For over thirty years, Ademola Bamgbelu has captured the soul of Nigerian football through his camera lens. His new exhibition, Face of Football, turns the spotlight on the people behind the game — the players, fans, and emotions that define the sport. Each photograph tells a story of joy, struggle, and passion, reminding us that football is more than competition but culture, memory, and identity.

ARTROAD – Exhibition | The Face of Football: Through the Lens of Bamigbelu Ademola Origa

By Ireho Aito | iBAND Magazine, Ibadan

Don’t Keep Your Art in the Finger!

For over three decades, Bamigbelu Ademola Origa has stood at the touchlines of Nigerian football grounds, camera in hand, immortalising the beauty, passion, and pain that define the nation’s most beloved sport. A seasoned photographer and journalist, Origa has covered the Nigerian Premier Football League with a rare eye for emotion capturing not just the game but the faces that tell its deeper stories

Now, in a new exhibition titled “The Face of Football,” Origa invites the public to experience football as more than a game as a human story. The event, which holds on November 4, 2025, at Alliance Française, Iyaganku, Ibadan, promises a rich mix of discussion, exhibition, and workshop sessions, free to the public.

“The story of every football fan is written on their face,” Origa says. “It’s joy, disappointment, hope, and unity all in one frame.”

This exhibition continues the photographer’s long-standing documentation of football’s visual language. His earlier showcase, “Metaphysics in Football,” explored the mysterious intersections of African spirituality and the sport, revealing a world where passion, superstition, and belief meet on the field.

In The Face of Football, however, Origa turns his lens to the expressions that define the beautiful game the roar of a victorious crowd, the despair of a missed penalty, the concentration of a coach, and the quiet prayer of a goalkeeper.

The opening ceremony will feature conversations with notable figures in Nigerian sports and media, including Mutiu Adepoju (former Super Eagles player), Tunde Olawunwo (General Manager, Splash FM 105.5), Tobi Samuel Adepoju (3SC Sporting Director), and Idris Animasaun (Creative Director, 3SCFANTV).

Beyond the frames, the event celebrates the shared heartbeat of fans, players, and storytellers who make football Nigeria’s truest mirror.

Words/Ireho Aito/Don’t Keep Your Art in the Finger!/Photographs courtesy Ademola Bamigbelu Library