Michael Olutusen Onafowokan was born into a Yoruba family in Ikorodu, Lagos State, southwestern Nigeria, in 1912. In c.1946, Onafowokan moved to London, England, to undertake architectural studies, subsequently relocating to Scotland to take a BSc in Architecture at the University of Glasgow, graduating in 1952. As an architectural student he also attended classes at Glasgow School of Architecture (now Glasgow School of Art. (GSA)). Onafowokan's university studies were pivotal in his architectural education and development as a pioneering African architectural modernist and he is widely recognized as the first Nigerian to qualify as a professional architect. Michael Olutusen Onafowokan died in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1991.
Architect Michael Olutusen Onafowokan was born into a Yoruba family in Ikorodu, Lagos State, southwestern Nigeria, in 1912. Onafowokan spent his formative years attending Christian institutions: the Methodist Primary School in the local community of Ita-Elewa in Ikorodu, and the Anglican-founded St. Peter's Primary School on Lagos Island. He then continued his secondary education at Nigeria's prestigious, second-oldest secondary school, the Methodist Boys' High School in Lagos. Onafowokan was a diligent student. In 1932, aged 20, he began his engineering training at the Public Works Department technical school (PWD) in Lagos, studying within the British colonial education system, where PWD-trained local student engineers and architects designed and built British colonial public and administrative buildings as standardised replicas throughout the Commonwealth, serving as architectural monuments to the British Empire (Salami, 2016, pp.48-49). In 1938, aged 26, Onafowokan graduated from PWD with a Diploma in Civil Engineering. From the late 1930s into the early 1940s, Onafowokan progressed as a qualified Quantity Surveyor, travelling around Nigeria and West Africa, project managing, financial planning, mapping, drawing technical plans, and overseeing the construction of public and administrative buildings. Onafowokan, however, had ambitions to develop his academic qualifications; between 1942 and 1945, with the financial means to pay the high fees required to attend regular evening classes in Lagos, he set out to improve his career prospects. After much challenging academic work, in 1946, he passed the University of London Matriculation Examination. This achievement enabled Onafowokan to pursue specialist architectural training overseas. He is widely recognized as the first Nigerian to train as a professional architect.
In c.1946, aged 34, Onafowokan moved to London, England, to undertake further architectural studies and, in the 1950s, he became a founding member of the Association of Nigerian Students of Architecture (ANSA). He subsequently left London to pursue an architectural degree in Scotland at the University of Glasgow (UofG), graduating in 1952, with a BSc in Architecture. In the early 1950s, students taking this degree also attended classes at Glasgow School of Architecture (now Glasgow School of Art. (GSA)), and in design technology at the Royal Technical College (RTC, now University of Strathclyde)). With this combined curriculum, Onafowokan received highly structured and innovative training in architectural design, as well as opportunities to develop his artistic and analytical skills. Onafowokan continued onto a postgraduate course, spending another year at UofG, completing a Diploma in Town Planning in 1953. His studies at GSA and UofG were an important period in his architectural education, marking a pivotal moment in his trajectory as a pioneering African architectural modernist. At GSA Onafowokan found himself among internationally recognised architectural specialists, such as the German-Jewish architect, Isi Metzstein, a Holocaust and Kindertransport survivor. Onafowokan's own architectural practice, when he returned to his homeland, would be directed toward the innovative merging of British techniques with African modernist design, manifest in Nigerian towns and cityscapes.
Onafowokan returned to Nigeria in 1953 and took charge of a series of official government building projects for the Ministry of Lands and Housing in Ibadan, southwestern Nigeria. He subsequently held senior posts in the Ministry of Transport, leading public architectural projects and project managing road development design, establishing a distinguished career throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and founding the Nigerian Institute of Architects (NIA) in 1960 (Akinkanju, 2027, online), He retired from the civil service in 1968; by this time, he was Chief Regional Architect. Onafowokan continued working independently and established his own eponymous architectural firm, the Onafowokan Cityscape Group. His architecture spanned diverse building types, from Methodist churches (1963-1965), to Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (1972), and Ogun State Low-Cost Housing Scheme (c.1980s), his designs combining adaptations for tropical conditions with geometric modernist aesthetics. He won nationwide recognition, notably the Order of the Niger (OON) in 1982, became a Member of the Commonwealth Association of Architects (CAA) and President of the Commonwealth Board of Architectural Education (CBAE) (Akinkanju, 2027, online). Michael Olutusen Onafowokan died in Lagos, Nigeria in 1991 and received a Posthumous Award from the NIA in 2010. Onafowokan remains a pioneering figure in African modernist architecture.
Joy Onyejiako.