Drama, University College, Ibadan. So, I could say that I founded the School of Drama; the others were expatriates. So, I knew that a theatre of that size –5,000 audiences – doesn’t exist anywhere. You can’t have an audience of 5,000; it becomes a sports. In fact, that building is a sports hall imported from Bulgaria. So, apart from the main bowl being 5,000, they started adding the cinema halls; it was not properly designed for those activities. They were just attached. What I proposed was that for FESTAC, we should build at least five theatres or venues in Lagos. Apapa, Isolo, Yaba, Victoria Island, etc, with each venue having the capacity of 1,000 – 1,500 persons, and everybody didn’t have to go to one. After FESTAC, there will be theatres at every neighbourhood. So everybody gets entertained after work in his or her neighbourhoods. It would have been more viable and that way, FESTAC activities would have spread. I gave the logic and all that, but it became a political decision. But again, it was the military at that time, but the minister was the be-all and end-all; he was a person I knew; someone I had worked with before many times.

But that is what happens in government projects; there are many things to consider – in allocating things, even in employing people; they could say it’s by quota, by this, by that. There are many reasons, but all manner of reasons except but for that which the thing is set up for.

In other words, you saw the theatre disaster long before it even went up as a building…
Well, I was the only local designer who even competed. For them in architecture, I’m like a quack; the other local architects didn’t come out to compete because they were all civil servants. In physical structures, it’s not a question of semantics. If it’s right, it will work. So, it lies there; nobody can use it or is it being used? Remember, we were not looking for a sports hall. Maybe, the minister was thinking of a political convention hall for political meetings like in America. Maybe, that was what he was looking for. But they called it National Theatre; maybe he had National Political Theatre in mind. But no politician has used it ever since for such rallies or convention. They use outdoor venues even in Lagos.

Interior of Nwoko’s country home in Delta State showing his architectural genius – a funnel channels sunlight and rainwater in the parlour unto a lone potted flower; thus illuminating the parlour deep into the evening

Capital city moved from Lagos to Abuja over 30 years ago, yet they have not been able to build a theatre there. Could you hazard a guess for it?
Oh yes, because the one they built in Lagos is not working. Anyway, the other matter is that when you say culture, everybody thinks it’s the National Theatre that is culture. Yes, there’s an art culture, but there is also culture culture; which is political, and then our education system informs on both. But that has not been resolved. I intend to do a book on it, but I don’t know if I will ever be able to get up to it. So really, we created Ministry of Culture by our own recommendations, but since it was formed, it has never functioned really. Then they started attaching information to it because they don’t know what to do with culture; they don’t know. Even the art culture cannot develop if we don’t have museum culture. We don’t have museum culture. It’s the small buildings that the colonial people gave us in Lagos that is being used. They have land for museum in Abuja, but it has been shared out for development for other uses. They haven’t seen the need; we are not clear in our head what really is culture? If you’re not clear in your head, how can you use something? If you pick up something that you don’t understand will you use it? You wouldn’t.

I don’t know, we took off but we eventually hit the wrong direction and we’re ending up in the wilderness. That’s where we are now in Nigeria, in the wilderness, like the Israelites.

If you were to give a blueprint to rescue Nigeria from the wilderness, what would you propose?
I have tried all my life proposing how things should be done. But I have decided that the only thing is to keep producing works. Because those works are really greater than us because they will outlive us. And you might be surprised, in 50 years’ time, Nigerians will be asking questions. If they don’t see models that they can focus on then it would be more difficult. I visited my studio in Ibadan recently; I have an uncompleted amphi-theatre. So you see, it’s not like it’s all failure. When I failed to get the National Theatre in Lagos, I asked Ogbemudia, then Military Governor of Midwest State to please allow me build a model African theatre. So, I was building one in Benin City, the Oba Akenzua Cultural Centre at the GRA virtually at the same time they were building the Lagos National Theatre. Meaning that not everybody closed his or her ears to what I was saying.

Ogbemudia, being a very progressive person allowed me to start building one in Benin City. And because that was my field of specialty that I studied in Paris, I had to create a land from my studio and carved out a mini model of that theatre in Ibadan on the hill. So, it has been used all these years like an open-air theatre like the Greek open-air theatre. I hope that I will now roof it. Not that they threw me away; as long as somebody listened and allowed me to do it, fine. Now that one in Benin City is there; the one in Ibadan is there and the National Theatre in Lagos is there. If you have been to these three theatres, study them and then you would have seen what I would have done if I had been allowed to do the Lagos National Theatre.

The Benin theatre was bigger, but it was cut down because of funds. I said it was alright because it is a provincial theatre; it doesn’t have to seat more than 500 – 700 people. So, I have done a model; in future, if architects and artists want to build more in Lagos, they can go to the one in Benin City or the small model I did in Ibadan; they have models to follow. I’m looking for funds to roof the one in Ibadan. I went there recently and took measurements so I can design of the roof. As it is we’ve been using it. The play I performed at FESTAC Children of Paradise was rehearsed and performed there.

Oba Akenzua Cultural Centre, GRA Benin City – Nwoko designed the centre as a properly suited theatre for African climate after loosing his bid to design multi venues for FESTAC ’77 instead of just one – National Theatre, Lagos

My son told me schools take their pupils and students to do excursions to my theatre in Ibadan and they take them round. Then they ask them what they thought about it. Some will say ‘nice,’ others will say ‘beautiful.’ One of them said ‘everything is equal!’ Do you understand that? It’s the highest appreciation of the physical structure. So if a child of today could say that it means that structure won’t go down. I built it with granite stone; it will be there for a long time. A third generation will see it as correct, as the child just said. There again, the answer lies in the production of works that can endure, last so that other generation other than the present one that has been swallowed up by western thrash – western thrash can see them. There is hope that their own children and children’s children will see them.

But you must feel a ting of regret that your generation of trailblazers pulled your country in a direction it should go, but the country pulled in another, and ended up where we are today. Don’t you?
No, no, no; that is what I’m saying. Our recognition is because we have put something down, not because of us as human beings. You know peer group or age grade, as it is called in the local language? In my language we call it ogbor, ndibe ogbor. They say that ogbor na uke we; meaning, wherever there is ogbor, there is uke or malevolence, like esu or Satan. They say that wherever you talk about ogbor, there is uke. In other words, no peer group sees any good in the other peer group. That is why, even the greatest artists in Europe were recognised years after they were gone, but they performed very well at their own time. But now their audience is much larger after hundreds of years and the audience continues to grow for hundreds of years. While they were alive working, the audience was small because the people you expect will understand them, so that if my age group is, say a Minister of Culture and you expect him to invite me, knowing what I have done, to build the National Theatre, he will never do that. That is natural; that is human because your peer group thinks that you are in competition. That is

what our people believe, and it might be true.
So, it will take another generation or even generations before they begin to realise what their travails are and begin to look again at what the Soyinkas, Achebes, Onobrakpeyas, Clarks, Nwokos have done and draw inspiration and models from their works and apply the values in them to rebuilding their society. Maybe that generation will now become ministers.