For the price of a bottle of coke, a pupil at N100 or an adult at N200 is granted access to Nigeria’s premier and leading gallery of history and culture, the National Museum at Onikan, Lagos State. Save for the small signage affixed to the museum’s main building and the little crowd of those initiated into arts and culture affairs, the site of Nigeria’s largest collector of artefacts may well be mistaken for a graveyard.
Tomorrow, thousands of Lagosians would troop into the main bowl of the Tafawa Balewa Square (TBS), for the inauguration of Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu as the governor of Lagos State. A thriving city mall separates the museum from TBS, yet only a handful of the crowd would be aware of the museum’s existence.
On the average, according to the curator of the National Museum, Lagos, Mrs. Omotayo Adeboye, there are between 10,000 to 12,000 visitors every year. “We have our low and peak periods. The highest visitors to the museum are students and March is our peak period when the pupils are about ending their second term. We have a lot of iconic works, which are part of the school curriculum,” she said. Read more