The ABUBAKAR GIMBA LITERARY AWARD postponed until March 2016
The Delta Book Club, a subsidiary of the Enugu-based Delta Publications (Nigeria) Limited and conveners of the annual Coal City Book Convention, have postponed until March 2016 the announcement of the winning entries for their N250,000.00 Abubakar Gimba Literary Award, which was hatched earlier this year in the wake of the passage of the company’s revered author Abubakar Gimba last February.
After consultation with the five judges commissioned to consider the books submitted, it was resolved to postpone announcement of the results in order to honour the existing protocol prevalent in most Nigerian cultures to allow 12 full months for the peaceful repose of the dearly departed before normal activities around the deceased can resume in earnest.
It will be recalled that The Abubakar Gimba Literary Award was billed to feature in Abuja on Day 3 of The Coal City Book Convention, the 7th in the annual series, which holds on Tuesday 24th and Wednesday 25th Novem- ber at The Exhibition Hall of The Alliance Francaise (French Cultural Centre), in Enugu.
The Olaudah Equiano Life-Award, which will feature at the Opening Ceremony, will be conferred on celebrated Dermatologist and author Professor Anezi Okoro, who at 86 reigns as Africa’s eldest surviving first generation novelist, and among Nigeria’s most widely-read authors of modern contemporary fiction.
It will be recalled that Professor Okoro hit the big-time as a best-selling novelist in the late 1960s with such classics as The Village School, The Village Headmaster, One Week One Trouble, Double Trouble. These were interlarded with such children’s adventure classics as Febechi in Cave Adventure, Febechi Down the Niger, Eclipse Fever. His landmark English-Igbo translation of Shakespeare, Akuko Ufodu Shakespeare Koro, has remained an all-time classic in the south-east of Nigeria.
Activities in this year’s book convention will revolve around the literary career of Professor Anezi Okoro, with a mini-book fair and a roundtable workshop.