Generally, as now; when things are tough and hard and the social climate tense; cartoonists pierce through the overhanging doom and gloom and offer the instant sunshine of laughter to ease the burden and defuse tension.
Nigerian newspaper cartoonists have been remarkable national safety-valves, and have also admirably fulfilled their other role as visual communicators without fear or favour, for many decades now. But as everybody knows, there is much more to cartoons than the spontaneous chuckle they evoke.
Their instant visual satire goes beyond an attempt to merely solicit laughter and, is usually as biting a piece of social commentary as any hard-hitting investigative prose or editorial in Nigerian newspapers. Most times, cartoons are even more vicious and cruel in their attack.
Whether they are lampooning intimidating military dictators, sacred community and political leaders, or ridiculing their draconian decisions and their resultant social consequences, cartoons are also irritating feedbacks of the national pulse and mood. Subtly, cartoon-commentary has a culminative power to influence change in society. Nigerian newspaper political cartoons have always been pungent, hard-hitting and noticed! Back in 1993, the no-nonsense Iron-fisted Gen. M. Buhari observed that, “the cartoons became more eloquent than before.”
Political cartooning in Nigeria is seven decades old and was the bane of the colonial administration. Militant nationalist newspapers at the height of Nigeria’s struggle for independence; effectively used cartoons as part of their media arsenal in their dangerous and prolonged propaganda-war against the British colonialists. Nmandi Azikiwe’s West African Pilot and its famous cartoonist LASH (Lashebekan) are one such legendary example. While the daring fire-spitting journalists eruditely countered the speeches and policy statements of the colonial officers, the cartoonists complimented them by belittling and puncturing the pompous power-posturing of the British Empire and its colonial administrators.
With such pedigree, it is no surprise that Nigerian political cartoonists after independence have employed the same tactics of caricature to curb the political arrogance and excesses of Nigerian political leaders and politicians; military dictators and now; our democratic leaders and politicians. Generations of political cartoonists; have over the decades gotten better in artistic technique/execution; become more subtle and definitely more daring!
It is not only political cartooning that has flourished in Nigeria. Over the years newspapers, magazines and other publications have employed cartoonists who visually comment on a broad spectrum of life and living in Nigeria. True to form, Nigerian cartoonists fully exploit this broad platform to shake-up many segments of the Nigerian society daily. Apart from tackling and hammering the all-powerful and famous, institutions such as the Police, Customs and Immigration, service organisations like PHCN, NIPOST, NITEL/GSM, AIRLINES, and Railways have rightly also become deserving butts of Nigerian cartoonists’ sarcasm. Naturally, the most caustic anti-establishment cartoons are seen in the privately-owned publications.
It was therefore no surprise that cartoonists were very much part of the renaissance that heralded the New Journalism in Nigeria in the early eighties with the birth of new publications like The Punch, Vanguard, Concord and The Guardian which had their special brood of cartoonists. These newspapers sold on their cartoons and, by their cartoonists. The newspapers showed their gratitude by giving their cartoonists pride of place daily on their front and back pages as well as their editorial pages. Naturally, because of their excellence cartoonists became household names.
Political cartooning remains the high mark of cartooning in Nigeria. Interestingly, over the turbulent decades of bad blood between the press and government; cartoonists like cats, jesters and drunkards have had guardian angels and nine lives; making them more outrageous and challenging. Yet, unlike journalists, they have rarely, if ever, been cut-off, punished by having their heads shaved, detained or jailed by the dreaded state security authorities.
Bisi Ogunbadejo, a.k.a Cracks, has been rightly described by Professor Tejumola Olaniyan of University of Wisconsin, Madison, U.S.A. as “the most radically innovative cartoonist Nigeria has ever produced; second to none in the art of political cartooning in Africa.” Bisi Ogunbadejo has a body of work spanning three decades to fully justify this rating; and he is still in full practice!
Ogunbadejo, in newspapers like Daily Express (’73), West Africa magazine (U.K. ’81), the Guardian, New Age, Africa newsfile and ThisDay where he is currently the Group Arts and Cartoon Director has shown his mettle. He was also the editor/publisher of The Fool’s Cap (Foolscap); Nigeria’s only satirical magazine.
Although Ogunbadejo’s political cartooning is the usual direct affront on political governance, he has forged his own unique style of political cartooning through storytelling and, the use of long horizontal bars in his multi-panel style of presentation. His blend of art and wit is exceptional and he is a master of the subtle understatement and snide side commentary.
At the end of April 2009, Massimo Baistrocchi, Ambassador of Italy to Nigeria, decided to exhibit 60 of Bisi Ogunbadejo’s cartoons over the years; at the Studio of the Italian Embassy in Abuja. According to Ambassador Baistrocchi, he chose to exhibit the works, “because culture is made up of everything; cuisine, poetry, art and I think Bisi has this fantastic approach to politics and reality; to point out what is wrong in a sarcastic way.”
On Ogunbadejo’s part it was tasking picking 60 works from his collection of about 4,000 works. He tried to pick political themes he had addressed for well over twenty years in West Africa, the Guardian, New Age and ThisDay. Some of the themes dealt on Patriotism, the OAU/AU, Development and Education and his new series for ThisDay ‘From The Outside.’
In his view, “Nigeria is still battling with the same problems” and this state of affairs informed the title of the exhibition ‘Things haven’t really changed!’ “I keep addressing the same issues because they keep recurring. The difference is that there are now different slants like strains of a disease, so I look for something extra.” Have his cartoons helped to bring about change in political behaviour? He chuckles and answers matter-of-factly, “They know, but don’t care!”
Nonetheless, he keeps on commenting visually virtually daily. He has plans to revive his African Man magazine. Come June 2009 Bookcraft, Ibadan, will publish a collection of Bisi Ogunbadejo’s ThisDay cartoons in 2008, titled ‘As seen from the outside 2008.”
-Tam Fiofori, photographer and filmmaker, wrote this piece a while ago and has allowed the kind permission to publish on thisislagos