One of Nigeria’s leading artists, Dr. Bruce Onobrakpeya, has called on the Federal Government to set up a national art museum to store up the best artworks in the country.

Onobrakpeya made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday in Lagos.

He also urged the government to ratify the nation’s cultural policy to enable artists to take advantage of the business opportunities in their trade.

“We want a museum, a kind of modern art museum to be built. We don’t have one now.

“Right now in Abuja, one has been proposed but it’s taking very many years now it has not started off the ground.

“In a country we need the museum to store the best of the artworks, those best of the artworks will now attract people from all over the world to see and that again will now boost the culture and bring a lot of money and prestige to the country.

“Those two things ratify the cultural policy; build us a museum, a modern art museum

“And then, make it possible, empower the artists to be able to create, those are things that are the challenges that we have now in the country.

“We are working as individual artists now in the country, the organisations that we have society of Nigerian artists and other organisations are not strong enough.

“So what we ask is for the government to ratify the cultural policy, so that some of the things should be made available to empower the artists to fund their organisations and do a lot of things which they are not able to do now.”

NAN reports that Onobrakpeya, 82, was last year honoured by the Smithsonian Institute in recognition of his significant achievement in the arts in the last six decades. (NAN)

•Photo shows Dr. Onobrakpeya.