He says he was able to start reading at the age of 16! This sounds incredible for a man who later won multiple awards in school and ended up becoming a lecturer at one of the most prestigious art schools in Africa.

Hold on, he is also a soul winner whose spiritual affirmation remains attached to resurrection. On October 17, 2026, Aderinsoye Aladegbongbe PhD opens his latest solo exhibition entitled Voice in Pigment at the iconic National Museum Onikan in Lagos. He returns to the same museum where he held his debut exhibition while honouring the National Call to serve Nigeria. His story is proudly Nigerian one.

Words Ireho Aito | Don’t Keep Your Art in the Finger! Photographs courtesy Aderinsoye Aladegbongbe

His persona has been so arresting since we met at Fobally Art Gallery, Lekki, Lagos in late 2025. Dr. Aderinsoye Aladegbongbe was sitting at Fobally Art Gallery waiting, the only early arrival among the judges, driving down all the way from Akute in Ogun State. Dr. Kunle Adeyemi, his former colleague, after giving me that gesture of positivity, humbly celebrated Aladegbongbe’s commitment to the task ahead of him.

“I trust him. He does not joke with time. Once you give him the schedule ahead of time, he will never disappoint,” Dr. Adeyemi remarked with an exchange of pleasantries.

Dr. Aladegbongbe was smartly looking African and not looking his 61 years of age in his full African prints, looking more like a band leader for Highlife music or Afrobeat music. He was indeed a dapper with his spectacles while creating those jokes on Yoruba and respectfully welcoming one into the fold. Yet, he shepherds for the Almighty God.

Such humility caught my attention and never left me about him. He came across to me as a humour merchant. He cracks ribs easily with jokes.

At the middle of this year, it was a text message that came from him about his solo exhibition coming up in October and he wanted us to meet.

That is what iBAND Magazine stands for, we find the artist anywhere and everywhere. He lives in the famous Akute and the trip on that fateful morning was memorable.

The urbanisation of Lagos and Ogun State has made the two states look like one single state. You barely could spot the difference. The traffic rush in Lagos is now everywhere in Ogun State. The mobility is interesting and worth documenting. It shows the two states are states for the people as businesses and commercial activities, including housing are springing up everywhere. We quickly say: power to the people.

Aladegbongbe’s abode is like searching for that famous resurrection story but for us, our artists’ abode are not far from us at iBAND Magazine. To the creative nest, our boots are at a walking distance.

The neighbourhood smells environmental opulence just like what you would experience in new estates in Lagos. From the interrogation at the main gate, one could see and feel the power of one voice in the estate. This is commendable. It is obvious the residents decided to come together and make the place a better habitable place to look the modern standard which it has attained already.

I keep asking put of curiosity why artists like building or living homes like country musicians. They love it in a country – like designs.

“My neighbour got here really before me and the reason my drive – in entrance is so narrow,” Aladegbongbe took me down historical part of how he moved in here when he could sight me and welcome at first hand.

“He chopped off better part of the land as you can see. It takes experience to drive through my entrance,” he reveals as he leads me in.

My first encounter inside his studio downstairs is a work entitled “Resurrection.” Another signs of what to expect in the life of a devoted artist.

Aladegbongbe explains, “I started normally to make the drawing before using linocutter to put it into shape.”

At another end, inside a packed studio filled with hundreds of works, “This is supposed to be lino-block. But since lino-block is not common here and very expensive, I decided to use all these shoe soles to work and get the same body of work. We call it ‘improvisation.'”

He confesses that he goes to Mushin market to get his materials whenever he wants to work. “We teach students to do it too under ‘Method and Material’ courses,” he clarifies.

Even when the erudite scholar and artist offers a seat, I prefer to stand and engage him, which became too interesting immediately he started talking. What a man to behold with his smiles opening up beneath his spectacles.

But the story of Aderinsoye Ademorin Aladegbongbe is not only about the artist we meet today. It is a story that stretches back to his childhood, his struggles with reading, his early discovery of art, his entrepreneurial instinct and the many people who helped him find his way.

He is the son of a cocoa merchant and his mother was a food seller. They lived in Ondo State. “I was raised by my mother’s older female sibling. I didn’t really grow up under my parents due to some circumstances,” Aladegbongbe reveals.

