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Literary Prizes And Nigerian Belief

Written by Odimegwu Onwumere

Monday, 12 May 2008

Nigerian authors continue to burgeon in the world’s literary prizes. From Asia to Africa, from United Kingdom to United States of America and in all the cronies of Europe, the story is not different. This generates and degenerates such gusto and hope, especially among the lovers and friends of arts and literature. One could not be left out to be swimming in ignorance that literature is a hi-cosmic endowment put or summed-up together by the author to inform and unite people of different pedigrees about the culture and happenings of different aborigines at a different periods of time. And this is replete among the Nigerian authors.

But these attained feats by the Nigerian authors still leave one in a state of rumination why the Nigerian authors base abroad are celebrated accolades when they won literary prizes more than the home base. In the festival of celebration of literary prizes, abroad base authors are handled with optimum care and optimum reverence accorded them as if winning of prizes have different cadels in the authors’ echelon.

At home, it is reclusive, when an author wins a prize, the author’s name doesn’t go farther or more than the eave of the auditorium where the prize was awarded. But when foreign base wins, Nigeria will quake, the media will be awash with the news, the author will be placed in such a supreme tower the home base might be seeing the author as a demigod of a sort, or might even begin to worship the foreign author. The respect and celebration given the two races of authors are different with different beliefs!

Complexity has had taproot in the marrows of Nigerians that everything that has to do with abroad is handled with a sense of superiority, and this act is ruinous and has made a lot of people crave to go to abroad by all means necessary or unnecessary.

Being gluttonous, and juxtaposing to the races of the writers, one is not left to disbelief that it is the monetary dividends that follow foreign prizes that quakes Nigeria and Nigerians because one could not see the difference between Alfred Nobel Prize and Michael Caine Prize from “Chinua Achebe Prize” and “Wole Soyinka Prize”. Or, is there any difference?

Home base being demeaned, Nigerians in the Diaspora do not even get the news when an author wins a prize in Nigeria in the different literary prizes that run round Nigeria annually. The supremacy shown the abroad base is without impartiality! And the abroad base authors wear the names of the prizes they won. One could hear, “Nobel laureate”, “Man Booker Laureate” and so fourth.

In the literary world, Nigerians are racists to Nigerians, as the points above could explain. This is the same manner books of foreign base are reviewed virtually in all the traditional and online journals owned by Nigerians, even when the books sell abroad than at home, the foreign base is glued in the forefront, while home base follow.

Notwithstanding, it is no longer news today that home base have the creative ability in the art of creative writing more than the abroad base. The home base write raw literature, which is how literature is supposed to be, while abroad base write literature, with the meaning on the surface, and the words so cheap, to sooth their foreign audience because the audience does not like any literature that tussles their brain.

A work of literature is usually different from other write-ups because of the maneuverings in the expertise of language and should not be mainly centred only on entertainment. This is what the abroad base does, and Nigerians who are not looking at the literary awards money given the abroad base should note. Foreign base mar literature instead of makes it.

Being abashed by the rigours home base authors pass through before they are published, that alone ought to win them prizes as undeterred people. Imagine where the author is left to do the work of the author – writing, the work of the critic, the work of the editor, the work of the publisher, the work of the marketer, all in a bid not to go oblivion.

Those awardees of the numerous literary prizes abroad are not doing much to help literature and its makings live in Nigeria. Do Nigerians know what would be the stand of publication in Nigeria if these foreign base could unite and come home and establish an apex publishing house where, with the arsenal of Nigerian authors – home and abroad – join together to edit, critiques, publish and market a chosen work of a home base! Doing this will reduce the feathers of foreign publishing houses these Nigerian authors publish that pride magnanimously to produce an awardee-Nigerian author more than Nigeria that own the author.

It smacks one on the face and sometimes mudsling the mind to hearing people lavish their strength saying that reading culture in Nigeria is at snail speed whereas Nigerian authors at home look up to foreign base as pacesetters, just the same way Nigerian politicians look up to foreign politicians for format.

The Nigerian government is deafened to help the Nigerian author upon much clarion calls on it. However, it is only a fool that abandons him or herself when people abandoned the person. More grease to the elbows of the many organizations in Nigeria that have helped to promote the life of literature in Nigeria not to meet the bricks wall. But, there is one question the home base authors have to answer. Explanation has to be made on what they celebrate when a Nigerian author base abroad or at home wins a foreign literary prize, is it the money or the recognition?

Odimegwu Onwumere, is a poet and author,
Founder, Poet Against Child Abuse.
Rivers State. 08032552855

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