TAYO Fatunla on the 80th Birthday of a Nigerian-American Cartoonist and Icon: Dele Jegede
*My late mother’s brother-in-law, the late Engineer Idowu Akinde was an Executive Engineer at PWD in Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria, through whom Dr. Dele Jegede got his first job as a youngster.
This provided him with the moral and financial stability to enrol at the prestigious Yaba College of Technology, Lagos where he was influenced by many instructors, including Adebayo and Yusuf Grillo.
Engineer Akinde and my aunty would often mention the name Dele Jegede, once they realised that we were both cartoonists, so it was a pleasure to meet him in the 80s when the Cartoonists Association of Nigeria was to be formed, and a meeting was convened in the Ikeja area chaired by Dr Jegede himself.
I recall that naming it CAN would create a conflict with the Christian Association of Nigeria, which is why it is now being named CARTAN instead. It would be my first and last meeting before I travelled out of Nigeria. But he was always on my mind.
There are icons and there are icons but when it comes to arts and cartoons in Nigeria, Dr. Dele Jegede is a living Icon and legend whom history will be kind to and remember well for his contributions immensely to the development of the Nigerian Society and contemporary Nigerian art.
Dr. Dele Jegede is a Nigerian-American painter, art historian, cartoonist, author, curator and teacher. He once drew editorial cartoons for the Daily Times newspaper in Nigeria and also drew his popular cartoon strip Kole the Menace for the Sunday Times.
He later relocated to the US to continue in his beloved career. He is a fan of my work and my illustrated OUR ROOTS, which documents Black History. He has now clocked 80 years on earth and I the art world are celebrating a long life.
In my quest to be a successful cartoonist, I looked at what worked for other cartoonists in Nigeria including those of Dr. Jegede’s. My mentors included Kenny Adamson, Tunde Okusi, Moses Osawe, David Lasekan, Dotun Gboyega, and Josy Ajiboye.
My late mother’s brother-in-law, the late Engineer Idowu Akinde was Executive Engineer at PWD in Ikeja, Lagos through whom Jegede got his first job as a youngster. The support allowed him to enroll at Yaba College of Technology in Lagos, where he was influenced by instructors like Adebayo and Yusuf Grillo.
Jegede’s works were the daily comics ‘Flower Power’ and Kole the Menace. Today, we celebrate Dele Jegede’s 80th birthday. Although his active career in the cartoon world was for about 20 years, he still had a significant impact on the development of Nigerian newspaper cartoons locally and nationally.
Jegede worked as a newspaper cartoonist and art editor for The Daily Times of Nigeria and its sister publication The Sunday Times. Incidentally, his cartoons were all published in the mid-1980s.
His Kole the Menace cartoon strips went through a period of Kole with caps on and without caps. Daily Times one of Nigeria’s foremost national newspapers published a cartoon compilation of Kole into a small booklet. In it, Kole was with an assorted range of wears, including a variety of hats/caps. Jegede also published satirical political cartoons in the Sunday Times and Lagos Weekend under the titles ‘Pocket Cartoons’, ‘Dele’s Opinion’, ‘Weekend Cartoons’ or simply under his own name.
The Sunday Concord newspaper published his cartoons in colour under the title ‘Funny Cords’. This was in fact the first colour Sunday comics section in a Nigerian newspaper.
Kole the Menace, started in the Sunday times in 1975 and ran till 1979 when Dr Jegede left Nigeria for Indiana university in the US for his graduate studies. Towards the end of the run of the cartoon strip, it was called Kole’s World.
Even though he left the Daily Times in December 1976, where he assumed his new position at University of Lagos in January 1977, he continued producing Kole cartoons after he had left the newspaper up till 1979.Through the years, I have been in touch with Dr Jegede following renewing contact with him, firstly as a father figure and then me contributing to his projects as an author. I will always cherish the respect he accords me and his love for my works.
TAYO Fatunla whose work has been featured on MSN.com via EURweb.com is an award-winning British-Nigerian Comic Artist, Editorial Cartoonist, Writer, and Illustrator and is an artist of the African diaspora. He is a graduate of the prestigious Kubert School, in New Jersey, US., and recipient of the 2018 ECBACC Pioneer Lifetime Achievement Award for his illustrated OUR ROOTS creation and series – Famous people in Black History – He participated at UNESCO’s Cartooning In Africa forum held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and the Cartooning Global Forum in Paris, France and has held a virtual OUR ROOTS cartoon workshop for SMITHSONIAN- National Museum of African Art, Washington D.C. His Fela Kuti image is prominently featured in Burna Boy’s mega-Afrobeat hit song “Ye.” – TAYO is the illustrator behind the pictorial Black history walk map on a lectern that guides the walk in Camberwell, South East London, U.K. https://www.instagram.com/tfatunla123
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