By Tajudeen Adebanjo
A Nigerian multilingual expert, Dr. Ahmad Rufa’i, has won an international Arabic Poetry Competition in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
The competition was organised by the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), as part of activities marking the World Arabic Language Day at the bank’s Saudi Arabia headquarters on Wednesday.
The United Nations had set aside December 18 every year as the World Arabic Language Day to create awareness for one of its official languages.
The Nation learnt that submissions were received and considerable ones were selected for preliminary where another round of selection was made for further presentation.
This culminated in a further selection scheduled for presentation at the quarter final and semi-final.
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Seven submissions made it to the final. They were one Saudi, one Yemeni, one Egyptian, two Sudanese, one Mauritanian and a Nigerian.
Dr. Rufa’i, whose classical poetry was adjudged the best among seven finalists, was presented the first prize by President of the Islamic Development Bank, Dr. Bandar Hajjar.
A Mauritanian and Sudanese were the first and second runners-up.
The competition was supervised by a committee of experts headed by Prof. Ahmad Masluh, a renowned scholar of Arabic Language and Prosody.
A prodigious scholar and education consultant, Dr. Rufa’i, was until recently the Dean, Faculty of Education at the Sokoto State University in Nigeria.
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