Nigeria's brightest poets, Professors Wole Soyinka and author of celebrated 'Just Before Dawn," Niyi Osundare, are annoyed over an invitation and proposed award to former military dictator, General Ibrahim Babangida.
Already, General Babangida is sending attacks the way of Professor Soyinka, labelling the Nobel laureate an ingrate for attempting to block him from collecting the prestigious award.
From his base in far away New Orleans, U.S., Niyi Osundare has had cause to again reach out to his General ‘friend.’ This time, however, the handout is not coming in garments of poems. It is coming in the guise of a ‘Letter to the Editor,’ in reaction to the controversy that has trailed the decision of the organisers of the Nigeria Prize for Literature to make Babangida the keynote speaker at the award night scheduled for October 6.
The invitation extended to IBB, as the General is popularly called, has unsettled a good number of writers and critics alike. Their grudge is that the IBB regime was anti-intellectual, anti-creativity and anti-regeneration in several respects. Now, for a project as grand as the NPL, such people argue, it is antithetical to have an IBB reaping from a field where he sowed, at best, contempt and scorn.
Of course, the decision started to raise dust right from the day NLNG’s Head of Communications, Mr. Ifeanyi Mbanefo, first gave writers and other literary enthusiasts the hint. That was at Ocean View Restaurant, Victoria Island, Lagos, where the Committee for Relevant Arts had organised a review of the first four years of the now $30, 000 prize. First to express shock was actor and activist, Ropo Ewenla, who felt that charging IBB with the responsibility was tantamount to polluting the spirit of literature. There, Mbanefo had, however, noted that the sky of the prize was wide enough to accommodate all birds of various backgrounds.
Of course, the Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, among others, has, according to a media report, called on the Association of Nigerian Authors to boycott the presentation should the organisers press forward with what, thank God, he did not describe as another beautification of the area boy. Also, another writer, Anthony Oha, has taken up ANA President, Dr Wale Okediran, over what he (Oha) perceives as the association’s executives’ reluctance to make a bold move on the controversy. And, in an e-mail message, ANA’s Publicity Secretary, Hycenth Obunsey, has in turn accused Oha of impatience and insubordination. Now, Osundare has ‘congratulated’ the controversial beneficiary through the letter baked in an oven of satire. Titled General Babangida, and the NLNG Event, it reads in part:
“It has come to my hearing that the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas is considering making General Ibrahim Babangida the keynote speaker at its Literary Grand Award night coming up in October. No choice could have been wiser, no reward more becoming. Remember how the arts bloomed during Babangida’s glorious rule: the way his Structural Adjustment Programme sapped the country and choked the literary enterprise in all its ramifications. Remember he was the great Nigerian ruler whose policies and actions triggered the exodus of the Nigerian intelligentsia and the hemorrhaging of the country’s creative and intellectual corps.
“Consider his unforgettable gifts to Nigerian letters: the way his June 12 fiasco destroyed our democratic hopes, thereby making this country safe and pleasurable for writers and the entire citizenry; the way he decorated the poet Mamman Vatsa’s body with the firing squad; that love letter to Dele Giwa, the dazzling journalist, in October 1986. (Oh, Babangida’s NLNG keynote this year will be a fitting 21st anniversary of that world-historic event!)
“A great job the NLNG would be doing for the rehabilitation of the ego of a great Nigerian ruler. After all, if the retired dictator couldn’t get back to the State House through the electoral process as he had dreamed, he should be able to maneuver his way back to public reckoning through an NLNG literary event.
“We cannot be more grateful to the NLNG for its great service to our national memory and moral patrimony in honouring this great hero, the inimitable Prince of the Niger.”
