By PRISCA SAM-DURU

The much coveted $100,000 prize money of the 2012 Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas NLNG will eventually get to the best author today as a winner out of the last three standing is announced at a world press conference in Lagos. The Prize which is in its 8th year running was instituted with a view to motivating Nigerian writers in four literary genres vis a vis, poetry, prose, drama and Children’s literature. The prize is rotated around the genres  each year and this year focuses on prose fiction.

Prior to the competition getting to its climax, over 200 works were submitted by Nigerian writers living in different parts of the world and out of this number, about  ten  writers were initially shortlisted.

They  include;, Pa Onuora Nzekwu(Troubled Dust), Vincent Egbuson(Zhero), Lola Shoneyin(The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives), Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani(I Do Not Come To You By Chance) and Jude Dibia(Blackbird). Others on the list were Chika Unigwe(On Black Sister’s Street), Olushola Olugbesan(Only A Canvas), Ifeanyi Ajaegbu(Sarah House), E E Sule(Sterile Sky) and Ngozi Achebe((Onaedo:

The Blacksmith’s Daughter). These top ten were at a Committee For Relevant Arts’ (CORA) organised book party held at the Kongi’s Harvest Hall, Freedom Park Lagos, on the 7th of October, 2012 presented to the public for the purpose of discussion around the authors and inspiration behind their works.

At the Book party, the need to ignite objective discourse thereby creating more awareness on the short listed works  became obvious. And buttressing this fact, CORA Secretary-General, Mr. Toyin Akinosho, pointed out that “Everyone knows that we produce remarkably good books in our country.

But we also know that we don’t discuss them enough; we are not made aware enough. The soft infrastructure of  the book reading culture is not aggressively under construction. We at CORA have always felt that books that make it to this level in such a major award system as The Nigerian Prize for Literature ought to be known about in every community in the country. Our ambition is to help that to happen; to extend the star attraction of the award winner beyond the Gala Night of the award”

The list was subsequently narrowed to three best works which include; Olusola Olugbesan’s Only  A Canvas, Chika Unigwe’s Black Sisters’ Street and Ngozi Achebe’s Onaedo: The Blacksmith’s Daughter.

Among the three contesting works, Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sister’s Street tells a heart rendering story of the lives of four African migrants working the red light district of Antwerp in Belgium who are brought together by vicissitudes of life into a sisterhood that changes their lives; Onaedo: The Blacksmith’s Daughter by Ngozi Achebe on the other hand, is a narrative of Onaedo, a young teenager of Igbo extraction, in the time before the arrival of Western colonialists.

The story captures the daily struggles of being a woman in a patriarchal society and how she deals with life, love and at some point, an unloving husband, while Only A Canvas by architect Olusola Olugbesan is a tale that brings together very interesting characters from different backgrounds with dreams complexly woven together to create a tapestry of life.

Two points stand out in this year’s literary contest. First,  apart from Chika Unigwe who has other published works before On Black Sister’s Street, other contenders for the prize are in the competition with their first published works.

There is also the tendency to belive that the prize seem to be favouring new entrants since Ngozi and Olugbesan floored some established writers on the top ten list to make it to the best three and this also speaks volume of the fact that the best is yet to be seem in the literary industry in Nigeria.

That notwithstanding, between  Ngozi Achebe and Olusola Olugbesan, one is likely to emerge as the winner of this year’s NLNG prize given that their works come with such engrossing, captivating and professional approach that impact tremendously on Nigerians.

Gender speaking, Nigerian male writers have dominated winning of the prize since inception. With the exception of Mabel Segun, Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo and Ken Agary, all the other winners in the past editions are men. They include; Gabriel Okara, Late Ezenwa Ohaeto, Ahmed Yerima,  Irobi Esiaba, whose Cemetery Road was awarded the prize posthumously and  Adeleke Adeyemi who wrote under the pen name, Mai Nasara.

As another NLNG laureate is canonised this morning at Ocean view Restruant, Victoria Island, one critical question that begs for answer is: will the Nigerian woman writer challenge the patriarchal order?