Growing up in the village also helped Aladegbongbe to grow his guts in negotiation. He recalls so many nights spent on the farm as a little boy back then in Ondo State. He moved to Lagos at the age of ten going 11 years old.

“As a farmer’s son, once we have our long vacation, we spent that time on the farm,” Aladegbongbe reminisces. He had his elementary education at Saint Michael Primary School, though he suffered dyslexia condition. “I don’t know if it was spiritual for me at that time. I discovered I couldn’t read,” he reveals.

Despite that, he was diligent at anything. “There is nothing, no chores you asked me to do that I cannot do,” he says. Yet, his report card from school was always woeful. “My dear mother, an Anglican woman was always in tears and raining abuses to whoever was behind my predicament,” Aladegbongbe remarks with humour.

It became mischievous to everyone that as intelligent and diligent as he is, he could not read anything, yet he was sure an enterprising young boy. He came home from school with terrible results. So, people in Ilaramokun village believed there was a kind of spiritual attack.

The mother’s older sister came to the rescue one day and requested to take young Aladegbongbe to Lagos with her.

He is the third of five boys and he was like a mummy’s boy in the family who helped his mother to carry out the chores for her. His aunt also noticed his strength and being resourceful. Aladegbongbe’s mother was a member of the Anglican Church and she would go through prayers for her son’s deliverance. His father married seven wives. It was his father that took him to Lagos to meet his aunt who loved him so much at Anthony Village. At his aunt’s house, Aladegbongbe found opulence where he was given a room with all amenities attached to it.

Aladegbongbe was taken to Lagos by his loving father in 1977.

“My chores in my new home were laid for me. When my aunt now discovered that I couldn’t read, though she owned a school at No. 8 Obokun Street, Coker, Ilupeju, she enrolled me in that school,” Aladegbongbe narrates. “She took it upon herself to be giving me home tutorials. I got to start reading when I clocked 16 years.”

Aladegbongbe’s aunt and her family played a massive role and added positive impact to his not only educational upbringing but also how to navigate life itself. They were disciplinarians.

Due to the family’s church situated at Montgomery, Yaba, and one of his older cousins, a female, was an undergraduate at University of Lagos, the proximity normally brought the family together to also unwind and reflect weekly.

When it was time for him to go to college, Aladegbongbe wrote three entrance examinations. He wrote Igbobi College exams, but it was Baptist Academy that offered him admission. He was also asked to sit for the Teacher Training College Exams as well at Surulere. He gained admission to Baptist Academy. Later, the Teacher Training Exams result came out and his aunt being an educationist advised him to go to Teacher Training College instead.

It was Governor Lateef Jakande that later cancelled the afternoon school curriculum to morning and the college was also moved to Ikotun Egbe end of Lagos.

While the Teacher Training College was still at Randle Avenue at Surulere, and in his third year, Aladegbongbe experienced a strange circumstance in his life. He found it strange that a girl was always coming out first in the class where there were males. Curiosity made him ask his friend and classmate, Fatai Sanusi about this strange happening in the class. He suggested after-school tutorial to his friend to help them measure up in class activities. His friend agreed.

“At that period, I felt a veil being removed from me and all of a sudden, I could reason very well. I could understand my teachers very well,” Aladegbongbe shares this miraculous intervention as if it was just now.

The after-school tutorial really helped him develop himself. “I developed the habit each time I got home, as well,” he confirms. “At home, we had a big bookshelf with a dictionary that really shaped me academically,” he states.

At the end of that term, Aladegbongbe came out top of the class of 45 students in his year two. The Teacher Training College programme was a five-year programme. His guardian was elated about the result. Aladegbongbe did not relent on his oars till he left the school and came out with good grades from the Teacher Training College.

He went ahead to sit for entrance examinations at University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, to study Business Administration. He also did College of Education, Ijanikin, to study Art Education but opted for Art Education.

It was a development that grew gradually in his life. Art was not forced on him. On the flip side, he also played basketball and represented Lagos State in 1984 and 1985 set.

Aderinsoye Ademorin Aladegbongbe invests in experimentation a lot because of his inquisitive nature. He has worked with different materials including wood.

