By Ibrahim Ramalan
Reactions are beginning to trail the recent release of the longlist for the richest prize in African literature, the Nigeria Prize for Literature (NLNG) 2017. Th e Advisory Board for the prize led by Emeritus Professor Ayo Banjo announced an initial shortlist of eleven books, drawn from 184 entries, in the running for the 2017 edition of the competition. Th e shortlisted poets are: Peter Akinlabi – Iconography, Hyginus Ekwuazi – One Day I’ll Dare to Raise My Middle Finger at the Stork and the Reaper, Obari Gomba – For Every Homeland, Ogaga Ifowodo – A Good Mourning, Seun Lari-Williams – Garri for Breakfast, Humphrey Ogu – Echoes of Neglect. Others are: Tanure Ojaide – Songs of Myself: Quartet, Ikeogu Oke- Th e Heresiad, Abubakar Othman – Blood Streams in the Desert, Jumoke Verissimo – Th e Birth of Illusion and Ebi Yeibo – Of Waters and the Wild.
A shortlist of three is expected in September and a possible winner will be announced by the Advisory Board in October. Immediately after the announcement, a prominent poet in the country, BM Dzukogi took to his Facebook page to doubt the credibility of the judges, saying “From the day the judges were announced, I knew that this year’s NLNG would be full politics.” DZukogi, who is one of the foremost literary promoters in the country and a former general secretary of the Association Nigerian aUthors (ANA), added on a separate post: “NLNG & the return of copy cat saga: the ‘copy cats’ abi na ‘copy kittens’ are questioning the potency of ‘mother cat’ on 2017 long list.” One of the many commentators who reacted to DZukogi’s post, Friday JohnAbba out rightly descried the statement as hasty saying that DZukogi and other critics needed to go through these works before jumping to conclusions. “I think that we need to stop this. Until we have read all the poetry collections on this list and “objectively” compared them to the ones we believe should have made the list. “Until we can categorically point at the collections that should not, by merit, make this list; until we can do these and in what should be a very “objective” way, I think we do a very serious injustice to the judges and the administrators of this prize,” he noted. Similarly, Isaac Attah Ogezi, the current legal adviser to the Association of Nigerian authors (ANA) agreed with John-Abba when he said: “We do the judges grave injustice which is as good as questioning their integrity. We lack the spirit of sportsmanship in Nigeria like our politicians.
When a decision doesn’t favour us, the house must be brought down.” However, BM defended himself by saying that, “questioning the judges’ integrity is not a wrong thing; it doesn’t amount to bringing down the house. “Brother, the Nigerian judiciary teaches us a lot, these days. Dr. Bala Usman once said that our inability to ask questions is a bane in development,” he pointed out. Also, Henry Akuburo, another writer and a literary journalist seemed to align with Dzukogi’s position as he categorically descried the contention on the integrity of these judges as laughable when he said: “It is laughable when some of us say we can’t question the integrity of judges. Are judges gods? “Th ey are human beings, and human beings are imperfect. If you don’t question the literary process, it will remain business as usual. “From Booker Prize to Nobel Prize, questions are being asked of judges and prize administrators to get it right. We can’t be all cowards at the same time. Judges are not super humans.
” It could e recalled that the NLNG had announced the judges for this year’s prize to comprise Prof. Ernest Emenyonu, professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint, USA as the leader, Dr Razinat Mohammed, associate professor of Literature at the University of Maiduguri and Tade Ipadeola, poet, lawyer and winner of Th e Nigeria Prize for Literature, 2013.
