Category: Arts & Life

Denja Abdullahi writes on the sentiments that guide and propel literary prizes world over.

Most literary prizes on offer today tend to be awarded on the basis of some (a times written) set of culture-specific criteria. Some however operate with undisclosed, even suspect criteria and motive. So often, prizes tend to have strings attached, perhaps the more prestigious the longer and tighter the strings.”

Saleh Abdu (2017)

The above assertion was made by Prof . Saleh Abdu in his keynote speech at the 37th International Convention of the Association of Nigerian Authors(ANA) held in Makurdi, Benue State under the theme “ Canons, Prizes and Boundaries: African Writers and African Writings in World Literature.” This statement sums up the fact that behind any given literary prize, be it the Nobel Prize, Ako Caine Prize, Commonwealth Prize, Booker Prize, Pulitzer Prize, NLNG Prize and even the ANA Prizes, there is always an underlying and overriding ideology or a principle of inclusion or exclusion. And as in Chinua Achebe’s words “no story is innocent,”  so also no literary prize is innocent of a certified bias or the other whether stated or inferred. Those who set up a literary prize have their reason(s) for doing so, they sometimes declare all or some of those reasons at the beginning but there is often no guarantee that those stated reasons are adhered to as the administration of the prize progresses. More often than not ,literary Prizes come with its expected or predetermined role playing by those who enter for them and the institutions set up to govern those prizes ; especially when the prizes are prestigious ones in terms of visibility and prize sum. Literary prizes in our world today have become powerful agents of literary canonization so much so that we now have an untoward situation of writers writing for literary prizes or playing extra-textual or extra-literary politics to gain literary fame. This is so, because it is  like  it is only those writers who win one prize or the other or who get involved in one literary controversy or the other that become famous and known as writers. Could this be the reason that in this part of our world, writers introduced themselves or are usually introduced with the appellation “award-winning” ?

 Let us start from the unarguably biggest literary prize in the world in terms of its great canonical propensity and prize sum, the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Nobel bouquet of Prizes were instituted in 1901 as willed by the Swedish dynamite inventor and entrepreneur Alfred Nobel to be given to “those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind” in the areas of physics,   chemistry, ,physiology or medicine, literature and peace. Since the beginning of the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature till date  ,it has had its fair share of controversies surrounding the secrecy behind its administration, its politics , the exclusion of some notable writers of the world from the prize over the years, its so-called fixation to awarding more European writers than those from other continents of the world and its penchant for garlanding obscure writers and their works. A few days ago , the Norwegian author, Jon Fosse, was awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize for Literature “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable.”  The relatively obscurity of the winning author , at least to many other parts of the literary world, brought to the fore again the perception in some circles that the Nobel Prize is largely Eurocentric and often awarded to “relatively unknown but undeniably consequential writers” in the words of Okey Ndibe.

 When the Nobel Prize came to Africa in 1986, the winner Wole Soyinka was (is) a widely known writer ,both in Africa and in the world , so the tag of  the Nobel being given to an unknown writer did not stick with him but what rankled in some circles was that another very famous writer should at least have been awarded the first Nobel Prize to come to Africa; that writer was Chinua Achebe, often given the honorific as the “father of modern African literature.”  The literary accomplishment of Wole Soyinka meriting the Nobel was never in doubt but not a few people doubted the politics of the awarding institution itself as it was seen to have favoured the works of a writer that is not obviously anti-western as against an Achebe, though equally meriting the prize, but may not have been given because of his trenchantly anti-west literary rhetoric and politics. The Nobel Prize for Literature and its reception in African literature by its award to four other Africans since Wole Soyinka(1986) to Abdulrazaq Gurnah (2021),has thrown up the subtle but immense power of the literary prize in the canonization of certain kinds of writers and literatures. But there are many other notable, popular and accomplished writers in Africa and beyond that are yet to win the prize. Sifting deeper into unearthing the disclosed and undisclosed criteria for adjudging a writer as deserving of the Nobel Prize will ultimately reveal the politics of the prize itself and why some writers will win it and why others may never.

