25 Emerging Nigerian Cultural Names To Know

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25 Emerging Nigerian Cultural Names To Know
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The skill, thinking and innovation on Nigeria’s culture scene are too deep to be satisfyingly captured in a limited list, which can only show the range of ideas and the reach of possibilities, but never truly tell the full story. But we can try. From the arts to media, fashion and tech, these are a few of the people whose ongoing work, irrespective of achievement or status, promises so much more. Some are known and some will be, but all have impacted – or have the potential to impact – what and how we see, think, feel and react to in culture. [Image: Tonia Nneji]

By Otosirieze Obi-Young

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25 Emerging Nigerian Cultural Names To Know.
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Taaooma – Social media comedian Taaooma went viral in 2019 when she turned a family quirk – mothers slapping their children as discipline – into content. In her skits, she satirises “the African mother,” imbues her with excessiveness. And in an industry where men outnumber women, her work stands out not only for its singularity, but for its quality: it is actual acting. In fact, Taaooma plans to transition into filmmaking. Last year, she was nominated for The Future Awards Africa Prize for Content Creation and listed by The Guardian Nigeria among its “100 Most Inspiring Women in Nigeria”.

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Tolu “Eros” Erogbogbo – While still in university in the UK, Tolu “Eros” Erogbogbo began selling seasoned chicken in Ziploc bags to his Lebanese and Indian course-mates. At 21, he bought a restaurant. As the founder and CEO of Cookie Jar Bakery and also the Executive Chef at Eros & Gourmet Foods, he puts a modern spin on street food, making the food itself into a language, a way of communication. He has cooked for the likes of Lauryn Hill and billionaire Folorunsho Alakija, and in 2019 he launched the Ile Eros restaurant in Lagos.

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Tonia Nneji – Artist Tonia Nneji’s shades are soulful, a chromatic colour palette that tells its own story. In her debut solo exhibition, You May Enter at Rele Gallery (until 1 November 2021), her subjects portray lived experiences of womanhood, specifically the pain, silence and societal shame of living with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS).; they form “a community of pain bearers,” stepping out of the silence. The emotionality of her paintings is enhanced by colourful textiles, a situation in history. Her work has been exhibited in South Africa, the US and the UAE, where she has held residencies, and was profiled by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for Harper’s Bazaar last year.

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‘Fisayo Soyombo – Investigative journalism has made a comeback in the last five years, and at the forefront is ‘Fisayo Soyombo who, as editor of The Cable and later of SaharaReporters, established a reputation for exposing institutional corruption. In pursuing stories, he has gone undercover as a clearing agent and a “vehicle thief”, and even spent two weeks in detention at a prison. This year, the multi-award-winning journalist – he holds the Gatefield’s People Journalism Prize for Africa as well as a Kurt Schork Award, and was runner-up for a Fetisov Award and One World Media’s International Journalist of the Year – launched the Foundation for Investigative Journalism Nigeria.

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Dr Amarachukwu Karen Allison – When Dr Amarachukwu Karen Allison diagnosed the first local case of COVID-19 last year, it was confirmation that the virus had entered Nigeria. Her timely action prevented what would have been an uncontainable outbreak in Africa’s most populous country. For many, it recalled the late Dr. Stella Adadevoh, who stopped what could have become a wild spread of Ebola in the country in 2014 – though Dr. Allison does not accept any comparisons. As misinformation and conspiracy theories about the virus proliferated, she used her Instagram Live to keep people well informed.

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Romeo Oriogun – When Romeo Oriogun first started sharing his poetry, he was just an unknown, aspiring writer on Facebook. Nine years later, his powerful, evocative exploration of masculinity is recognised as part of an epochal moment in African literature – the rise of queer artists on a continent where they are mostly hunted by law. The influential poet received the Brunel International African Poetry Prize in 2017, published his acclaimed Lambda Award-shortlisted debut collection Sacrament of Bodies (2020), and has received fellowships at Harvard and an MFA at Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

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Nkwo Onwuka – A graduate of psychology, designer Nkwo Onwuka focuses her fashion ethics on how people feel rather than how they look. Her brand, NKWO, maximises upcycling, finding use for imported second-hand clothing, and her conceptual designs made from Dakala cloth recall the past as a way to determine the future. NKWO’s cross between sustainability and culture has seen it considered one of the more imaginative brands on the scene. Upon the label’s UK debut at the Kulture2Couture 2007, it took home the Phoenix Award.

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Nonso Bassey – Singer-actor Nonso Bassey first rose to fame as a contestant on The Voice Nigeria in 2016, where he reached the Top 8 with a voice that singer Ric Hassani has called “the definition of vocal range”; Bassey then signed with Universal Music Group and dropped two singles, “411” and “For You.” As an actor, Bassey landed a major role in Africa Magic’s telenovela, Battleground, but one might say his true breakthrough came this year with the release of the neo-noir thriller La Femme Anjola. Playing a saxophonist in love, he is sure-footed and addictive. It is one of the best performances by a male Nigerian actor in years.

