Abuja — Nigeria will soon take possession of an ultra modern museum as the United States-based organization, Ford Foundation, Monday, in Abuja presented a prototype of the museum to the Federal Government.

Construction of the prototype museum according to information gathered by Saturday Arts will be funded by Ford Foundation, British Museums, Federal Government and other stakeholders.

The Ford Foundation team led by Dr. Adhiambo Odaga while presenting the design for the proposed Lagos national museum to the Director General of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM), Mallam Yusuf Abdulla Usman, said work will commence on the site as soon as NCMM settles on the particular design of their choice.

Mr. Armstrong Yakubu of Fosters & Partners, a British architectural firm during the official presentation of the standard Lagos museum prototype on PowerPoint said the construction might take a year but all depends on the funding.

Yukubu said from the architectural work, the building will be easy to construct adding that the building is a traditional proposal, using modern materials in a traditional way, explaining that much electricity is not needed to run the buildings.

According to him, "you don't need too much energy and hopefully the building doesn't depend much on the electricity generating to run it. Also it does not need coverage or high raising walls so that it can give access to children and Nigerians to appreciate Nigerian culture and as you know, the collections in the museum in Lagos is one of the highest in the world because what they have in storage is more than anything in the museums I have seen anywhere in the world. All those artifacts there when displayed, people could come in from all over the world to come and view and we focusing more on the storage facilities".

The NCMM director General Mallam Yusuf Musa while accepting the architectural design form the Ford Foundation team said "we are going to view and evaluate the plan to see which one will be more suitable as we have a previous plan presented last year. I will study the two plans and see which one will reach our expectations.

"No one can tell when the project proper will kick off, but we are hoping it will be very soon because we are going organise fund raising so as to get the fund needed for the project and it will take some time to get the amount needed. Ford foundation has given the seed money two years ago and that will enable us start off something", he concluded.

Recall that, two years ago, the Ford Foundation voted $2 million dollars as a seed project when NCMM requested for sponsorship for the said scheme.

The National Museum Lagos which was established in 1957 is one of the 34 national museums operated by the National Commission for Museums and Monuments under the supervision of the Federal Ministry of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation and houses over 40,000 art objects.

The National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) two years ago formally announced the partnership of the Lagos National Museum with the Ford Foundation, the Arts and Business Foundation and the British Museums on the prototype museum project.