Read Also: NDDC, NLNG in embrace for sustainable development

 The other literary Prize or the range of literary prizes in our focus in this piece are the Association of  Nigerian Authors(ANA) Prizes, which came into being as soon as the association was established in 1981. The Association’s objective for instituting its literary prizes across all genres is without doubt developmental. ANA Prizes ,right from inception, have a developmental philosophy governing them. ANA Prizes were instituted originally to announce new writers and new voices into the public space; it is to sort of groom talents for later literary greatness. In the early years of ANA , there was a primer for the award of the prizes, developed by Lynn Chukwura and others,  containing the criteria for the adjudication of the prizes  and their justifications.  This primer was always given to the selected judges each year of the award of prizes as guidelines. I was directly  part of the Prizes administration for ANA for the years I was General Secretary (2005- 2009) and President (2015-2019) and I can vouch for the rigorousness and transparency of the procedures. Basically ,judges, about five, are chosen basically on the strength of their expertise across selected genres(mainly teachers of literature in Nigerian Universities) and they read the books independently, form their  opinions on winning entries after sifting through the whole pile(of 200 texts or a little below) and meet once to compare notes and harmonise positions. I have sat on a number of those final meeting of the judges and I was often amazed at the coincidences of their choices of exceptional texts and even when they did differ slightly, they argued it out objectively and arrived at a  consensus. There were few times when the judges tried to seek my opinions but I always declined as I was not charged with their task and I would not want my views to influence theirs. That was the procedure for the award of ANA prizes during my watch but I would not know what happened before my time and afterwards.   A study and review of the history of ANA prizes will reveal that many who won the prizes years back later went on to win other glamorous literary prizes at home and abroad; sometimes with the same books or with other books. ANA prizes were designed to build confidence in writers and boost their literary careers.  The ANA Prizes may have lost their shine today, firstly with their abandonment by past endowers such as CADBURY, Chevron, NDDC, Literamed, Spectrum, etc due to a myriad of economic reasons , secondly with the coming of mega prizes such as NLNG Prize, Caine Prize and the now rested Etisalat prize and thirdly with receding monetary value of the Prizes due to inflation. I was at the head of a team instituted by ANA in the past to review the Prizes and suggest possible ways of overhauling them. The team recommended the streamlining of the prizes, knocking off those that have outlived their usefulness and those whose administration have become difficult due to sponsors’ disinterest and fatigue. These recommendations were upheld and implemented and ANA now has even more new Prizes such as the Chinua Achebe Prize for Fiction being managed  amid the general problems besetting literary prize administration in the country. The obvious bias of ANA Prizes is that of its being attuned to midwife new writers, new voices and younger writers into the literary firmament. This is often manifested in a winning work of a younger writer in a head to head race with that of an older  writer and more established writer preferred and crowned.At other times , qualitative mere manuscript in a tight race with a published work in the same competition is also preferred by the judges.  Those who go about with the tale of  unholy behind the scene maneuverings surrounding ANA Prizes with regards to undue interference may just be “mouthing old wives’ tales” without any iota of fact. The only bias that may attend the ANA prizes is the literary biases of the judges and these are often mediated with that of other judges in the team.  

Another popular prize that has similar developmental objective as that of ANA Prizes is the Ako Caine Prize, formerly called Caine Prize for Africa Writings.   The prize is known to have midwifed many new literary talents in Africa to global reckoning of some sorts. Buchi Emecheta at the 2002 ANA International Convention which held in Asaba ,Delta State , told a bemused audience at a writers’ workshop on how a palm oil-stained script of Helon Habila’s short story “Waiting for an Angel” did not deter the judges ( she was one)from awarding him the 2001 prize because of the literary merit of the piece. We all know it was that prize that grew the literary career of Helon Habila to where it is today. Many other young African writers came to prominence via winning the Caine Prize. But the snag is why should a prize for African writings be established and administered outside the continent? This question became imperative at a point in the history of the Prize when it started breeding “poverty porn” literature about Africa as alleged by some critics. It was like to win the Caine Prize, you just have to set your story in a refugee camp and imbue your characters with all the indices and characteristics of a dystopian Africa and viola, the Caine Prize may be yours! The poverty porn genre, seen to be promoted by the Caine Prize,  was pummeled relentlessly by its critics until things started taking a new turn towards  “extroverted” and “diasporian positioning” of African literature by mainly Nigerian and African writers living in the West ,as posited by E.E. Sule.  It is apparent that at some point in the life of the Caine Prize, the dictum of he who pays the piper dictates the tune predominated and may still be relevant to the Ako Caine Prize and other prizes of that nature set up for a people and administered and controlled by others.

