AKINTOLA, ADETAYO TO HEADLINE SECOND EDITION OF BUSARI
AGBOLADE MEMORIAL LECTURE
Ibadan Book Club (IBC) in conjunction
with AZA Artists and Writers Movement have set aside 30th day of July, 2022 to
host two Ibadan based Artist and Writer, Mr. Kola Akintola and Mr. Gbenga Adetayo in Ibadan, the capital
of Oyo State.
A statement issued by both the
Coordinator and Secretary of the club, Ayobami Odunyemi and Ayoade Hassanat
said the event would take place at the Oyo State Library Board, Opposite Cocoa
House, Ibadan by 11AM.
The July book reading also coincides
with the club’s annual Busari Agbolade Memorial Lecture (second edition).
The Memorial Lecture will be
delivered by Mr. Kola Akintola on the topic: “The Importance of Drawing and
Painting in Writing”. Also Mr. Gbenga Adetayo will deliver a short talk on
“Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: Making a Success of the Business
of Life”.
MEET
OUR GUEST SPEAKERS
KOLA
AKINTOLA
Kola Akintola is an artist of rare
ingenuity, his perspective is as wide as his gaze on each of his works is
intense. He possesses an especial capacity to make art works from common and
unlikely things.
His works serve as an experiment to
understand the delicate intersection between 'art and life', 'art and anatomy',
'form and media'.
He believes that this interesting
conceptualization of form and media arose from his attempt to blend his initial
training in Human Kinetics dealing with real forms with his subsequent training
as an artist dealing with "imaging". This is 'imaging' not as in
photography but as in the faucouldian frame of things, in nature and in life
things exist in themselves at particular times and in particular spaces as
regimes of truth. Almost as isolates.
Kola's latest path-breaking skill is
found in his new form / style which he called "Vein Painting". This
is an inventive and brilliant use of organic materials laid on a background
which throws it out in relief such that lines of fibre are used to give
imaginative meaning to form.
It is a stylistic as well as
technical improvement on his use of organic fibre.
Kola Akintola's art works have
become academic studies in some universities in Nigeria and Colorado university
in the United States of America.
He has had several art workshops and
exhibitions around the world, and represented Nigeria at some international art
discusses in the West Coasts of Africa.
He runs an art studio cum art
gallery and he is the Proprietor of "Institute Of Art Technology here in
Ibadan, as an outlet to training the younger ones in proper artistic
acquisition.
He is always poised to saying
"Everybody is an artist, but not every artist can become a great one, but
a great one can come from anywhere"
GBENGA
ADETAYO
Gbenga Adetayo is a visionary, a
thinker and an investor. He is also the founder and CEO of MindScape Media Co. Ltd.,
who are the publishers of an online business and investment magazine called
Terraculum magazine. The firm is based in Ibadan. Adetayo is deeply passionate
about capitalism, but not the zero-sum game variety that is predicated on the
wealth of the few having to derive from the toil of the many. He is married to
a Senegalese woman and together they have two boys. Mr. Gbenga Adetayo also has
a stepson.
Gbenga Adetayo was born on August 31,
1967 to the family of Mr. Joseph Adebayo Adetayo and Mrs. Florence
Oluwadamilare Adetayo. His father is a descendant of the Owa Ajimoko ruling
house of Ilesa, while his mother hails from Okitipupa. Gbenga’s father worked
with the defunct Tate & Lyle Nigeria Plc. for 18 years where he rose to the
position of Labour Manager before he was retrenched in 1983.
From a very early age, Gbenga
Adetayo had the dream of starting a company and building it to become a
multi-national, multi-divisional behemoth and that really gave a driving
impetus to his outlook on life. What that did was to give his mind a sense of a
higher purpose in life; giving it focus and considering life as a journey one
has to undertake with all seriousness and with the mindset of accomplishing
great things in the time one has to spend on earth. In the course of his
educational career, he came under certain influences and cues that acted as
guideposts to lead him in the direction of his dreams. For example, he started
reading The Economist avidly from the age of twelve. He had also read all the
story books in the school library by the time he got to class two in secondary
school.
On his education, Gbenga Adetayo was
educated at the Cherubim & Seraphim College, Ilorin and the University of Ilorin,
where he majored in geology with a minor in physics. Beyond the honours degree
which the university awarded him in 1985, he received a well-rounded education
from the experience since he deliberately set out to open his mind widely to
assimilate and internalize knowledge in their different branches as obtainable
in the university. In the course of his development, he gravitated towards
becoming more of a thinker than a doer, which dampened down the propensity to
venality in his character.
