In the bid to maintain her lead in the evolving Nigeria’s third tier art market, the ArtHouse Contemporary, will again tomorrow, at the Lagos high profile event venue, the Civic Centre host the 4th ArtHouse Contemporary’s art auction.

Nigerian poet, essayist, journalist, and social critic, Odia Ofeimun has been announced as the 2010 winner of the Fonlon-Nichols Award. The award, administered by the African Literature Association, ALA, is given to an African writer every year for excellence in creative writing and for contributions to the struggle for human rights and freedom of expression, according to Dr. Oty Agbajoh-Laoye, chair of the ALA award committee.

Ahead of this year’s International Theater Day (ITD) which will come up on March 27, National Association of Theater Arts Practitioners (NANTAP) Lagos State chapter has unveiled plans for a successful hosting of the event. As usual, the event will be marked in a unique way in Lagos and other states of the federation.

Facts emerged weekend that the mobile communications giant, MTN Nigeria and Pay TV darling HiTV have thrown their weight behind Opa Williams’ talent hunt show tagged: “Thousand Laughs Hunt- Comedian Next.”

Talk about Niger Delta people, the things that come to mind are oil, militancy and youths restiveness occasioned by many years of exploitation of the oil rich region. But that does not take away the fact that apart from oil the region can still boast of producing some of the finest brains in the different areas of human endeavor.

Following the controversies that trailed the non emergence of a winner from the nine short listed poets for the 2009 NLNG prize for Literature which somehow strained the relationship between the writers and the sponsors of the Africa’s richest poetry prize, Liquefied Natural Gas of Nigeria (NLNG), the company last week at the Nigeria Institute of International Affairs(NIIA) Victoria Island organized what it tagged a ‘Dialogue with Writers’ to look for the way forward.

Following his recent appointment as the Acting Director of the National Troupe of Nigeria, Martin Adaji, last week in Lagos at a Press parley with journalists outlined programs of action to help promote and propel the activities of the Parastatal forward.

THE news came as a good development, one which does not happen frequently in the industry, when MultiChoice Nigeria in partnership with the Cable News Network International (CNN) announced a two-day media workshop to enhance the skills of journalists plying their trade in Nigeria.

IT was indeed a Valentine gift to Arts and culture lovers and numerous customers of Mega Plaza Shopping complex as Cameroonian artist and designer, Catherine Pittet in partnership with Mega Plaza presented a special exhibition of unity tagged, Valentine Art Exhibition – an exhibition of Art works and paintings of Cameroonian and Nigerian Artists at Mega Plaza, 14, Idowu Martins Street, Victoria Island. The exhibition which featured about 50 works of arts mixed with fashion show opened on February 12 and will end on February 21, 2010.

One of the public faces of contemporary literary scholarship in Africa, the reasons why Professor Nwachukwu-Agbada maintains an exulted status in African literary criticism range from his awesome prolificity to his incisive and indepth consideration of the most germane issues in African literature. In this interview, he handles in characteristic manner some of those issues.