Chima Ibeneche, managing director of the Nigeria Liquified Natural Gas (NLNG) company, should fire his speech writer. If perchance he wrote the speech he delivered at the NLNG Literature Prize Award night himself, then he has passed a vote of no confidence on himself. His speech at the fiasco of October 10 was shot through with infelicities. Before the night was over, he promised, they would be crowning "the new kings and queens of Nigerian Literature."
Anyone following the lacklustre build-up to the night would have questioned: queens? There was not one woman on the shortlist of writers to be honoured or - given what transpired - dishonoured, by the NLNG. For weeks, the literati stomached, rather too easily, a shortlist made up entirely of males; this, in a writing milieu in which women are doing great things. In an act of latent misogyny, the NLNG saw nothing wrong in effectively saying the best poets in Nigeria are men. No one raised any dust, which is symptomatic of the easy pass that has been given to this prize so far. $50,000 cash prize is worth any lapses in the administration of the prize, it seems.
Ibeneche set out the kind of people due for recognition by his company. "We have... passed the stage of having just a handful of men and women define this country," he declared. Have we? A look at newspaper adverts proclaiming the NLNG's grand award night in celebration of literature, is instructive. One listed former Nigerian head of state, Yakubu Gowon as chair of the award gala; special guests of honour were former military ‘president' Ibrahim Babangida and Shehu Shagari of the second republic. Minister of Information, Dora Akunyili, completed the list.
A charade
No mention of the nine shortlisted writers, the ‘stars' for whom the whole charade was being organised. There was a collage of images from previous award nights; weighted heavily in favour of politicians. Also in the collage, is Ibeneche and his wife, Ugo, who has now sung at the NLNG gala two years in a row. And what's with this obsession with politicians by the organisers of a literary prize? The NLNG's insistence, year on year, to make politicians the unworthy beneficiaries of a vanity gravy train, has long been a sore point for writers. The decision to make Babangida (a grotesque pillager of the Nigerian psyche, who orchestrated the scourge of anti-intellectualism from which the country has not recovered) a keynote speaker in 2007, was highly controversial. Babangida it was after all, who dispatched Mamman Vatsa to an early grave, the latter a beloved soldier-poet.
Impervious to criticism
NLNG compounds the insult by inviting the dictator again in 2009. Is this the action of an organisation that has the tiniest jot of respect for writers?
Who ever heard of politicians presiding over a literature prize? Imagine Britain's Margaret Thatcher, delivering a keynote speech for the Booker Prize, and you would have a sense of the idiocy. Another advert announced that Biafran leader, Odumegwu Ojukwu, would give the 2009 keynote speech - such that the gala night began to take on the air of a vacuous national reconstruction exercise. And who assigned to the NLNG this role of a one-night only cosmetic exercise for the nation? Is it not enough that the gas company already reaps the benefits of million dollars' worth of image laundering through its insincere literature prize?
And what is the dividend of a literary prize (NLNG's petty cash, really) dispensed by an energy company hard at work in the Niger Delta? It is that you buy the silence of the class of society most likely to criticise you. Let us come out and say it: the NLNG's Literature prize is hush money. Let the NLNG acknowledge it and let the writers acknowledge it - and let's move on.
Chima Ibeneche says his gala night is where "writers... previously unsung... achieve recognition and success despite our collective preference to recognise only power and money." But the NLNG, by recognising only the Babangidas of this world, have shown that they only recognise power and money. Why have former rulers lord over the award? They are not particularly renowned for their love of literature or reading. As for Dora Akunyili, her talent these days seems to be for the ‘foot-in-mouth' disease, as she demonstrated again on October 10.
Yet, Ibeneche would have us believe that his gala privileges only the "ordinary man" - the writers. That he classes writers - more often than not members of the intellectual elite - as "ordinary", shows that Ibeneche does not know his subject. Whilst writers readily identify with the masses, they are far from ordinary. Why should a writer consider it a "pleasure to sit with full merit amongst the business and political elite?" Let Ibeneche know, that writers are stars and do not need his validation. The shame is the NLNG's for failing to see this.
No commitment
In a Freudian slip, Ibeneche said he hopes to give winners "at least temporary fame". Temporary? Where is the commitment to the future of the writer and literature in general? A prize of this stature, if properly organised, should transform the winner's life and art permanently. But what, pray, has Kaine Agary done with the 2008 prize, other than being dollar-rich, at least temporarily? Ibeneche's grand condescension really takes the cake. All this, while his wife jumps on the coat-tails of the sham literature prize to musical relevance. For what would Ugo Ibeneche - she with no album, no music career - be doing performing at the NLNG award if she were not the boss's wife?
It has been suggested that a science company was bound to mismanage this prize, conforming to the trait of those to whom literature is a foreign country. That perhaps, is where the literature committee comes in. Speaking on behalf of the committee, Professor Ayo Banjo defended the administration of the prize, which excludes Nigerian writers based abroad. He questioned the supposed dependence of "exile literature" on memory and imagination. The judges were seeking poetry that "reaches beyond a private quest for meaning," he informed. The "presence of introspection" did not also sit well with him. As a professor of English, Banjo should be embarrassed to go on record with such poppycock.
Here are some facts: writing is nothing if not a personal quest for meaning; and poetry is the most private of the literary genres. And as any writer knows, fiction and poetry are acts of the imagination, exertions of memory - so what is Ayo Banjo talking about?
Meanwhile, the ‘stars' of the award gala, the short-listed writers, were not even invited! So, who on earth was the NLNG celebrating? To cap the insult, the judges (who, by the way, are secret; where is the transparency, the accountability?) decided that none of the nine writers deserved the award. The $50,000 prize will go to a hitherto obscure body known as the Nigerian Academy of Letters (NAL). Ayo Banjo is a fellow of NAL. No wonder some are suggesting that the committee and the faceless judges awarded the cash to themselves.
Why this murkiness, always, even in literature? Why can't we in Nigeria attempt to do things right for once? Why can't people attempt to be decent, to be seen to tow the honourable path? The 2009 NLNG Prize for Literature is a disgrace. Professor Ayo Banjo's position is untenable and he should resign from the committee, along with others found to be members of NAL. Conscientious members of the committee should leave this disreputable arrangement with the NLNG.
As for the prize, it is a shambolic endeavour that has lost all credibility and should be dismantled. Writer Denja Abdullahi walked out after Ayo Banjo's bombshell. The Nigerian writers' body should follow suit and boycott the prize as presently constituted. It is time for effective non-cooperation. $50,000 is too cheap a price for our dignity. I am a writer and I am saying this now: I will never enter a work of mine for the NLNG Prize - may the future hold me to it. There are others like me, and our numbers are growing.
In the final analysis, Odumegwu Ojukwu was the only one that attempted to be decent on the night. "What are we doing here?" he repeatedly asked. Good question
Reader Comments (61)
post a comment
* = Required information