Lawyer wins $100,000 NLNG Literature prize

 by Akeem L.

An Ibadan, Oyo State-based lawyer and poet, Tade Ipadeola, has won the 2013 Nigeria Prize for Literature.

Ipadeola, who is also the President of the PEN Nigeria, won the prize worth  $100,000 with his collection of poetry, ‘The Sahara Testaments.’

The prize is sponsored by Nigeria LNG Limited.

‘The Sahara Testaments’, clinched the prize ahead of Promise Ogochukwu’s ‘Wild Letters’ and Chidi Amu’s ‘Through the Window of a Sandcastle.’

The three works had been short-listed from  201 entries received  for the prize.

Ipadeola was announced winner of the prize, which rotates annually  among poetry, fiction, drama and children’s literature at a world press conference held at Oceanview Restaurant, Victoria Island, Lagos, on Wednesday.

Officials of the NLNG, led by Dr. Kudo Eresia-Eke, General Manager, External Relations; the judges headed  by their chair, Prof. Romanus Egudu, and members of the Advisory Board for Literature jointly addressed newsmen.

Also present was Ghanaian academic and writer, Prof. Kofi Anyidoho, the international assessor of the entries.

Explaining the choice of Ipadeola’s The Sahara Testaments  in their report, the judges described it as “a remarkable epic covering the terrain and people of Africa from the very dawn of creation, through the present, to the future. The text uses the “Sahara” as a metonym for the problems of Africa and, indeed, the whole of humanity. True to epic tradition, this work encompasses vast stores of knowledge in an encyclopeadic dimension. It also contains potent rhetoric and satire on topical issues and personalities, ranging from Africa’s blood diamonds and inflation in Nigeria to ‘contrite…Blair’.”

The judges added that Ipadeola’s use of poetic language demonstrated a striking marriage of thought and verbal artistry expressed in the blending of sound and sense.

“The work is replete with historical, geographical, and literary allusions and tropes. On the whole, the poet demonstrates an outstanding level of intellectual exposure and knowledge, language use, and awareness of literature, which should be beneficial to readers and writers alike,” the judges said.

Prof. Molara Ogundipe and Dr. Andrew Abba were the other jurors.

In a related development, no winner emerged for the literary criticism prize also sponsored by the NLNG.

With respect to the literary criticism aspect of the competition, the panel observed that no literary criticism entry was qualified for assessment because none met the criteria advertised for the prize.