THE PRIZE AND THE TRUTH -- The NLNG Prize controversy
LNG Literary Prize: The Return Of Truth
Unfortunately, none of the entries received met the high standard set by the panel of judges for the Nigeria Prize for Literature 2004. None was adjudged free of numerous faults observed because grave damage was done to these submissions through Self-publication with its attendant disabilities emanating from poor packaging. The panel of judges observed that recourse to self-publication short circuits the traditional publishing processes and this gives rise to the numerous stylistic and grammatical flaws just observed. It is further observed that many writers have not acquired the necessary education or undergone proper apprenticeship and training required for the high-level performance expected from winning entries at this level. Future competitors are thus urged to take note of these observations.
So, what are the new things that the jury of the LNG prize was saying in their damning reports on the state of Nigerian literature, especially in terms of quality of production, that had not been said in the past? Was the community of Nigerian writers being told anything new than what many conscientious critics, book reviewers and concerned observers of trends in Nigerian contemporary writing, had consistently drummed into their ears?
Weren’t those observations about carelessness in craft handling, poor editing, bad grammar, awkward constructions, irrational logic and general sloppiness in theme and techniques, the bulk of observations contained in the reports of the juries of the Association of Nigerian Authors, ANA annual Literary Prize in 2001?
Wasn’t this impatience with the due process of producing qualitative writing what Professor Niyi Osundare was stressing at the 51st Art Stampede held in honour of the 70th birthday anniversary of the Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, last June?
Wasn’t the poor attention to mastering the laborious craft of writing meaningfully and sensibly pointed out by the LNG jury, the theme of a statement by Africa’s foremost novelist, Chinua Achebe, to two reporters in a room at the Sheraton Hotel and Towers one afternoon in 1991, when he came home after nine years of sojourn in the United States?
Didn’t (at the same Sheraton meeting with Achebe) the city fictionist Cyprian Ekwensi, express the fear that self-publishing and the inordinate ambition of young (or new) writers to become overnight stars will rubbish the excellence that Nigerian literature had attained globally.
Said the then Septuagenarian -- “these young people they want to win the Nobel overnight without first knowing the meaning of good writing”. He added: “And they don’t want to listen to anybody. They believe they know it all.”
Wasn’t the matriarch of Nigerian literature, Mabel Segun right after all, when at the flag-off of the reading tour of the LNG prize shortlist, she told a group of culture activists who were asking her to address the 54th Art Stampede dotting on the imperative of a dialogue between young and old writers at the 6th Lagos Book and Art Festival, she said: “I would very much love to do that, but I am not sure your colleagues — the young writers — are ready for the truth. When you talk to them, they say that we are too old and should retire and die. But I will be there. We shall not stop telling them the truth. They must go and learn that writing is not as easy as they think; that they need to be patient and learn the craft very well. No writer in history ever got it right without patiently reading the others and working very hard?”
Haven’t the eventual submission of the old woman — and that of the other people who shared her worries about the so-called new writings — at the Art Stampede, just a little over a month ago, about the deprecating quality of writings, turned out prophetic?
Aren’t those concerned observers of the Nigerian literary field, who had warned that the dislodgement of merit and enthronement of “Family Circle” criteria in the award of the annual awards of the ANA prizes, the eventual winners in this ‘drama of unbecoming’ of the Nigerian literature?
And far back into history…
Haven’t the words of the late poet and literary critic, Sesan Ajayi at the very first edition of the Art Stampede in June 1991, to the effect that new writings were already being afflicted by the viruses of rot and devaluation in quality that was at that time creeping into all spheres of the national life, come true, 13 years after he made the statement, and seven years after he died?
That afternoon on the open space in front of Toyin Akinosho’s (convener of the Stampede and today, secretary-general of the CORA on A Close in Festac Town), Ajayi, who was writing a weekly critique on books in The Guardian, had warned that the advent of the so-called ‘pop novel’ then championed by (now late) May Ellen-Ezekiel (later Mrs. Mofe-Damijo), was bound to assume some preeminence in Nigeria’s literary production. And that it could begin to affect the nature and progression of Nigerian contemporary writings.
Expectedly, Ajayi’s opinion was not popular and the anger from some of the then-emerging writers – who had begun to win the ANA prizes — drowned the late critic’s very lean frame. He was almost a pitiable sight. And when he went ahead to write on the discussion at the Stampede in his column, the following Sunday, he reaped baggage of opprobrium and condemnation. Some of the writers stopped talking to him altogether.
Ajayi took it all in his usual calm mien. He took it all into his blessed final resting place.
The disgrace -- well, there is no other apt word to capture the reports of the LNG prize read publicly at the Grand Finale cum Gala Nite of the Prize project -- is the triumph of Truth; triumph of the words of wisdom; the triumph of the written Word as the everlasting treasure that will bear testimony to the power of the Truth.
