By Damiete Braide
Nike Arts Foundation is set for the opening of a new art gallery in Nigeria’s biggest art spaces in the heart of Nigeria’s capital city, Abuja on Tuesday, March 28, 2023 by 10am.
Dignitaries expected to grace the occasion include government officials, diplomats, ambassadors, art lovers amongst others.
According to Chief Reuben Osaruyi Okundaye, a former police commissioner, the ultra modern gallery popularly known as Nike Arts Gallery, is one of the best art galleries in Nigeria and Africa and disclosed that the project has taken 19 years to complete, long before the Lagos gallery was opened.
“It occupies a two-floor building which will showcase many segments of arts and culture such as textiles, sculptures, antiquities that reflects Nigerian cultural and heritage, paintings of visual arts of different culture.
Okundaye recalls In the year 2000, we went to Abuja and approached the government to give us land to build a cultural centre for Nike Art Foundation organisation, which they graciously granted and allocated. We were allocated 5.1 hectares of land in a choice area in Abuja which had been earmarked by the Federal Government to be developed. It is a district of institutions. We were lucky to have that land.
In 2004, we developed a mini-Nike Art Gallery on that land, which also housed a first of its kind textile museum. On November 22, 2004, we invited the former minister for Federal Capital territory, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai. We said at the time that we have a very bold intention to develop an ultra-modern art gallery that will feature many segments of arts and culture, and that is what we have now achieved. That edifice has been completed, it is a massive art gallery facing the Defense College.
In the same vein, Chief Nike added, “We started that gallery before this one in Lagos. Abuja is the capital of Nigeria and the gallery we are going to put there in another two years will be bigger than this one. This is just the beginning. We are going to put three types of these in Abuja. We want people to be able to see the art and sit down and relax.
We want to bring a few people and put a few houses with mud. When tourists come to Nigeria, they don’t want to see five-star hotels, they want to see the village life; how we eat, and how we sleep. So, we want people to be able to come and see an art village.