It came as no surprise that when the NLNG’s Nigeria Prize for literature was to be established in 2004, ANA as the only body with the expertise for literary prize administration in Nigeria as at then was consulted. ANA formed the bulk of the few experts who helped set up the prize and the primer for ANA prizes then was adopted and extended to establish the Nigeria Prize for Literature.  A lot has happened to the NLNG Nigeria Prize for Literature since then with its many controversies such as the initial confusion whether it was a prize for literature or publishing; the dissention between the gas company and the literary community in the administration of the prize; the exclusion of Nigerian writers living in the diaspora from the Prize; the initial  privileging of writers from the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria(the operation base of the gas company) or Niger Delta themed books as winners; the rather paltry prize sum compared to the huge amount spent on prize administration; the invitation of a “writer-killer” , General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida  to headline a literary prize award ceremony; the overextended stay of alleged old-school and literarily outdated scholars as members of the Advisory Board for the Prize; the secrecy surrounding the identity of the prize judges and the privileging of only persons from the academia appointed as judges for the prize. These and many other controversies NLNG has responded positively to, leaving some lingering issues still to be addressed. The total integrity of the prize in terms of the selection of winners is still in doubt. It is like NLNG there are still some hidden hands, hidden considerations and unwritten rules that determine who wins the prize in a particular year. There have been cases when in some years , the winning works , were seen as not better the others on the shortlist or even on the long list. There were years when the judges declared that no work was deserving of winning when actually the reading community held to the contrary. There are presently front burning issues regarding the Nigeria Prize for Literature such as the actual relevance of appointing an international consultant to make the final decision on a prize that is called Nigeria Prize for Literature. There is a subtle implication to the final determination of the winner of the prize by this arrangement which may not be obvious except analyzed against peculiar years of the prize award. There is the issue of the availability of the winning works pre and post award of the Prize. Many of the prize winning books are never found on the shelves before their wins and hardly afterwards. That shows that many writers write for and package their works mainly for the Prize and those works hardly travel much after they win. Of what canonical weight is the Prize when no one reads , performs or stage the wining works? Is it the fault of the writer, the book industry, the NLNG or the society at large? The most insistent issue right now being bandies in the literary community about the NLNG Prize is the winner-takes-all policy. In a competition where the three works that make the short list are often strong enough in  their individual capacity to win the Prize if not for the decision that a winner must emerge, that is often arrived at through subjective prism, why must the other two works not be rewarded in some ways for having come that far? Literature is unlike science, it is never precise but govern by subjectivities. A princely sum of $100,000(one hundred thousand dollars) cannot just go alone to a work which another set of competent judges for the same books on the shortlist may declare as not good enough to win. NLNG should rethink that aspect and find a way to compensate the works on the long list and shortlist. They must take cognizance of their operating environment and do much more to assist the literary community beyond just coming each year to revel in the glamour of literature.  The Nigeria Prize for Literature is not the Nobel Prize for Literature awarded for a lifetime career of writing and heaping too much money on a single text while neglecting other equal deserving texts on line will ultimately be counter-productive.

 Literary prizes as highly as they may come advertised as enablement of literary development or as salubrious to the career or writers and the health of the literary industry must be properly interrogated to reveal their positive or negative underbellies. Without doubt, literary prizes are powerful agencies for forming the canon, whether locally or globally, and can spring a writer or text unto hitherto unfathomed prominence, but we must look beyond them to discover other kinds of texts or writers that are necessary for cultivating wholesome literary taste. Literary Prizes have their politics, biases, intentions and objectives. Each Prize should therefore be approached within their peculiarity and context.  In a case like the Nobel Prize for Literature  over which Africa and the third world countries cry about its eurocentrism, Africa  or the black race can establish its own Prize in the magnitude of the Nobel with which its own literatures in both indigenous and colonial languages can be celebrated and awarded. Other regions and literatures of the world being excluded by the Nobel as presently constituted can establish their own similar prizes. If you do not want to be judged by other people’s parameters and paradigms then you must set up yours. If we do not want others to dictate to us the kind of stories we tell or the kind of stories we read, as literary Prizes are modeled to do today, then we must set up our own homegrown literary prizes that will project the multiplicity of our literary productions and worldviews to the wider world.