by Olu Obafemi

I write with a certain trepidation on this year’s NNLG Prize for Literature, which has generated so much passion, anger and furore.

Trepidation because on a matter like this, it is difficult for one’s intended objectivity to be believed if there is any evidence that there is a certain slant, one way or the other, towards a direction of the seemingly clear divide on the issue.

Trepidation also because of the history of one’s involvement in the NNLG at its take-off point and also the distance one has kept away from it after the initial controversy which the conduct and management of the Prize generated after its first year of disbursement.

Most people who have cajoled me to comment on this heated debate arising from this year’s Award or non-award believe that I must have an opinion, one way or the other, based on the facts that, one, I was the Chairman of the initial Panel that NNLG put together to work out the modalities, regulations and criteria for awarding the Literature Prize; two, that I was one of the Presidents of the Association of Nigerian Authors that served on that take-off Panel before the NNLG reconstituted it; and three, I am a member and Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters presently alleged to have awarded the Prize to itself, having pronounced that none of the nine poets on the final shortlist merited the Prize.

It is also important for me to add, if that would persuade people of my capability or competence to offer an objective opinion on this issue, that in spite of all the above credentials of involvement, I have since been distanced from the Award, even at the mere ceremonial level, since in the past three Awards, I have not played any part in the Award, not even being invited as a mere guest in Award ceremonies.

I wish to re-state here that, in spite of the difficulties, challenges and errors of rendering of the Award, I remain a firm believer in the NNLG Literature Prize, or as the NNLG itself controversially christens it, the Nigerian Prize for Literature. I believe that the Prize can directly or tangentially promote, nurture and enhance the growth of Nigerian literature, if only at the level of inspiration or motivation of writers to write creative works in all the genres that can win such a prestigious prize and inexorably produce qualitative literary masterpieces. This is the sole reason why I consider myself an interested party in the Prize—not because of the initial history of my involvement with it nor because of my membership and Fellowship of the Nigerian Academy of Letters presently under fire –justifiably or nay.

This is the reason that I am coming out of my ‘shelve’ to make a few guided, near-neutral comments (if that were at all possible) on the present imbroglio over the 2009 edition of the Prize. In doing this, I have tried to find out, as much as I can, from sources close to the management of the Prize, how it got to this impasse or is it a cul-de-sac? It is important to make my position and understanding clear right from the outset before discussing the various departures on the issue. I am persuaded that there has been a technical error in the management of this year’s edition of the Prize for Literature.

By this I mean that there has been a procedural hitch. While I know that the panel of Judges reserves the right not to make an award in any particular year, it must do so credibly and convincingly. Not many are convinced that the judges have arrived at the decision not to award in as clinical and faultless a manner as it could, given the unassailable integrity and intimidating statures of its members. The decision to make conclusions from an unwieldy short-list of nine, while indeed, the usual practice is to draw a final shortlist of three, is marveling.

Why wait till the Award Night to find that none of the nine poetic entries was good enough to win the Award, and after having goaded the public and the involved poets on till the very last moment? The earlier comments made by members of the Panel had led everybody to the conclusion that an award will be made and a winner or joint winners would be declared. If the example of the Science Panel is anything to emulate, there was a year when the panel did not find any of the entries good enough to win and they said so long before the Award Night and no controversy evolved. The Award Ceremonies are not just about an award and could still be held even when there would be no winner, as it had been done before with the Science Prize.

There was also some administrative shoddiness in the way in which many of the poets on the shortlist did not even get properly invited to the ceremony, leading to the allegation of inequity in the treatment of the would-be winners.

Secondly, the manner in which the decision to offer the Prize money to the Academy of Literature (not Letters, as the MD of the NNLG pronounced it), leaves a lot to be desired, especially given the fact that prominent members of the Nigerian Academy of Letters served on the Panel. I say this because of the known fertility of the Nigerian mind. No doubt, there is a furioso-claim that the Nigerian Academy of Letters constituted the panel of Judges or indeed ran the Prize as is the case with the Academy of Science. This is an erroneous perception of the situation. Members of the Nigerian Academy of Letters on that Panel were nominated by the NNLG, in their individual capacities, not as representatives of NAL, nor was NAL consulted as a body to name judges or run the Award. The same misconstruction prevailed a few years ago when some of us from the Association of Nigerian Authors were invited, individually, to serve on the inaugurating Panel that ANA was running the Award. The decision to hand over the money for the development of literature could have been done, either through a joint committee of ANA and NAL or through an independent body, with the terms of reference clearly stated. It is indeed unfair of the NNLG to announce, on the spot and without prior consultation with the Panel, that the money was being offered to NAL to help develop Nigerian literature.

The manner of handling the affair habours the possibility of compromising the integrity and altruism of the panelists in the eye of the public and raising opprobrium for them by the contestants, as it has indeed happened. It is an unfair compensation for those panelists who have come a long way with their name and integrity intact for many decades. Perhaps the spokespersons of the Panel ought to have expressed their consternation and reservation over this manner of handling the matter publicly then or immediately later.

As I have averred earlier, the jurors reserve the right to name or not to name a winner, but they ought to have done so in no unclear and uncertain terms and certainly not from a short-list of nine, whose works had been publicly read and positively critiqued by members of the jury only to be later declared unfit to win Prizes. I hear that the decision not to award the prize this year was a unanimous one by the jurors but it was marred by temporal and spatial circumstances. It should have been done long before the Award Night after so much hope has been raised and it should have been done when a shortlist of three could not be found. This error in itself does not constitute a verdict of failure or self- compromise on the part of the judges, as it is being unfortunately put out. It is however a critical lesson for all involved in the Prize, both at the technical level of adjudication and on the management level by the NNLG itself, which did not help matters in the way the invitation of short-listed members was handled and the racy manner in which the pronouncement to hand over the prize money to the Nigerian Academy of Letters.

Now, the poor Nigerian Academy of Letters, the highest professional body in the Humanities, has since been passed through nebulous lenses, including the mischief of saying that it is a body set up by Government! This is one of the needless and avoidable injuries that have been inflicted on a body that has nothing to do with Government and has been run through its own modest means to endow the Humanities and excelling humanists in Nigeria.

The NNLG’s Prize is a good thing notoriously marred by poor management. It can correct itself and serve the noble goal of promoting Nigerian literature—when the storm finally subsides.

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