Posted by By Mcphilips Nwachukwu & Benjamin Njoku on
LAGOS - Efforts to bring multi-national establishments operating in Nigeria to promoting and expanding their social responsibility.....
LAGOS - Efforts to bring multi-national establishments operating in Nigeria to promoting and expanding their social responsibility to their host communities was given an added challenge week-end, when the winner of a privately instituted prize endowment in honour of Africa's first Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, was announced in Lagos.
The prize won by Sefi Atta's Everything Good Will Come was the third to be set up by private individuals in Nigeria. They include, N1million Pat Utomi Prize for Literature and USD75,000 Literary Prize set up by celebrated novelist, Chinua Achebe and now Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature instituted by the Lumina Foundation. The prizes respectively were set up two years after the NLNG instituted the Nigerian Prize for Literature with the prize money of $20,000.
Atta's Everything Good Will Come, defeated A'La Pourisute D' Aurore by Georges I. Zrek and LoveSong For My Wasteland by Remi Raji, a lecturer at the University of Ibadan.
In announcing the winner of the prize, Professor Femi Osofisan, who represented the panel of judges described the institution of the prize as 'historical and one which worth its while."
Atta's entry, Prof. Osofisan noted, was not only outstanding in all ramifications but also can stand the taste of competition anywhere in the world. According to him, the jurists received many entries which showed in his views good example of the growth of literature in Africa.
' The prize is in honour of a world class writer, a great visionary, a fighter and a social critic. Kogi has done all of us very proud. I am glad that the prize is instituted in his honour," Osofisan said.
Presenting the prize money of $20,000 to the mother of the winner, Sefi Atta who is based in America, Professor Wole Soyinka expressed gratitude to the initiators of the prize. He promised to ensure that the prize is sustained in the near future.