There is something about Ibadan that makes everyday life feel like a story waiting to be remembered. Perhaps it is the city’s layered history, its old neighbourhoods, its busy streets, its writers and intellectuals, or the generations of people who have passed through it leaving behind fragments of lives, ideas and memories. For Nseabasi Akpan, a photographer whose own journey began in Ibadan, the city is more than a location for Everyday Life 2026. It is part of the story.
Curated by Nseabasi Akpan, and sponsored by African Culture Fund, the ongoing photography exhibition at the National Museum of Unity brings together photographers from Nigeria, Africa and beyond to look closely at the people, places and fleeting experiences that make up ordinary existence. In doing so, Everyday Life enters a city with a long relationship with storytelling, documentation and intellectual exchange.
As the exhibition continues in National Museum of Unity Ibadan, here are five talking points worth considering.
Words Ireho Aito | Don’t Keep Your Art in the Finger! Photographs credit : Caleb Ishaya Oseshi and Victor Oluwayoju
Ibadan, Surely A City Where Everyday Life Carries History
Ibadan is more than the backdrop for the exhibition. From its emergence as a major Yoruba city to its long-standing reputation as a centre of scholarship, publishing, journalism, literature and intellectual life, the city has always been a place where stories are produced and preserved. Everyday Life 2026 extends that tradition through photography, looking at how ordinary people, streets, landscapes and moments become part of the historical record.
The Ordinary as a Subject Worth Preserving
The exhibition challenges the idea that photography must always pursue the spectacular. A marketplace, a family gathering, a worker returning home, a street corner or a passing expression can hold cultural meaning. The photographers invite us to slow down and recognise the value in moments that are usually passed over.
Photography as Memory, Not Just Documentation
These photographs do more than show us what life looks like. They preserve moments, identities, environments and experiences that may otherwise disappear. In a city like Ibadan, where generations of intellectual, cultural and social history have unfolded, photography becomes another way of building an archive of lived experience.
Many Photographers, Many Ways of Seeing Africa
With photographers from Nigeria, Africa and beyond, Everyday Life 2026 creates a conversation between different environments and perspectives. The exhibition demonstrates that there is no single way of photographing African life. Each photographer brings a personal relationship with people, place, culture and experience.
Ibadan as a Meeting Point Between Past and Present
Perhaps the most compelling conversation is between the city’s history and the contemporary images on its walls. Ibadan has witnessed enormous changes in Nigerian society, yet its streets continue to hold traces of its past alongside the realities of the present. By bringing Everyday Life 2026 to the National Museum of Unity, the exhibition places contemporary photography within a city already deeply connected to storytelling, culture and collective memory.
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