Nok and Africa’s Disregard for Prehistory

Under a gentle beam of white light, two figureheads of fired clay glare in apprehension. They are posed behind a glass pane inside the Yemisi Shyllon Museum in Lekki, Lagos. Through the hollow pupils of their triangular eyes, they gawk at me, the evening visitor pretending to have survived more stress in under twelve hours than they have in the last 2,000 years. It is a sunny Tuesday in the middle of September, 2024. Propelled by curiosity, I have flown all the way from Port Harcourt to Lagos. My work as a history writer has seen me spend the last year collecting and reorganizing Nok history resources. The project is in its final stages, and this journey is a step in offloading a persistent burden regarding two elusive Nok heads. The two historic art pieces have roamed the highbrow streets of the global art world for the past three decades. I have come to check if they are here now, in this recently opened museum that boasts of two authentic and recently retrieved original Nok artefacts. I will put up at a cousin’s house in Ikorodu for the night. For now, I have braved the onset of Lagos’s rush hour to be at Pan Atlantic University, where the museum, an architectural masterwork, sits.