When about a decade ago, glaring corruption began to creep into the activities of the Association of Nigerian Authors, ANA, in which certain members of the executive council began to walk the set criteria for the award of the annual prizes on their heads, and arm-twisting members of the jury to give awards to their friends and cronies, certain members of the literary community raised alarm; and warned of the future consequences. The dissenting voices who berated the power-drunk exco members and their regime of ‘influence peddling’, were labelled enemies of the writers' community. Gradually they were excommunicated from the body of writers.
Enter, the regime of ‘Caucus-ANA’ and ‘godfatherism’, whose masters polished the armour of demerit, and institutionalized ‘Paddy-Paddy’ government in the history of the writers’ body.
Yet the critics, many of whom had then become ‘mere enthusiasts’ in the affairs of the writers’ body, would not stop crying out their fears and anxieties. At every opportune moment they raised it. But the ‘arrogance of the head’, which has over the years become the most defining characteristic of many of the young Nigerian writers and their godfathers, would not let them heed the voice of wisdom.
Every year, the writers are called out to a chosen part of the country for the ANA convention, and prizes are dished out to so-called winners. Observations of the various Jury, pointing out the enthroned culture of rot in the firmament of contemporary writings, which were always read out publicly, were always soon forgotten. The reports never at any time mattered to the enlightened interests of the writers and their godfathers.
The yearly party of writers would every year, always end up in a feast of the bottles and wild merry.
Everyone would go home. Case finished. Till next year.
The truth came home last Saturday however. It gave vent to the aphorism that even when a lie had reigned for decades, it takes less than a second for the truth to catch up with it. All the lies of ages crashed at the foot of truth on Saturday, in the cool, comfort of the Congress Hall of the Nicon Hilton Hotel, Abuja. The story unfolded right before the very eyes of many of the members of the community… well, and some of their godfathers.
They were not present at the return of Truth: Sesan Ajayi. Chinua Achebe. Cyprian Ekwensi. Mabel Segun. Niyi Osundare. All those who had in the past registered their voices in the campaign to rescue Nigerian literature from the path of self-destruction.
They were there with obvious burdened heart: Wole Soyinka. Gabriel Okara. Charles Nnolim. Theo Vincent. And some others in that respected club, who had spent their youthful and adult years fathering the vocation and nurturing it to respect at home and abroad. Expectedly, their club could rightly be termed the ‘Estranged members’ of the writers collective, ANA.
Intriguing indeed, it was the lot of the man, who by his prodigious productions and attainment in the vocation of writing, represents the pinnacle of Nigeria’s achievement in the global literary firmament – Oluwole Akinwande Soyinka.
“I agree with much of what the judges have said”, remarked the all-grey-haired man cutting more the picture of a stage on the broadly lit stage. If he bore a pain in his heart, he was as usual, smart with it. He buried it beneath the swelter of humour that lazed his extempore speech. Though he said he was not totally in agreement with the whole of the observations of the LNG jury, he nevertheless agreed with them that Nigerian literature has ceased to aspire to excellence and unblemished accomplishment.
Soyinka noosed the neck of publishing business with the tragedy… “this is an indictment of the publishing industry in Nigeria”, said the man as he recalled his earlier frequent warnings about the potential evils of self-publishing. In the audience that night sat at least three chief executives of notable publishing houses in the country Joop Berkhout (Spectrum); Bankole Olayebi (BookKraft), Adegbola (Evans) – the first two are Soyinka’s publishers. What could have been running through their minds as Soyinka scorched the buttock of their trade? Were they self-congratulating themselves that what they had always given as reasons for refusing to publish manuscripts from many Nigerian writers had eventually been upheld as justified? Or did they sink into self-mortification for having been the harbinger of the regime of “self-publication with its attendant disabilities” through their much-vilified refusal to patronize works of Nigerian writers; and their overt covetousness to commercialization which made them romance biographies and school text while shunning creative writing?
Oh, they were not in the hall… the so-called Nigerian writers abroad, majority of whom had been acerbic critics of the LNG prize, particularly for its stated criterion that only writers in Nigeria were eligible to participate in the competition. Since the prize project was announced about a year ago, it had become perhaps, the most discussed project in the Nigerian literary circle home and abroad. It had the most feasibility on Internet discussion groups as well as on the arts pages of Nigerian newspapers. Cannon of words and angers have awash its soul. This is not to abate now. Not with the latest development.
