Smart Owie is the sculptor who was shot in the leg by the police during the demolition of illegal structures at the Artists’ Village, National Theatre, last Saturday.
Although the artist was initially treated at a Lagos hospital after the incident, he says in an interview with our correspondent that he has not been issued with a police report and a doctor’s report that will enable him to receive proper treatment for his bullet wound.
“Even the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Muhammed, has not fulfilled his promise to ensure that I receive proper treatment. He has not sent a message to me and I don’t know how to reach him,” Owie says.
Like many of his colleagues, the least thought on the sculptor’s mind when he arrived at the village on that day was to find that bulldozers had demolished his studio and in the process, destroyed some of his prized works.
The realisation that those works were destroyed for a reason that he could hardly understand, still hurts him badly.
In his pain and misery, Owie is hardly able to evaluate the total cost of the items that he lost in the studio.
“I had lots of works in that studio and each of them had a price tag of not less than $5,000 on it. If you go to some popular galleries and auction houses in the country, you will find my works there. But I had bigger works that would have sold for more than that sum in the studio,” he says.
Almost in tears, the sculptor, who now walks with the aid of crutches, laments that after the demolition, he cannot recognise the shattered bits of the works that once decorated his studio as belonging to him.
Owie describes the shooting at the village as unnecessary. “There was no confrontation between the artists and the armed policemen. None of the artists came out of the premises when the police started shooting. Not even a stone was thrown at them.
“The policemen were already leaving when some of them started shooting at us. I think the gunshots were their parting gift to us and it was unnecessary,” he says.
Meanwhile, a group of resident artists have called on the minister to remove the current General Manager of the National Theatre, Kabir Yusuf, from office with immediate effect.
The artists, some of who lost properties valued at several millions of naira to last Saturday’s demolition of structures in the village, made their desire known in a statement signed by the Coordinator, Tope Babayemi, and made available to our correspondent on Thursday.
Earlier, the management of the theatre had said that it was the minister that ordered the demolition and that the facilities destroyed were illegal and unbefitting of the place.
Besides, an aide to Yusuf, Toyin Mohammed, said the artists neglected the quit notice the National Theatre gave them.
But the practitioners insist that Yusuf should be sacked for what they described as his lack of leadership and direction, which, they claim, has plunged the culture sector in deep crisis.
The statement reads in part, “We pray that the Honourable Minister takes active steps to stop Kabiru Yusuf from further preventing the National Council for Arts and Culture from carrying out her statutory obligations to artists and the artistic Community. The minister should as a matter of urgency, remove him from office as he has become an embarrassment to the current administration.”
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