He recalls as part of his upbringing in life how he would accompany his father to many of his socio-cultural meetings and gatherings where he learned a lot about the culture and tradition of his people. Those movements, he says, were eye-openers for him as a little boy. Unconsciously too, he was learning proverbs.

Integrity and honesty, have always played big roles all his life. The values he picked from his parents and which accompanied him everywhere he went. Mr Abiodun Lamikanra and Mrs Abigail Lamikanra, his guardians whom he grew up with when he came to Lagos, also lived by that virtuous standard. “They accepted me with open arms because they discovered how obedient I was,” Aladegbongbe says.

“They could entrust me with some responsibilities like paying hefty sums of money into their bank account or cleaning their private apartment,” Aladegbongbe remarks about the actual trust his guardians had for him. This virtues he keeps sharing with his students to abide with, as they sojourn in life. His effect on the students was obvious at the Pop Up Museum at Ecobank in 2025 when we all visited the venue for one in a lifetime exhibtion organised by Yaba Art Museum and Ecobank. Aladegbongbe’s charismatic touch was all over the room on the students from Federal College of Technology, Yaba

The Federal College of Technology, Yaba lecturer revealed that he was actually given a series of tests when he came newly into the house to confirm his honesty and moral values. “There was a time they deliberately kept some money in their shoes, making it look as if they forgot the money and I would be sweeping their rooms only to see the money. Several times, I would keep the money on their table for them and still report what I found to them,” he recounts while still maintaining that face of truthfulness in his epistle.

“Later on, they got convinced that I am an honest person. They decided to give me keys to their secret places,” Aladegbongbe explains. Integrity paved the way for Aladegbongbe in the hands of his guardians.

While still with the family, he recalled how his aunt’s husband advised him to now go to a driving school to learn how to drive. He did not know that the young Aladegbongbe had started learning secretly how to drive with the help of their driver.

“One of those memorable days, I was in the vehicle with my aunt and driver coming from a journey at Ilesa. Then, along the way, the driver developed feverish conditions and started vomiting. He just couldn’t steer the wheels anymore. My aunt got panicked,” he reveals. That panic also sent shivers down the spine of the young Aladegbongbe.

“I told my aunt to allow me give it a try, but she was hesitant. My aunt asked if I really know how to drive, I lied to her that I actually study the drivers on how they manoeuvre their steering wheels and quietly learn from them,” Aladegbongbe says he had to lie about his driving experience to the elderly aunt.

Confronting his fears, Aladegbongbe eventually drove his aunt and driver back to Lagos to the astonishment of his aunt and her husband, who felt suspicious of Aladegbongbe’s antics, speaking in his Ilesa accent of being suspicious of what Aladegbongbe had been doing with the driver secretly.

“He thanked me but he knew I have been playing some pranks behind him by driving secretly. He eventually ordered him to go and learn properly at a driving school. I went to Bariga School of Motoring to learn how to drive again. And I opted for lorry, train and big buses specialisation.” Again, his elderly guardian remained astonished by the driving school certificate he came home with. The elderly man was speechless!

Aderinsoye Ademorin Aladegbongbe’s enterprising spirit was already showing itself long before the artist became the scholar and lecturer many people know today.

In 1987 and 1988, when he was a National Diploma student at Federal College of Technology, Yaba, he said they were taught how to weld. The lecturer, Mr Nwaji, their sculpture lecturer of blessed memory, asked them to go round and pick bolts and nuts to test their intuitive skills. At that level, all subjects are taken. Aladegbongbe reveals, “not that he taught us how to actually weld. He only asked us to visit mechanic workshops to pick up those materials and create an image that you like by welding those bolts and nuts together,” he still remembers.

“That time, too, as I was going through some books on post-impressionism, in Italy and especially Europe in general, I stumbled on someone that made a discovery on discus thrower. I decided to draw that out and that is what I welded somewhere at Anthony Village where we lived at the time,” he summarised. “The welder that I used was operating at Olorunlogbon at Anthony Village, back then,” he continues.

When Aladegbongbe got back to school and presented his assignment, his work was adjudged best among the other students submissions.