But are the ‘Nigerian writers abroad’ – many of whom were swept mostly across the sea by the late 80s through the 90s' brain drain phenomenon, triggered by the search for better and qualitative education in the face of the falling standard at home; disillusionment with the social and political conditions at home as well as the search for economic fortunes, far away from a land that gradually crippled its middle class and the elite – toasting that their winds have blown to expose the behinds of their ‘enemies’… those who supposedly conspired to exclude them from aspiring to the largesse of the NLG? Is anyone out there lullabying: ‘we told them so, that the NLG prize was destined to come to no good for the Nigerian literature?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WzmWApYreM&list=PLl6IvhbhEqwwf3FdaeUpB8uW97rwEIhvm&index=621
Well, let the jubilant step softly on the dance floor, so he doesn’t end up in the belly of the earth as happened to the elephant, whose arrogance was fatally tamed by the lithe tortoise. There is nothing to be jubilant about. The writers abroad are not themselves exculpated from the indictment in the NLG jury reports. They had been part of the rot too. Everyone has a mote in his eyes in this affair. Many of these writers were themselves the kingmakers of self-publishing, or what has been variously described as ‘Vanity Publishing’ or ‘Money-for-hand’ publishing. Many of them, through unbridled ambition, to win the annual ANA prizes ‘at all cost’, dragged the collective body of writers into the mud of ‘caucuses’ and ‘alliances’, which led to the exit of a huge club of potential members, who could have been part of the few insisting on sanity, truth and conscientious-ness in the activities of the writer's body.
Majority of the works with which many of the ‘writers abroad’ won the ANA prizes, too are riddled with the type of ‘avoidable errors’ catalogued by the wise judges of the NLG – incidentally, the jury is peopled by the teachers and mentors of many of the writers abroad.
Many of the writers abroad scripted the ‘arrogance of the head’, which blotted out any attempt to recourse to self-cleansing of the writers’ community, through an obviously bloated sense of accomplishment or ‘arrival’ as someone once dubbed it.
Stated Osundare in his extempore keynote at the 51st Stampede in June: “…there seems to have developed a certain kind of over-bonding among our new writers, a kind of nest-crowding that happens among birds threatened by external danger…. No, there is nothing wrong about a sisterhood or brotherhood of letters. But what we have at the moment is a kind of tiwantiwanism (ours-is-ours); with, of course, the unstated but implied rider tiwonntiwon (theirs is theirs), a kind of intra-generational commune whose tenet is: our own thing wrong or right.
“This kind of mindset is capable of producing an incestuous affinity, an over-subjective fraternity/sorority which operates through a process of inclusion by discriminatory exclusion: This is our own generation; let’s patronise, publicise, and protect our works at all cost. The older generations have taken care of themselves and grabbed their place in the sun. Greedy bunches: see how they stand in our way. This is our chance... Are we in danger of producing a band of writers, a guild of think-alike critics whose sworn duty is to protect the group from inter-generational onslaught? This clannish mentality draws inspiration from another strain of the tiwantiwanist virus: tribalist criticism, an infection that has never been very far from the fabric of Nigerian letters, but which has become quite acute in recent times: How dare you criticize the works of a fellow tribesman/woman. Good or bad, it is the work of your kinsman/woman, and belongs to the tribal stock. Stay under the tent. Not so to do is to be guilty of treachery. Let us be frank: our new writers did not invent this virulent mentality, though this fact does not absolve them from blame for its perpetuation...”
The applause that trailed Osundare’s (though stylishly veiled) brutal and frank critique of the degeneration of the Nigerian writing had hardly subsided when some of the ‘new writers’ – many of whom hadn’t even listened to the full delivery, picked up the axe, aiming for his ageing neck. One particular writer rushed up to the compere of the occasion and declared: “it will be so sad if you don’t allow us to respond to this Osundare man. He was just making sweeping statements; what does he know about the work of new writers. How many poetry collections has he read; how many drama scripts has he read. Has he read my work”. When he noticed the disinterest of the compere, he stammered off. He went to join some other members of the writer clan, who as always, had formed another discussion group some metres away from where Osundare was dissecting the state of Nigerian literature, drawing a comparison between old and new generations of writers.
The impatient comportment of the young writer to criticisms reechoed at the Abuja NLG Prize ceremony.
Shortly after concluding the report of the jury, Abubakar Gimba proceeded to give the citation of the three writers considered befitting of ‘Honourable Mention’… he had hardly gone through the first paragraph of the first writer when a corner of the Congress Hall erupted in grumbling. Someone out there was agitated. He was one of the shortlisted 13 (the judges claimed they shortlisted six). His aggressive outbursts continued to laze the entire presentation by Gimba. While the Vote of Thanks was in progress, the agitated writer was seen in the lobby of the hall, screaming: how can any reasonable person say that this book (he flaunted a copy of his entry) is not well edited; has grammatical errors and all that rubbish they were talking about. What do they know about the English language? Do they know that some of us have been writing for decades… please let’s get out of here; I have just come to waste my time here. With that, he grabbed copies of his book on display in the lobby and dragged his company (a rotund fellow who all along was heaping expletives on the judges) and walked into the night of Nicon Hotel. A reporter who tried to conclude an earlier discussion with the writer was shoved off the way.