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Odunayo Eweniyi & Damilola Odufuwa – In 2020, a year that saw a dramatic increase in gender-based violence, Odunayo Eweniyi and Damilola Odufuwa invited a group of exceptional Nigerian women to form the women’s rights group Feminist Coalition. But it was during the End SARS anti-police brutality protests that the group came to fore, raising NGN 147.8 million and providing leadership and accountability that the younger generation of Nigerians had not known on a national scale. Eweniyi, co-founder of savings platform PiggyVest, won The Future Awards Africa Prize for Technology in 2018. Odufuwa – who has led teams at CNN, Zikoko and now Binance – joined her on the TIME Next 100 and Bloomberg 50 lists.

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Tayo Aina – YouTuber and filmmaker Tayo Aina cut his teeth on photography, walking around the streets of Lagos and capturing unique moments. Now on YouTube, where he has 247,000 engaged subscribers, Aina produces content on travel, lifestyle and real estate. His vlogs cover entertainment, culture and local traditions in Nigeria, as well as promoting tourism to several African countries, from luxury camps in Ethiopia to resorts in South Africa, farms in Tanzania and businesses in Kenya, Rwanda and Cape Verde.

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Shola Akinlade & Ezra Olubi – By the time tech entrepreneurs Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi began working on solving payments problems in 2014, Nigeria was entering its fintech revolution. Their multi-channel solution, Paystack, publicly launched in 2016 and became the country’s first to join the tech accelerator Y Combinator programme, accruing 60,000 clients. Last year, Paystack was acquired by Stripe for USD 200 million – the country’s biggest startup acquisition. With Akinlade as CEO and Olubi as CTO, the company is in a new phase of integrating a fragmented marketplace.

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Wunika Mukan – Before she launched Pacers Gallery last year, Howard graduate Wunika Mukan worked widely in arts and media consultation, founding the Women’s Film Club, serving as brand director of the African Artists’ Foundation, co-curating the Lagos Photo Festival, directing Art Summit Nigeria, organising the Kadara Yoruba Heritage Festival, and project-managing the Nigeria Pavilion at the 57^th Venice Biennale. With Pacers Gallery, she pools her experiences to add a new dimension to contemporary Nigerian art in the unfolding rush for African cultural products.

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Osinachi – As a child, Osinachi learned to write on MS Word. In the last five years, he turned it into his canvas for visual art which, on the blockchain, has now – after years of struggling to get into traditional art galleries – established him as “Africa’s leading crypto-artist”. His debut solo, Existence as Protest, was held in Switzerland last year. In the space of ten days earlier this year, his NFTs exploring gender and race fetched USD 75,000 worth of sales. An in-demand artist, he is collaborating with the Salim Amin Foundation to usher in a new social currency, $Afrofuture.

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Pamela Adie – As executive director of NGO The Equality Hub, Pamela Adie’s work focuses on giving a voice to women who face both queerphobia and sexism. In 2019, she released Under the Rainbow, Nigeria’s first documentary about the experience of being lesbian, which earned her a nomination for the Mary Chirwa Award for Courageous Leadership. Upon the announcement of Adie’s latest project Ife, the first Nollywood film to humanise lesbian love, the movie was targeted by authorities. In response, Adie spearheaded a new network for LGBTQ+ stories, Eh Tv Network, where she premiered the film.

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Faith Oluwajimi – Faith Oluwajimi was only 18 when he launched Bloke, a fashion brand that rethinks luxury with a sense of spirituality, and views fashion through a genderless lens. Bloke takes an experimental approach to knitwear, an underexplored section in contemporary African fashion. The winner of the inaugural Emerge ALÁRA award in 2018, his SS19 collection, A Collection About Nothing, is a Dadaist take on the idea of “nothingness,” flipping conventional standards of beauty. Bloke is committed to ethical manufacturing.

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Kiki Mordi – As the lead reporter on BBC Africa Eye’s Sex for Grades, Kiki Mordi went undercover to reveal the male lecturers who preyed on female students. The International Emmy-nominated documentary trended at number one globally, increasing pressure for legislative action in Nigeria. Her next project dealt with the humanitarian crisis of the Tarkwa Bay evictions. The Feminist Coalition member – and winner of an MTV EMA Generation Change award, the Michael Elliot Award for Excellence in African Storytelling and the People Journalism Prize for Africa, all last year – currently runs Document Women, a platform that shines light on women’s stories.

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Imoteda Aladekomo – When Imoteda Aladekomo first entered the food industry, she brought her style as a former makeup artist. Because she couldn’t see enough Black faces on cooking shows, she planned two, Heels in the Kitchen and Urban Kitchen, presenting food in fashion. The former, also a food services company, reflected her experience cooking in high heels. In 2016, she embarked on the Nigerian Fusion Food Tour, a seven-city event to showcase Nigerian cuisine in Lagos, Abuja, London, Baltimore, Chicago, Atlanta and Toronto.

