IBADAN BOOK CLUB HOLDS SECOND EDITION OF BUSARI AGBOLADE MEMORIAL LECTURE ON SATURDAY, JULY 30

Ibadan Book Club in conjunction with AZA Artists and Writers Movement will hold their joint annual Busari Agbolade Memorial Lecture (second edition) in honour of one of its past Patrons and the former Chairman of the Movement, Busari Olaniyi Agbolade who passed away on the 9th of June, 2020 at the age of 72 years.


The lecture will be held on Saturday, July 30, 2022.


This was contained in a statement jointly issued by Ayobami Odunayo and Gboye Abidoye, Coordinators of Ibadan Book Club and AZA Artists and Writers Movement respectively in Ibadan on Thursday.


The lecture which will hold at the Main Hall of the Oyo State Library Board by 11:00AM.


The Memorial Lecture will be delivered by Mr. Kola Akintola on the topic: “The Importance of Drawing and Painting in Writing”. Also Mr. Genga 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.