visual arts in an artistically uninformed nigerian society

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refused to contravene and vilify their regally conviction in
art as their future career. Instead of dumping art or being
weakened by very defective societal hypothesis, they were
determined to fight, very frontally, with intelligence,
wisdom, creativity, language power, self confidence or
strong will. What followed was a convocation of ideas
mostly by few Igbo art students who were not ready to
surrender their artistic pride to caustic and vile feelings of
their artistically uniformed and misinformed
environment. 40
These students were Uche Okeke, the embodiment
of the impending revolution, Simon Okeke, Demas Nwoko,
Emmanuel Odita, O. Nwagbara, Oseloka Osadebe, Felix
Ekeada, Yusuf Grillo and Bruce Onobrakpeya. Apart from
revolting ideologically, against the parasitic and non-
African nature of their art curriculum, they set in motion
the agenda for total art rehabilitation in their college. Many
of these students had already acquired such academic pride,
through their excellent Cambridge School Certificate
Examination results, that emboldened them to raise their
heads high on the campus; particularly also knowing that
many of their secondary school classmates whose results
were not as good as theirs were in the departments of
Architecture, Engineering and English, for example. 51 The
non-departmental Zaria Art Society which the students
formed in 1958 became a revolutionary commune that gave
the students the opportunity to showcase their creative,
academic, intellectual and ideological exuberance.
Combining various creative events with many
literary activities on the campus, these art students,
especially Uche Okeke, Demas Nwoko, Brnce
Onobrakpeya and Yusuf Grillo, quickly made themselves