This is another edition of Don’t Keep Your Art in the Finger! and this week, I return to the work of veteran sculptor and artist Nse Abasi Inyang, whose linoleum engraving original, “Ojuelegba Before Now,” is receiving attention as part of his just concluded exhibition, “Climbing Dreams,” at the Metropolitan Club, Victoria Island, Lagos.

Words Ireho Aito | Don’t Keep Your Art in the Finger! Artwork credit Nse Abasi Inyang

Some artworks have a strange way of unlocking forgotten chapters of our lives by opening a door to a place, a time and an experience buried somewhere in memory. Nse Abasi Inyang’s “Ojuelegba Before Now” did that for me.

The moment I encountered the work, I travelled back to 1993 to my first experience of Ojuelegba, a place that would remain one of my earliest and strongest impressions of Lagos.

At that time, I was living with my mother. She was running her textile business, and she sent me on an assignment to Bodija Market at Ibadan when my aunt and her son drove by to say hello to my beloved widowed mother.

Part of my responsibilities was to go around her textile debtors, collect money owed to her and also use the opportunity to buy groceries for the house.

It sounded like an ordinary family responsibility. I later joined my aunt and her son in their 504 Peugeot car for a drive down to Bodija. They lived at Agbowo at that time. But life has a way of changing the direction of ordinary days.

They later dropped me off at Bodija Market so I could carry out the assignment. Somehow, that journey took an unexpected turn, and instead of returning as planned, I found myself on my way to Lagos. I actually found my way to Challenge motor park where I boarded a bus to Yaba for N15 only. You read it right, just 15Naira only.

By the time I arrived, it was late in the night. Then I met Ojuelegba. I had never experienced anything like it before.

Coming from Ibadan, even with the familiar energy of Mokola, Ojuelegba was a different kind of world. It was a place where everything seemed to happen at once. The colours of the lights. The movement of people. The voices coming from different directions. The vehicles fighting for space. The constant sound of horns. The arguments. The hurried negotiations. The street drama unfolding without a script.

It was chaos, and a disorganised chaos at that. Everybody seemed to have somewhere to go. Everybody seemed to be chasing something.

I remember the confusion, the intensity and the feeling that Lagos was a city that never paused for anyone. The red-light areas, the commercial activities, the endless movement, everything introduced me to the reality of a city built on ambition and survival.

I still had over 100 naira left after paying my transport fare of only 15 naira. Yes, my first journey to Lagos was 15 naira, and that was from the motor park, not the roadside transportation culture that later became commonly known as ‘Soole.’

Do me a favour please don’t ask where I slept in Ojuelegba. All I remember is paying ₦50 for a dingy hotel room for the night. The noise outside was so relentless it could have deafened anyone. I never slept. Instead, I lay awake, filled with pride about my Lagos ambition and the dreams that had brought me there.
Those dreams lasted barely two days.
I ran out of cash. Back in Ibadan, my mother, siblings, friends, church members and even the police had begun searching for me. My grand Lagos adventure started and ended almost as quickly, beneath the bridge at Ojuelegba. With no money left, I abandoned my plans and began making my way to my sister’s home in Mushin, hoping to find a place of refuge.
Years later, that brief encounter with Ojuelegba returned to me in an unexpected way and not through memory alone, but through art. Going through Nse Abasi Inyang’s engraving in his catalogue, I realised that the place I had once experienced through anxiety, exhaustion and youthful ambition could also be understood as a landscape of countless human journeys. My personal story became only one thread in a much larger narrative woven into the life of the suburb.

The artist captures the suburb as a living organism. The engraving does not only record buildings and roads; it records energy and movement. It records the human activity that has made Ojuelegba one of Lagos’ most recognisable identities.

Ojuelegba is a meeting point of journeys. It connects the Mainland and the Island. It is a major transport corridor where thousands of Nigerians begin and continue their movements across the country and beyond. It is also a place where strangers meet briefly and continue their separate stories.

Perhaps that is why Ojuelegba has remained such a powerful cultural symbol.

The legendary Afrobeat pioneer Fela Anikulapo Kuti recognised the importance of the place, in his song 1975 “Confusion” album while contemporary musician Dayo Balogun known as Wizkid later transformed Ojuelegba into a global cultural reference through his music, reflecting on memories, struggle and the experiences that shaped his journey.

Nse Abasi Inyang’s work enters this long conversation.

“Before Now” becomes a reflection on time. It asks us to consider what changes and what remains. The buildings may evolve. The roads may become different. The city may wear a new appearance. But the spirit of Ojuelegba remains which is the hunger, the hustle, the dreams and the endless movement.

This is where the true strength of the artwork lies. Ojuelegba is not merely an image of a place but an archive of human experience, preserving memory, migration, hope, struggle, and survival within a single frame. It reminds us that places are not defined by buildings or streets alone, but by the lives that pass through them and the stories they leave behind.
Through “Climbing Dreams,” Nse Abasi Inyang continues to remind us that artists are not only creators of objects; they are keepers of memories. They preserve moments that may disappear from everyday life but remain important to our understanding of who we are.

Ojuelegba was my unexpected introduction to Lagos.

Years later, through Nse Abasi Inyang’s hands, I encounter it again not as a confused young traveller arriving in the night, but as a memory preserved through art.

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