“My work was titled ‘Discobolous,'” he says. He picked the title from the discus thrower. What a beautiful advertising sense for his age. Aladegbongbe was very resourceful at a very tender age.

One of his older cousins, a lady, who saw the work got fascinated by it and took it to work on Akin Adesola Street, Victoria Island. His cousin was working at one of the finance companies, took the metal work Discobolous and placed it on her table. Interestingly, the work attracted members of the company and was acquired for a sum of between 250 to 300 Naira. Aladegbongbe couldn’t remember the exact monetary transaction.

For him, too, he couldn’t believe his eyes. “I told myself, what?! So, I can be making money from this?”

Aladegbongbe decided not to rest on his oars henceforth. He went back into scavenging for more bolts and nuts from the mechanics. He was given the apprentices’ tips like 20 Naira to help him gather bags full of metal parts, bolts and nuts from their workshop as his materials for welding into sculptural pieces.

Aladegbongbe still recalls his humble beginning. “For God so good, there was a lady at Shonibare Highway at G. Cappa Estate. The lady, definitely from a rich background, saw another metal work of mine and fell in love with it.” Aladegbongbe was already working on the high scale despite being in school at National Diploma level.

“One of lecturers, Mr. Coker, from Painting at that time, has taught us how to do watercolour. It was an added advantage for me, as I was also doing watercolour works,” he remarks with nostalgic feelings.

“So, the lady saw the work and ordered for three pieces and informed me, specifically, that she wanted to resell the works.” At that period, too, Aladegbongbe had scaled up as well by increasing his price to 400 Naira per work.

He was a man of enormous faith as he recalled how another man from Techno Mechano, at Gbagada, Lagos, approached him when he saw the earlier work of Discobolous and asked if he could construct a metal door, 3ft by 7ft. His life was wired in abundance and opportunities from the beginning. Aladegbongbe took up the contract as a student and delivered like a professional.

“The work was similar to the gate Olu Amoda, the renowned sculptor did for Yabatech. Mine came earlier before the time,” he clarifies.

Aladegbongbe was paid a princely sum of 12,000 Naira for the project. Then, he was an IT student with Insight Communications where he bagged four awards after completing his ND programme and the advertising firm asked him to join them for his one-year Industrial Attachment Training. He confirmed the big advertising firm was operating at Eric Moore Road, towards Costain, at that time.

As young as he was then, his enterprising skills were captivating to behold. He also had a brief stint with Nike Afrikana fashion house, though with the school at Ojokoro end of the Lagos-Ibadan Toll Gate, situated at Ajegunle bus stop. “The principal of the school was fascinated by my work and resume. He told me right there I was employed,” he says.

It was during this period that Aladegbongbe got the Techno Mechano contract for the door. The money he made from the door contract made him also resign from the teaching job and started freelancing.

Aladegbongbe, at a very young age, started growing with clients queuing to work with him. He did a job by designing sheets billboard on the Island of Lagos for his grotto party. The bill was running into 100,000 Naira, which tells how business-minded he was at that time. Yet, he was still an undergraduate. Aladegbongbe saved his money at Ecobank, a pan-African bank at that time, in Oshopey Plaza branch.

One of his incredible attributes is ‘A Can-Do Spirit’ that has been part of his upbringing. Aladegbongbe so much believed in himself that he could market his works without even waiting for recommendations. One of those episodes was his NNPC encounter, situated at Eric Moore Road visits, where he took his watercolour paintings to and met one of the female staff working around the place. He presented his school Identity Card as a student that he had some works he felt the staff might like to buy. He was able to persuade the staff at the front desk that was he was an indigent student. Through this secretary, Aladegbongbe met her boss and told him he was an indigent student.

Despite the fact that the man told Aladegbongbe that he was not a lover of art, that is, he was not a collector, but he knew some of his colleagues that loved picking art. “The man told me to lie to them he was my older brother so that they can patronise me,” Aladegbongbe recalls. And the NNPC staff bought about three to four watercolours from Aladegbongbe. He was elated.

Aladegbongbe was also a fashion illustrator for so many fashion houses at Ojuelegba end of Lagos while he was still in school. His enterprising skill needs to be studied. From his own ingenuity, he would do clothing designs and sell for 50 Naira.