Gbenga Adetayo minded to use the
agency of that intellect to advance the cause of humanity by lifting people up
everywhere: while in the pursuit of his personal interests, to also advance the
interests of the wider society and that of all of humanity. For him, that
really is the mark of a true capitalist. He is also minded to spread the
message of the universality of certain human values; to exalt all of humanity;
to treat people as people irrespective of any artificial barriers of the mind
that human beings have crafted out of the unconscious ignorance of their minds
to divide people and to put the vast majority of humanity down. This is the age
of thinking the unthinkable and for him it is time to think differently about
how we have managed our economic lives as a species.
Adetayo is completely apolitical,
lacking in political skills. He has the ability for deep contemplation. His
observation, reflection and engagement with the world of business, with
markets, economies, the political sphere and the evolution of the human
condition everywhere in the world over more than 50 years have given him a
unique perspective on how capitalism should be evolving to better serve the
material and spiritual interests of a greater percentage of humankind as time
progresses.
Gbenga Adetayo started his working
life at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Ibadan, in 1988,
as a Research Assistant in the Agroclimatology Department. He resigned in 1993
to start a business of his own as an IT Consultant. This he did until 1999 when
he joined the service of the Nigerian Subsidiary of Saipem, the Italian oil and
gas Contractor as a Senior Procurement Officer. He worked there until 2015 by
which time he had risen to the position of Deputy Procurement Manager. His
disengagement from Saipem was through a redundancy due to the decline in the
market price of crude oil which gave rise to reduced workload in the company.
Gbenga Adetayo set up a pig farm
immediately after leaving Saipem, as a prelude to what he imagined would grow
to become a food company in line with his dream, but things did not work out as
he had planned as his African compatriots, starting with his immediate younger
brother worked hard at siphoning all the money he invested in the business.
But he remains undaunted as his
journey into capitalism is a lifelong one, the journey being the destination.
He has big dreams to contribute towards the bringing to life of a more benign,
inclusive and more intelligent mode of capitalism that will evolve from the
Western-conceived extreme short-term, zero-sum game mode. He understands
capitalism deeply, starting from first principles.
PROFILE
OF LATE BUSARI OLANIYI AGBOLADE
Busari Olaniyi Agbolade, a
professional painter, steel fabricator was born on 13th July, 1948. He attended
A.U.D Primary School, Ila Orangun from 1955-1960, L.A Secondary School, Ila
Orangun from 1961-1963. He later enrolled as an apprentice under Adegoke Metal
Construction Company from 1965 to 1967.
Busari Olaniyi Agbolade worked with
the Niger West Construction Company, Niger Dam Authority and Uren Construction
Engineering Company between 1969 and 1975. In 1976, he studied Aluminium and
Copper Artistic Panel Beating under the tutelage of Yekini Agboola, an
apprentice to Chief Ashiru Olatunde of Osogbo School.
He later joined the Abayomi Barber
School of Thought of the University of Lagos to study painting in 1980. Elder
Busari worked with the University of Lagos from 1980 and resigned his
appointment in 1993 to become a full time artist.
Elder Busari Olaniyi Agbolade has
participated in several exhibitions such as Barber School Exhibition sponsored
by N.C.A.C in 1984, Benue State Art Exhibition – 1985, Lagos State Art Council
– 1986, “ Man in Focus” exhibition by Federal Department of Culture – 1086,
Exhibition of Paintings and Batiks by three Nigerian Artists in Dakar – Senegal
1987. Exhibition of Paintings, Batiks, Carvings and Ceramics by Six Nigerian
Artists with 843 Studio Gallery, East New York, U.S.A from October-December
1988 Lagos State Chapter of S.N.A. Annual exhibition from 1991-2009.
Some of Elder Busari Olaniyi
Agbolade’s commissioned works are:- Portraits of HRH Aholu Menu Toyi, Akran of
Badagry, Orangun of Ila, Oba William Adetona Ayeni and other prominent Nigerians
both home and abroad. Painting of “Mother and Child” commissioned by 843 Studio
Gallery, New York, U.S.A.
Some of his works (paintings) can be
viewed at
https://artsfocus.wordpress.com/2014/08/14/electronic-exhibition-of-mr-busari-olaniyi-agbolades-painting-works/. Before his death, Elder Busari Olaniyi Agbolade was the
Chairman of AZA Artists and Writers Movement.
.jpg)
