The Prize Trojan: Misleading by example

Literature, especially poetry, ultimately is about truth and beauty. Think John Keats. We may look at a poem from a contemporary poet to catch a glimpse of this idea so central to life. In the opening lines of his poem, Symposium, Paul Muldoon had this to say:

‘You can lead a horse to water but you cant make it hold its nose to the grindstone and hunt with the hounds.’

Poets would say that is a shimmering, heartbreakingly beautiful way of stating the obvious. You may excuse Chima Ibeneche, managing director of NLNG, the specialist gas company of Nigeria, for not caring particularly for Keats or Muldoon or Remi Raji or Hyginus Ekwuazi: he is a man of science.

But neither Mr. Ibeneche nor his company may be excused any indifference to truth. They deal in liquefied gas, something they transport at many degrees below zero. Mr. Ibeneche knows exactly what happens if any error occurs in determining the true temperature at which he transports liquefied gas. There is only one word for it: disaster.

Now, if this is the consequence of an error with gas, what is the consequence, the real consequence, of an error with national literature? But is Mr. Ibeneche to be bothered? His wife will sing at the next awards.

The key players

The NLNG seemed determined to ensure that there were no errors. At inception they got talking with Nduka Otiono who was then national secretary of the Association of Nigerian Authors.

They also got talking to some icons of Nigerian Letters. The prominent names and faces were those of Professors Ayo Banjo, Theo Vincent, Femi Osofisan and Dan Izevbaye. What emerged from the rubbing of bellies between the parties generated immediate hostile reactions from the body of writers.

First, the company excluded Nigerian writers resident abroad from their literature prize. Next, it took a dark route to giving its prize the nomenclature of the Nigerian Prize for Literature, with none of the stakeholders, namely writers and the National Council of Arts assenting.

The company also refused to endow the prize properly and insisted on administering it by itself. Now, there is no surer recipe for disaster than operating outside your core competencies, but in this matter, since what was at stake was literature and not gas, the NLNG couldn’t care less what writers wrote or said.

A leading poet and writer who raised the red flag of caution at inception was Odia Ofeimun. He itemised the objectionable elements in NLNG’s modus vivendi and said in not so many words that if it persisted in its plans it was going to end up with a ghetto prize instead of a truly respectable literary prize.

The NLNG, impervious to reason, ignored him. That poet swore never to enter his works for the NLNG ghetto prize. Some thought at that time that Ofeimun’s position was extreme.

Early dissenters

Transparency is a key best practice. The NLNG could not deign to be transparent. It decided to play hide and seek with Nigerians regarding the identity of the judges.

They preferred to further diminish the stature of the prize by not announcing beforehand who these noble personalities are. In other places, organisers of literary prizes make a lot of cultural capital out of announcing the identity of judges.

A sound literary panel of judges is evidence of good taste, critical intelligence, gender and demographic sensitivity. I am not sure if any woman ever served on the NLNG’s panel of judges. Compare the odd approach of NLNG to, say, the Neudstat Prize. Anyone can go online and see who the jury members are.

Not content to simply hamstringing the prize horse with anonymity, the NLNG panel of judges since 2004 has turned out one controversial verdict after another. It began to resemble a death-kiss, the prize.

And then the irritating habit of inviting to the award ceremonies known enemies of Nigerian Literature particularly, and mass literacy in general. A poet, perhaps the most gifted in his generation, Benson Eluma, thought this proclivity of NLNG is an extreme display of contempt for our literature.

When NLNG quite deliberately decided to invite Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, I knew it was gung-ho about humiliating the writers of Nigeria and then decided never to enter my works. Anyone who does accept such a prize, in my view, does so in disservice to Nigerian Literature.

And what shall it profit that writer? Another poet of stature in his generation, Niran Okewole, winner of the Berlin International Poetry Festival 2008, publicly advocated that poets ignore this repugnant prize.

A Trojan steed

The ghost of Artaud entered the picture in 2009. When the call for entries went out, no one was told that the rules had changed. We all got to learn that this was the position when Remi Raji’s sterling collection of poetry, Gather My Blood Rivers of Song, was disqualified for containing a ‘rehash’ of previously published poems. Now, it is a mortal sin in a literary judge to use words such as ‘rehash’ loosely.

I happen to know personally that Raji’s entry contained not a single poem from ‘Lovesong for my Wasteland’, Raji’s only previously submitted volume of poetry. And there was no rule against submitting either selected poems or collected poems. Except this anonymous panel of judges invented that illiterate rule ex post facto.

A long-list of nine was nevertheless announced. No one was prepared for what happened on the night of the awards. None but one of the writers on the long-list was invited. NLNG gave the prize money to the Nigerian Academy of Letters. It’s a delicate situation.

We wait to see if the Academy accepts this $50,000 Trojan steed. The NLNG insists it dealt with Mr. Otiono in his personal capacity. But that claim cannot now stand with NAL. In the twilight of these idols, they attempt to lead the horse to hunt with the hounds. And therein lies the tragedy.

Tade Ipadeola, a poet and lawyer, is the author of A Time of Signs.