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Jake Okechukwu Effoduh – Legal scholar and activist Jake Okechukwu Effoduh was on the radio for 12 years, hosting programmes that reached millions of listeners on 103 stations. For his activism, he received the 2014 Future Awards Africa Prize in Community Action and the 2015 Africa Youth Choice Award for Human Rights. The occasional actor has worked across 21 African countries, with the ECOWAS, African Human Rights Commission and the UN Human Rights Council; he also studied at Oxford and held a fellowship at Harvard. Currently a Vanier Scholar in Canada, where he is researching AI legitimation in Africa, he is on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Frontier Risks.

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Marcellina Akpojotor – Marcelina Akpojotor takes after her artist father, using traditional painting techniques and collaging to create works of rich texture and stunning visuals. Her work, achieved with discarded Ankara fabric, captures layers of femininity. In 2018, she held her debut solo exhibition, She Was Not Dreaming, at Rele Gallery. Her painting Tobi is the cover image of the reissue of the pioneering Nigerian writer Cyprian Ekwensi’s 1961 novel Jagua Nana. Her work has been shown in the US, Switzerland, South Africa and the UAE.

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Samuel Ogundipe – This year, the Nigerian government blocked the website of People’s Gazette, the news platform founded by Samuel Ogundipe. So he changed the web address and continued publishing stories that expose corruption among the country’s political and economic elite, gaining the Gazette the trust of a young population in search of full truths. It is a continuation of Ogundipe’s distinguished work in the last ten years, including at Premium Times, where he was arrested by the SARS police unit – causing a public protest – threatened by government associates, and tracked by the DSS, forcing him into hiding.

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Chidimma Nnoli – Chidimma Nnoli’s oil paintings are lush, poetic experiences expressed with an impressionist texture. She mostly depicts women, positioning their sisterly solidarity as an affront to patriarchal power and misogyny. They are works of psychology and allusion, exploring the cultural conditioning of women, their sexual and mental health. A graduate of the University of Benin, Nnoli held her debut solo exhibition To Wander Untamed this year at Rele Gallery, Lagos. Undeniably, she is a major star on the rise.

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Richard Akuson – In 2017, Richard Akuson founded A Nasty Boy, Nigeria’s first LGBTQ+ fashion magazine, which uses provocative images to open conversations about gender. Two years later, he was assaulted in his hometown for being gay, after which he left the country. A trained lawyer, Akuson was named to Forbes Africa’s “30 under 30” list in 2019 and YNaija’s “40 Most Powerful Nigerians under 40” list in 2017. Most recently, as associate nonfiction editor at Guernica, he curated the magazine’s fashion and time issue.

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Omafume Niemogha – After obtaining degrees in engineering, Omafume Niemogha went back to her childhood in Lagos, finding inspiration in her father’s love for the arts and developing an interest in promoting culture through fashion. In 2018, she founded Pepper Row, a label that prioritises sustainability and artisanal techniques, and debuted its ready to wear collection REIGHÉ. Her SS20 collection envisioned a futurist, Africanised world. The aso oke and adire were handwoven and hand-dyed, and scrap fabrics were repurposed for the abstract wiggle skirts.

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David Hundeyin – In tracking corruption and cover-ups for News Wire NG and SaharaReporters, David Hundeyin has earned praise for his courage and doggedness. This year, he published exposés on Isa Ali Pantami, the Nigerian minister with a history of jihadist teaching and support for the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, and on the murder of the young jobseeker Ini Umoren. Both stories shook Nigerians. Journalism is risky business, which is why, during the End SARS protests last year, the investigative journalist fled the country.

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Oyinkansola Dada – A trained lawyer, Oyinkansola Dada worked behind the scenes at art fairs before deciding to venture into the art world to help elevate her generation of Black artists. She began a blog on African art and politics in 2015, which morphed into a semi-digital gallery in 2018: Polartics, now DADA. Her artists – based in Nigeria and the UK, and exploring themes of immigration, womanhood and sexuality – have showcased works at 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in London as well as at Christie’s, and at pop-ups in Lagos. DADA’s most recent exhibition, Everything Good Will Come, ended this January.

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About The Author – Otosirieze Obi-Young is a Nigerian writer, journalist, curator and media consultant. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of Open Country Mag, a multiplatform space for African literature, and was editor of Folio Nigeria, CNN’s exclusive media affiliate in Africa, where he profiled innovators in culture in over 20 fields. He has sat on the judging panels of The Morland Scholarship and The Gerald Kraak Prize. In 2019, he received the inaugural The Future Awards Africa Prize for Literature. [Photo via otosirieze.com]

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25 Emerging Nigerian Cultural Names To Know

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