Artiste Qudus Onikeku Bestowed ‘Hero of Egbaland’ at Egbagalinza

Artiste and founder of Afropolis Festival and J. Randle Centre for Yoruba Culture and History, Qudus Onikeku, has been bestowed the title of Eyan Akinkanju (Hero of Egbaland).

Onikeku received the title alongside 39 others who are shaping the cultural imagination of the Egba people at the just-concluded second edition of Egbagalinza, held on March 28 at the Ake Palace, Abeokuta, Ogun State.

The festival is an annual cultural exchange initiative that showcases the rich heritage, culture, and fashion of the Egba people. It has as its overarching goal the creation of a ‘Made in Egbaland’ fashion brand, a $1b fashion industry, and to empower the local economy via investment in traditional crafts.

In his message to Afropolis followers, the dancer, choreographer, and curator said the award was a sign of ‘continuity’ received with care.
He noted that as a practitioner, culture has never been for spectacle alone, rather an infrastructure, one that ‘shapes how we think, how we create, and how we assume responsibility.’ It is something living. It is something he projects in his practice, which sees the human body as a memory, an archive, a material.

“Over time, I have come to understand the human body as an archive. It holds memory, genealogy, intelligence, and histories that refuse erasure. Each work I have made, as a dancer, choreographer, artist, teacher, curator, has been an act of translation of culture into something contemporary, something structured, something that can travel forward.”

Thus, he views the title bestowed on him as both a continuation of what he’s doing at the J. Randle Centre, which is the cultivation of spaces where culture is carried beyond preservation into activation, and an alignment with the vision of Aare Lai Labode – one of the spearheads of Egbagalinza.

“What he is shaping is transcending fashion as a form, but as a cultural identity articulated with precision. With the Lisabi Festival, he has found a platform for cultural expression in which every detail carries intention, each cut, each texture, each composition forming a complete language.

“With Egbaliganza, he presents work that arrives fully formed. Work that does not seek explanation. Work for bodies that arrive already knowing what they are with clarity. Culture, held with clarity, becomes something living. It moves. It speaks. It carries responsibility.

“And that perhaps is the task before us. To take what we inherit and render it usable for the future. To ensure that what we now carry does not end with us,” urged Onikeku.