In the woods, a flash of white streaked through the trees and disappeared into the denseness of the forest.” Welcome to the world of 10 years old Anisa Daniel-Oniko as expressed in her book, “Double ‘A’ for Adventure”.
Anisa’s book tells a story of an incident involving two girls and their family that happened on a forest.
She joined the league of giants when her book made the 2019 initial shortlist of the $100,000 Nigerian Prize for Literature, sponsored by the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG).
Since 2004, the prize has rewarded writers yearly. For this year’s edition, a writer of children’s literature will go home with N35.7 million prize money.
There have been winners, such as Gabriel Okara (co-winner, 2004, poetry) and Prof Ezenwa Ohaeto (co-winner, 2004, poetry) for “The Dreamer, His Vision”.
Win or not, weeks after Anisa made the list of the prestigious prize, it still feels “surreal”, said the 10-year-old. “I still can’t believe it,” she expressed at the 2019 Book Party, organised by the Committee for Relevant Art (CORA) and the NLNG.
It was a rich harvest of conversations around children as this year’s edition of the book bash held at Shell Hall of the Musical Society of Nigeria (MUSON) Centre, Lagos. The panel discussion was moderated by Lookman Sanusi, while Osaze was the MC.
As CORA’s programme chair, Jahman Anikulapo, once observed: “If you make it to the last 11 out of the highly competitive entries, the public needs to hear your voice.” It was no wonder then that the event featured readings and discussions on the 11 books, children literature and performances.
Anisa joined 10 others authors in the spotlight at the party, which brings the laureates and their books face-to-face with the literary audience to create conversations around them and their work .
“”I love fantasy books”, Anisa said with broad smiles on her face. For now, she is working on another title soon to be released. “I began to read while in my early years in primary school. This has helped me to know so much about story books and characters.”
Other laureates with her on stage were Jude Idada, author of “Boom Boom”; Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani (“Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree”); Nnena Ochiche (“Ginika’s Adventures”); Anote Ajeluorou (“Igho Goes to Farm”); Dunni Olatunde (“Mystery at Ebenezer’s Lodge”); Ndidi Enenmor (“A Hero’s Welcome”); Nkiru Uzoh (“Obioma: A Girl’s Journey to Self-Discovery”); The O. T. Begho (Great Walls of Benin); Oladele Medaiyese (She Calls Him Daddy) and Lami Adejoh Opawale (Spurred).
To Idada: “We can change the world if we can do things right. I wrote it because I have lost four friends from the sickle cell anemia disorder. It is basically on sickle cell in children. It is about an eight-year-old boy that had a dog that could speak. I felt it is high time to throw more light on the disorder. It is a lesson for children to learn about it early in life. A lot of parents do not understand the real meaning of this sickness.”
On his book, journalist, Ajelourou of the Guardian Newspapers, said: “It is to let parents learn how to take their children to the village often enough.”
Begho spoke from Saint Kitts Island, Caribbean Island, through Skype, said the past and something historic inspired him to write the story. “I noticed we have a shortage of positive African stories to assist children. Since we have a rich past I decided to look into that to produce this book. I used cartoons on TV to illustrate part of it to aid the children when they read the book,” he said.
To Nwaubani, her story was from interactions with girls captured by Boko Haram insurgents. “This novel indeed, is a harrowing story of survival and then the hope in the darkest of places. It is based on the experiences of young women, who were captured by Boko Haram. The case of these set of girls even happened before that of the Chibok girls. What I did was to look for them, interviewed them to produce this book,” she said.
Since the first edition in 2009, the book party has become a platform through which writers on the prize initial shortlist alongside their works are engaged by the public.
“The book party is used to celebrate the authors and their works for emerging as some of the very best in the country. The book party is a way of ensuring that there’s a robust audience engagement with the books that have been longlisted for this award. A work that makes it to the last 11, is worthy of significant public acknowledgment,” CORA Secretary-General, Toyin Akinosho, said.
According to him, despite the advent of social media, his organisation believed that a rich ecosystem around the book trade is still possible. “CORA believes in the building of the soft infrastructure of the book industry; the presence and improvement of book reviews in the old and new media, the availability and utility of a functional library system, the efficiency of distribution and the profitability of the vocation of writing,” he said
A shortlist of three is expected in September and the Advisory Board will announce a possible winner in October.
The chairman, panel of judges for this year’s prize is Professor Obodimma Oha, a professor of Cultural Semiotics and Stylistics in the Department of English, University of Ibadan. Other members of the panel of judges include Professor Asabe Usman Kabir, professor of Oral and African Literature at Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto and Dr. Patrick Oloko, a senior lecturer at the University of Lagos, who specialises in African post-colonial literature, gender, and cultural studies.