Aladegbongbe was proudly a big boy with lot of money in his pocket when he was in school. While at Yabatech, Aladegbongbe targeted distinction, which he eventually missed by the whiskers. “I got Upper Credit,” he confirms. He still ended up being the best student in his set of 1992.

One of the most compelling moments was his National Youth Service Scheme at Ijebu Ode in Ogun State. Aladegbongbe didn’t just serve at the College of Education, he also had a solo exhibition at the National Museum Onikan in Lagos to launch his arrival on the exhibition circuit.

As a student, too, Coca-Cola sponsored Aladegbongbe and four other students on a group exhibition at the German Embassy. “I was in HND 2 at that time,” he remembers.

He was part of the group exhibition in Chicago in the company of renowned printmaker Dr. Kunle Adeyemi in 2014. He recounted how Dr. Adeyemi doubted if his visa application would be granted by the American embassy. He remembered how he assured the Don not to worry about his application, that it would be granted. Indeed, Dr. Aladegbongbe was given a visa after going through the normal visa procedures.

“At the present I have done about eight solo exhibitions.” Artists’ career paths sometimes involve spiritual evolution and interception.

I asked Dr. Aladegbongbe what spirituality means to him. He decided to go memory lane and narrated how in the village, there were native doctors and sorcerers with their spiritual wand and more. He knows about the words and incantations from the spiritual realm. “I have seen the power of darkness,” Aladegbongbe reveals.

He recalled one opportunity that came his way while on a church retreat and received a call from two strangers who came to Lagos from Bayelsa State. When he eventually met the two strangers, they explained to him that they were actually shopping at Tejuoso end of Yaba and were thinking aloud where they could purchase artworks back to Bayelsa. From nowhere, the strangers explained that they got a tap from someone who gave them Aladegbongbe’s number to reach out to him.

“The Bayelsa strangers came into my world and bought works worth several thousands of Naira to my surprise,” Aladegbongbe recalls with nostalgia. “I am a man of faith.”

He moves through his filled-up studio where he dissipates energy on his craft. With the series of old exhibitions and catalogues, the studio was more than a place to carve out sculptural pieces but another haven to read and learn about the movement of an artist who continues to set standards for generations to read in their time. He hates laziness and preaches hard work always to his students and interns.

Aladegbongbe was full of life in his quiet studio at Ikate in Ogun State. Inside the studio, he brought out even more series of unfinished work to improve on them. Some of them would be part of his forthcoming solo exhibition.

His studio is packed full with everything. Productiveness is the drive for him. Right there in the studio, he brought out one of his exhibited works from 1993. A rare picture of his mother was also found in the studio.

It is not a surprise that the National Museum Onikan in Lagos will stand still on the 17th of October 2026, to witness a body of over 60 works from mixed media, acrylic and metal foil, all done by Prince Aderinsoye Aladegbongbe PhD from different periods to the present at the museum.

Aderinsoye Ademorin Aladegbongbe is showcasing Voice in Pigment, a solo exhibition on October 17, 2026, slated for the National Museum Onikan in Lagos. Voice in Pigment is woven in different media from paintings, sculpture pieces and miniatures. Some works for the exhibition are painted on damask materials by Aladegbongbe, identifying the various diversity of Aladegbongbe’s career path as a teacher, writer and studio artist. The works will cut across periods in the artist’s life from the year 2000 to the present. A journey inspired divinely.

Aladegbongbe explains that he dwells more on colours because colours speak. The forthcoming exhibition therefore returns him to a place already connected to his artistic journey. The National Museum Onikan is not an unfamiliar ground for the artist. It was where he held his debut exhibition during his National Youth Service period, and on October 17, 2026, he returns with Voice in Pigment, carrying decades of experimentation, teaching, writing and studio practice with him.

This is a journey that has moved from the boy who could not read until he was 16, to the student who discovered the power of art, the young man who welded bolts and nuts into Discobolous, the entrepreneur who found ways to sell his works, the teacher who became a lecturer, and the artist whose studio continues to carry evidence of a life spent making, teaching and learning.

Voice in Pigment opens at the National Museum, Onikan, Lagos on the 17th of October 2026.

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