Mentoring the Youths Will Secure their Future, Says Onabrakpeya

Mary Nnah

A celebrated Nigerian painter, printmaker, sculptor, Bruce Onabrakpeya has advised the Nigerian society to mentor the passion of the youths in order to secure their future.

Onabrakpeya made this assertion during an inaugural public art exhibition tagged: La Vie (Life) at Didi Museum, Lagos.

The exhibition had 26 creative paintings displayed by a 17-year-old girl, Ayomide Fadase, who is passionate about creativity and interested in charity.

Onabrakpeya urged government to recognise talents in the art who may not have funds to develop their talents by sponsoring and providing them the platform to showcase their talents.

“Government should award them scholarship, where expense for the workshop and institutions should be initiated for them to actualise their goal in life. Government needs to make it possible for talents like Ayo to learn, and harness their potentials”, he noted.

Onabrakpeya lauded the parents of the teenager for encouraging her to pursue her passion and talents, adding that the school the child attends equally should be commended for mentoring her.

“Kids with talents should be encouraged. Our government needs to do more by investing on the youths.

That is the only way the future of the youths can be secured.”

The initiator of the event, Ayo Fadase, said she wanted to do something for the physically challenged, so she met a woman in her church, who was taking care of kids with cerebral palsy, and she was passionate about it.

“I felt I need to create awareness after discovering that the set of people are really not given attention. The society view them as a burden, coupled with the fact that their condition is more demanding, most people in the society are not aware of this set of kids, so I am creating awareness and donating proceeds from the exhibition to kids with cerebral palsy.

Fadase said studying Fine Art in school as a subject was just an academic training for her, she never knew she had the talents. While at school in Nigeria she was given rudiments, like the positioning of her pencil.

She added, that when she moved abroad to continue her education, another chapter on art was opened and she discovered that there was a lot more to art and she started developing herself.

At 17 year old, she was able to harness her art potential and organised the first exhibition where she painted 26 creative paintings to depict real life situation.
Fadase spent 336 hours to get the paints done for the exhibition.