The Magic of Art in a ‘Homecoming’

Through an art exhibition, held concurrently with a display of Nigerian gastronomical delights in its headquarters in Abuja, the Foreign Affairs Ministry proclaims the current administration’s foreign policy doctrine. Okechukwu Uwaezuoke reports 

Surely, there is no denying the fact that the brand of diplomacy known as “soft power” still sells! And that should explain how, of all places, the atrium of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Abuja’s Central Business District was turned into an unexpected venue for an art exhibition, whose opening, on Monday, December 11, evening, was graced by top members of the diplomatic community, high-ranking government officials, and a select group of the federal capital city’s art community members.

Homecoming, as this exhibition is titled, runs until March of next year and is aimed at rendering the tenets of the present administration’s foreign policy intelligible to the average Nigerian. More precisely, it was conceived to project President Tinubu’s so-called 4 Ds foreign policy tenets, which centre on diaspora, democracy, development, and demography. “Additionally, we welcome you, our diplomatic friends, to see this land as your home, just as it is to us,” Nduwhite Ndubuisi Ahanonu clarifies in his curatorial statement. “It is everything to us; it is here that our cultural identity has been carefully defined, nurtured, and shared.”

It all started at a policy retreat for the leadership of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs held from October 5 to 7, which had in attendance former ambassadors, retired permanent secretaries, the heads of the ministry’s agencies, as well as everyone considered relevant. The current Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Yusuf M. Tuggar, signalled shortly after taking office that his first goal was to align the ministry with the president’s agenda. This convergence was realised during a policy “It’s one thing for the president to have his aspiration; it’s another thing for the ministry to adopt it,” the Senior Special Adviser to the Minister on Strategy Investment and Partnership, Simi Fajemirokun, explains.

The high-wattage idea, which rooted for the introduction of art during the policy retreat’s downtime instead of providing the attendees with their customary gastronomic treats before they headed back to their hotel rooms, was, for some reason, enthusiastically embraced by all. So, in the spirit of team-bonding, these top officials—who had never wielded paintbrushes before—donned aprons and expressed their own artistic interpretations of the workshop’s reviews on the provided canvases.

When the idea of holding an exhibition of the efforts of these uninitiated, emergency artists came up as the next logical sequel, they all vehemently objected to it. Eventually, the idea became more acceptable with a little tweaking after it metamorphosed into the organisation of a bigger exhibition featuring works by professional artists, which would be chosen at the whim of a curator to further promote the 4 D’s doctrine and, thus, supplement their modest creative efforts.

At long last, it appears that culture is starting to make inroads into official priority bucket lists with this visual arts show and another that highlights Nigerian cuisine in a ground-floor hall next door. Hence, even as he remains mindful of his curatorial brief, which is to project President Tinubu’s 4 D’s doctrine, Ahanonu still reminds the viewers: “This exhibition also seeks to introduce Nigeria’s rich, flamboyant traditions and culture to you.”

Talking about the exhibition’s title, it is an unintended allusion to Ambassador Tuggar’s return to head a ministry, which he was answerable to while he served as Nigeria’s ambassador to Germany. Interestingly, it was barely a year ago that he initiated the repatriation of lost Benin artefacts from the German government, leading to the return of 22 Benin Bronze looted artefacts valued at over 100 million pounds. The Bauchi State-born politician completed his term as Nigeria’s ambassador to Germany on Monday, August 21, when he was sworn in as the Minister of Foreign Affairs. In a dramatic proclamation of this title, Ahanonu strategically positions an installation by Helen Nzete, titled “The Announcement,” which features a performance part, to proclaim a homecoming to the rainbow audience. “We hope to celebrate our shared humanity, to share our locally selected dishes, and to go beyond visual perception to bring delight to the sense of taste and music,” he waxes.

Central—or, more clearly expressed, pivotal—to the crystallisation of Ahanonu’s curatorial whims is the transformation of the previously bare atrium into a smart exhibition space that is transportable and customisable to the user’s needs by the architect Jesse Yakubu and his team at the instance of Ms. Fajemirokun. “Everything [in the newly designed space] can be moved, and we can tear it down anytime and assemble it elsewhere,” the architect Yakubu explains.

Hosting this exhibition at this space, according to Ms. Fajemirokun, meanwhile, also provides step-down training for all other ministry staff members, the majority of whom were unable to attend the exclusive policy review retreat. This saves the ministry the stress of going door to door to disseminate the results of the three-day October retreat.

Yet, this cultural treat doesn’t exactly imply a purloin of an exclusive preserve of the Culture Ministry, which apparently has expressed its interest in the endeavour through its minister, who was present at the Monday evening event. Culture, Ms. Fajemirokun argues, is as much the Foreign Affairs Ministry’s jurisdiction as the Culture Ministry’s. “We are supposed to take Nigeria to the world, and how do we do that without its culture?”

So, the exhibition featuring the works of 15 cross-generational artists—namely, Bruce Onobrakpeya, Chuu Krydz Ikwuemesi, Victor Ehikhamenor, Tola Wewe, John Oyedemi, Chike Obeagu, Uchay Joel Chima, Jacqueline Suowari, Abdulfattah Adeyemi, Ifesinachi Comedy Nwanyanwu, Helen Nzete, Wanger Ayu, Shariff Bakare, Ejiro Fenegal, and Sauda Abba—alongside the paintings by the retreat’s attendees, could be seen as the government’s effort at leveraging soft power. “We’d be underutilising the assets that we have if we didn’t do this,” Ms. Fajemirokun says. “Soft power goes around the world several times before hard diplomacy begins to put its act together.”