Nigerian author Patrick Oguejiofor (General Secretary, Association of Nigerian Authors, Abuja Chapter), gives his thoughts on a number of issues pertaining to Nigerian letters in an interview with Bridget Chiedu Onochie. This includes a weighing-in on the fiasco that was this year’s non-awarding of the NLNG Literature Prize:
What they did that day was very embarrassing, first they gave us an invitation, spent a lot of money inviting people to come for the award. If they knew they did not have an award to give at the first instance, they shouldn’t have invited us or made us to do so. It was the height of irresponsibility to invite people to the award ceremony. I also disagree with the fact that out of nine books short-listed for the award, none of them was worthy to win the prize. I do not agree with that because they did the short-listing, categorized the books into two sections - the first they said, were socially relevant but lacked craft while the second group were not socially relevant but has craft. That was what they claimed; what I am saying is that they would have used the same process they used in arriving at the short-listing to equally get the winner. They would have chosen the best of what they had, after all, most of the books that win prizes are not usually the best and for each winner of a literary work, there are 10 or 20 works better.
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