Welcome to department of FINE AND APPLIED ARTS

“The old college of Education Awka was connected with the commencement of the department at the inception of Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka in 1991 as an autonomous university, it inherited seven faculties from its mother University, the defunct Anambra State University of Technology ASUTECH. The Faculties were: Education, Engineering, Law, Medicine, Management Sciences, Natural Sciences and social sciences and the Arts”.¹ In 1991 under General Ibrahim Babangida’s regime, the new Anambra State was carved out from the old Anambra State which comprised of Enugu and Ebonyi states, respectively. Consequently, the Awka and Nnewi campuses which comprised of the old Anambra State University of technology (ASUTECH), were constituted into one autonomous University and was named after Nigeria number one nationalist, the Late Rt. Hon. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe. Following the need for the formation of an avenue for study in the arts, the department of arts was set up and that gave room for recruitment of eighteen lecturers from the defunct Anambra State College of education Awka.

“Five lecturers were transferred from the obsolete ASCEA to staff the new academic unit. P.N. Emejue headed sculpture, Pius Nwankwo headed painting, Bonaventure Osita Njelita headed Graphics, Emman Okunna was invited to head ceramics and Ifedioramma Dike was invited to head the Textiles Section.”² The five lecturers started the new academic unit alongside other units that formed the department of Arts.

“The new unit was later housed under the faculty of Education under Professor E. U. Akusoba as the Dean. By then Faculty of Education, the Admin block and many other faculties were situated on the Unizik Temporary site. Mr. P.E. Nwankwo was appointed the head of Fine and Applied Arts Unit. The Department was relocated to the faculty of social sciences and arts as an academic unit in the department of arts.”³ “The proposed department of Arts was as it were, to be brought under the umbrella of the faculty of social sciences which, hence forth, was to be known and addressed as the faculty of Arts were African Languages, English Language and Literature in English, Religious Studies and Theatre Arts.”⁴

“The young unit was provided with a common room for staff of the department of arts in social sciences faculty. Fine arts was given two rooms in the structure. They used those two rooms for Applied Arts and Fine Arts areas. Behind our common room, sculpture students accomplish their class works under the sun and in the rain.”⁵

Fine and Applied Arts had five subsections and they were painting, sculpture, graphics, textiles and ceramics. At that time the lecturers and the students of all sections used the same common room. Department of arts became an Associate Faculty of Arts, with all the academic programmes known as sub-departments it was on November 2000, that NUC approved A full-fledged Faculty of Arts and all the Departments gained a full status. The department required urgent expansion after it was made a fully fledged department.

When the personnel unit moved into the new Admin Block, they left their former office space along Ifite axis. Fine and Applied Arts department moved into the building along with Music and Theatre Arts department. Fine and Applied Arts was on the ground floor while Music and Theatre Arts had middle and third floors, respectively. Fine and Applied Arts department expanded a bit. The Annexed building, the faculty of Art extension was otherwise called “The Bermuda”, because it was located way off the campus walls.

Prior to 2004 NUC accreditation, under Professor Ilochi Okafor, SAN as the vice chancellor, An old warehouse was procured along Ifite road for Fine and Applied Arts, Music and Theatre Arts Departments. It was Engineering Faculty that made use of it formerly.

By 2006 under Professor Ilochi Okafor SAN as the vice chancellor, the management made a move to move all annexed departments into the permanent site. Then the sciences village was almost completed. All the departments in Unizik temporary site had been moved. Fine and Applied Arts Department was not an exception since they were located off campus. When the faculty of natural sciences moved to the science village, they vacated their office spaces, lecture halls, including the multipurpose building, all situated near the Bank Avenue. Immediately, faculty of Arts vacated the Group Captain Rufai D. Garba Square and settled in the former sciences building. Following this, the department, making up the faculty of Arts extension, including Fine Arts moved into the campus and settled Around Garba Square, near Social Sciences Faculty.

The 2007 Accreditation saw the department settled in the Faculty of Environmental Sciences. By 2012, under Professor Egboka’s Administration, the Department had secured the old General Studies unit building as for settlement. There the HOD’s office, General Admin office, Library and most of the lecturers offices were housed till date.

The department aims at producing competent artists with the right intellectual perspective on the role of art as an instrument of social development. Specifically, the department endeavours to achieve the following objectives:

To stimulate and nurture artistic creativity in all ramifications.

To encourage and guide the students to use their creative skills to enhance the quality of living in the Nigerian environment.

To maintain a good balance between practical and theoretical courses. This is to produce artists who would be both visually and culturally literate.

To constitute a programme of study that will enable the students to combine the international dimensions of Art with a deep knowledge of local artistic and cultural traditions, emphasizing development of high professional skills, motifs and the cultivation of a personal idiom of expression.

To raise the level of aesthetic and cultural awareness in the students and by extension, among the people through research, academic publications and art exhibitions.