I celebrate the increasing pride in, and beautification of, family homes. I salute the individual home builders all over Nigeria who take pride in turning their homes into works of art. By individual home builders, I mean builders of family homes and not office buildings, not government buildings. All over Nigeria, in small towns and villages, there are pockets of stylish homes built, not by politicians, not by the government, but by hardworking individuals who take steps to beautify their own small pieces of real estate.


These new home builders, for sometime now, have steadily been seducing and massaging our senses of aesthetics. Some do this by incorporating indigenous works of art on those walls and gates that our people normally install around their houses for security reasons. One of the driving tenets of my celebration of these artistic homeowners is the knowledge that theirs are not the extravagant and ostentatious buildings of the very wealthy. Theirs are the simple, modest, houses pushed to higher classes by structural styles as well as by decorative arts and lively colors.


The works of art are complemented by trendy roofs of lively colours: red roofs, blue roofs, green roofs, yellow, and even purple roofs. Because the beauty of these new age houses is extended to the outside areas of the houses, such as the walls and the roofs, they add sparkles, like fireworks, to entire neighborhoods. They force liveliness into otherwise drab communities. And because a beautiful thing feeds the eyes and the soul of everyone and not just their owners, I salute these builders and celebrate these structures.

Here are just a few of them in pictures, mostly from Owerri, Imo State:


Small but beautiful bungalow homes are proudly brightened with wraparound works of art, inviting and arresting the eyes of passersby and enriching their immediate neighborhoods. A green roof, an alternative to the trendy but common red roof, completes the seduction.


Those who can afford to make their homes big and bigger now add eye-pleasing style and rapture to architecture and structure. This is a contrast to the old, colorless, and rather drab, practice of merely piling bricks and cement on top of more bricks and cement.


Naturally, the brighter colors, such as this yellow on decorated walls, will accentuate the walls and complement the green roof in order to catch and hold your attention, bring joy to the occupants, as well as add a touch of liveliness to the community.



Ahh, a blue roof. Here, there is a tasteful coordination of every part of this home with the color blue. The owner is clearly a man who knows the attraction of everything blue. See the roof, the windows, the doors and … you get the drift.



Real estate value is always improved by an appropriately designed wall

Look closely here. You will notice the nearly-three-dimensional quality of the sculptured images which are parts of the wall of this house. I went round the house riveted by the rich and deep burrows of the artworks. The professionalism of the artist is not disputable and the value the artworks add to the house and the neighborhood is equally not disputable.



Simply but surely cool, with a generous glimpse of the inside structure



Red roof with walls reminiscent of thousands of homes in Nigeria. Tasteful.



Arts of Numbers or number of Arts? Take your pick of a description. Good.



The Nigerian fever of home beautification was caught by this unlikely victim: Kentucky Fried Chicken (Yes, KFC of America) tucked away in Owerri is designed and built to fit into the neighborhood. Nowhere in America does a KFC building look as classy as this one. As for the chicken sold in this building, you will find far better delectable chicken at any “Food is Ready” outlet in Nigeria.