Yet another shortlisted writer found himself alone in the midst of five reporters, who were expressing their shock at the jury’s report said: “Those judges whoever they are, are jokers. My book has been well applauded by knowledgeable people and now these guys came and said it was not good enough for their award… We know their politics. They found a safe way out of the embarrassment of having members of the board of the prize and relatives of some of the NLG staff on the shortlist.”
No contrary argument canvassed by some of the reporters would swing his convictions that the Jury’s decision had been influenced by the controversies that had dogged the inclusion of certain names in the shortlist.
Echoing the sentiments of some of the members of the audience that night, he kept muttering “Even at that they should have awarded the prize to at least one of the writers.”
It did not matter that the book adjudged to represent the very best work published in the last four years in Nigeria, should according to criteria for the NLG prize “represent the best of our writing”. Just give the prize and let my people go — the morbid philosophy that has come to define national etiquette in terms of performance and accomplishment.
But the attitude of impatience reflected in the reactions of the two writers above has been with the community of writers for long. And it is not peculiar to writers at home alone. It is part of the reasons why qualitative critics have taken the flight off the pages of newspapers. It was impossible to write a critique of work and keep a straight face, without being ostracised by what Osundare has called “clannish” community of writers. Those who had dared in the past had been rewarded with insults and abuse. The era of “Scratch-my-back-I-scratch- yours” critics and reviews of literary work was effectively entrenched
Reviewing a collection of poems by a writer, a critic suggested that the poems are very prosaic, do not read like verses and at best sounded more journalese and pamphleteering! The writer who, then, had just relocated abroad, fired back: he thought the critic was mischievous, unlearned in the art of poetry and was indeed stupid to question his competence in poetry writing, after all, he had won many prizes, and no jury had ever queried his writings.
Another example: after a half-decade stay abroad, a writer came home, thrust his latest collection in the face of a reporter. After two poems, the reporter retorted:
‘But what has happened to your love of strong, dreadful imageries, which distinguished you from the others in the past?’
‘They are there. You need to read deep to get it’.
‘I think you have really watered it down, these read like a short story; it is not really poetic’.
‘Well, you may not see it. Others have seen it and praised my craft. But because some of you guys here have not seen good literature for a long time, you tend to lose the trend of new styles and techniques. Nigerian writing has moved away from here. It is abroad’.
With that, he suspended his promise to autograph a copy of the book for the reporter. They sank their differences in drinks under the almond trees at the National Theatre.
At the June Stampede where Osundare spelt out his fears about current writing, a robustly argumentative writer, who one hour after he arrived the venue had not even sat down to listen to what the Professor of English was saying, walked up to the compere: ´hey, this man is overtalking, tell him to shorten it and give other chance”.
“But he is doing the Keynote, protested the compere”.
“Ehn, but what is he saying that others have not said before him”.
The exasperated compere remarked, “But you have not even listened to him, at least not since you arrived here, I saw you… you, like your friends over there, are more interested in breaking this house into two…”
“Well, you know we writers are restless. We have no time for all this long talk”.
He went off to join the rest of the ‘break-away’ participants at the Stampede.
As it was with Soyinka, the novelist Abubakar Gimba had a burden. He was saddled with reading the fatalistic report of the LNG jury. Gimba is a past president of ANA. If he felt rankled by the indictment of his community, he was not alone in his category. Also in the hall were Femi Osofisan, also a former president of the writers' body; and Olu Obafemi, the incumbent President of the body.
In spite of the excuses that members of the writer community would bring up to counter the claims of the LNG prize, the subtext of the indictment should not be sacrificed. It is not enough to attempt to rubbish the submissions of the jury as some of the writers have already begun to do, blaming certain clandestine agenda of the organisers or the failure to include everybody in the project. These excuses and blame-trading will only lead to one path: a return to the rotten past. The report should serve to relaunch Nigeria’s writing to dream and aspire toward excellence again. A rebirth of craftsmanship and technique mastering, after all the Jury ruled that the writing is not devoid of great themes or good stories or ambitious style and technique. It is in the matter of cleanliness and effective production that the entries were mostly faulted.
The Jury’s report is in substance, a call to the re-examination of how much Nigeria literature had derailed from a destiny of excellence on which its history had begun. It is a subtle call for return to the glory which had enabled Nigerian writers win nearly all the Literary prizes ever instituted in the world.
A failure to see the report as a call to rebirth should perhaps lead to only one
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