As a colourful international arts review published in Nigeria since 2001, Position Magazine has since been keeping its promise of bringing to the fore the world of African arts, artists and the complex issues that concern them.

Editor and publisher of the magazine, Dapo Adeniyi said the magazine at inception had a choice to make. There was the option of focusing on issues surrounding African arts and culture and letting African writers and artists address those issues across different national, regional and continental barriers. Another option was to concentrate on documenting the artistes and writers themselves.

Both options were considered imperative for the intellectual and artistic societies of the modern African states.
Position has thus published reviews of African arts, aside documenting voices of leading artists through interviews, which are rich, engaging and insightful. For example, a past edition of Position Magazine published an inciting interview with the Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka in 2005, shortly after the writer clocked the age of 70. This was Adeniyi’s second interview with the Nobel laureate.

The first was conducted in 1985, recorded just before Soyinka left his teaching job at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. The second interview, 20 years later, had the added feature of being filmed, with additional footages of Soyinka reading from some of his own works against the natural setting of the writer’s private home resort in Abeokuta.
The magazine, now in its fourth volume, with more than 14 special issues, has continued to keep up with the spate of arts production in the African world, beginning from Nigeria, its base.
Adeniyi also expressed the opinion that Nigeria alone needs many vibrant review outlets. He feels there ought to be weekly journals and bi-monthly publications for the purpose of rapid response in terms of critical feedback.

The current issue of Position Magazine is exquisite and full of insightful reviews. Photography seems to have a pride of place in the current issue courtesy of the Ford Foundation and The Prince Claus Fund of the Netherlands. The magazine was also distributed throughout West Africa and the United Kingdom in partnership with British Council. The March 2007 issue has on its cover a photographic feature on the Nigerian female talking drummer, Ara.
Ara was interviewed in France by one of the magazine’s contributing editors, George Osodi, also a photographer of international repute. There are also in depth reports and reviews on two foremost writers who really made their mark on the African word of letters before dying -Cyprian Ekwensi and James Ene Henshaw.

There is an essay on the history of literary production in the African country of Malawi by one of Africa’s best-known writers, Steve Chimombo. Readers in any part of Africa would be impressed by the great similarities between the histories of the development of education and the enterprise of literature from country to country. Chimombo also tells of the many challenges of creative writing in Malawi.
A.M Ahuwan of the Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria recalls in a moving narration the life and times of one of Nigeria’s best-loved artists, Ganiyu Odutokun, whose life was tragically cut short in a road accident that occurred between Lagos and Zaria in 1995. The works of Odutokun, complete, with his portrait, makes for a beautiful presentation, which has become the hallmark of Position Magazine.

In terms of printing quality, the magazine is thoroughly international. The review of Asa’s latest album shows that Position is a forum where the experts speak. For example. Adeniyi describes Asa’s creative input in this album as “ intersound” . Rather than accuse the musician of being influenced by other forms of music, he praises her for “ letting music speak to music”. He thinks of Asa’s borrowings of mood and style from sources like Bob Marley, Fela Kuti and another of Asa’s contemporaries, Segun Akinlolu (Beautiful Nubia) as “ an awareness of her musical progenitors and her environment. A celebration. Hers is the eclectic form of music”. There are several snapshot reviews from visual to performing arts and from literature to photography and film.

Adeniyi was for many years the arts editor for Daily Times. He is founding editor for the television magazine programme, Arthouse on Channels in Lagos. His first play, Helot was broadcast on the World Service of the BBC in 1986 and he was in 1994 a British Council Fellow at Downing College, University of Cambridge. He has also translated one of D.O Fagunwa’s Yoruba novels into English (Ife University Press, 1994).