Good Nigerian art, media & entertainment. This includes Nigerian-inspired visuals, auditory or performing artifacts (artworks), music, movies, culture, etc.
Bulus FearGod, a pupil of LEA Primary School, Waru, Abuja Municipal Area Council of the FCT, has emerged as the overall winner of the ninth edition of the Korea-Nigeria drawing competition.
Bulus FearGod defeated 149 other participants to win the gold medal and was presented with a laptop during the award ceremony held at the Korea Cultural Centre in Abuja.
Continue reading Bulus FearGod Wins 9th Korea-Nigeria Drawing Competition
Abubakar Ibrahim, a Nigerian reporter and editor whose work conveys the human toll of terrorism and displacement, has been named the winner of the 2018 Michael Elliott Award for Excellence in African Storytelling.
The International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) said Abubakar Ibrahim, a news editor at the Daily Trust in Nigeria, was selected by a distinguished jury from among 238 applicants for this prize.
Ibrahim’s story that won him the prize: ‘All That Was Familiar’, was published in Granta magazine in May 2017.
His story puts a human face on a story often expressed in numbers: More than two million people from northeastern Nigeria, northern Cameroon, and southern Niger have been internally displaced since Boko Haram began its insurgency.
Abubakar Ibrahim tells about the struggle of two women, one from Cameroon and one from Nigeria, to find their loved ones and return home.
The Michael Elliott Award, which was established in 2016 in honour of Michael Elliott, is given by ICFJ in partnership with ONE and the Elliott family.
Michael Elliott was an outstanding editor and philanthropist whose life was a testament to the power of storytelling to bear witness to and improve the human condition.
The prize aims to advance the work of an emerging journalist covering Africa who strives to strengthen people’s voices and improve their well-being.
According to Emma Oxford, Elliott’s widow on the 2018 award:
“Mike would be thrilled by the breadth and depth of talent displayed by the entrants for this year’s award.
The Elliott family, along with ONE, ICFJ and many generous supporters, is proud to help support the development of quality journalism in Africa.
I am hugely grateful to the staff of ICFJ and my fellow judges for their thoughtful review of the broad range of entries.
The winning story exemplifies outstanding storytelling on a difficult and important topic. Abubakar’s fearless reporting and powerful writing brought home to me the hardships faced by women, in particular, displaced by the scourge of Boko Haram.”
Two broadcast journalists were commended as finalists for the award, which includes Lindile Mpanza of South Africa’s SABC Digital news, for her report on sexual abuse of widows.
The other finalist is Ridwan Dini-Osman of Ghana’s GHOne, for his coverage of a community in crisis because its drinking water is contaminated.
Abubakar Ibrahim would receive the award and a cash prize at a reception in New York on May 24.
He would also spend time in U.S. newsrooms to learn new skills and share knowledge in an intensive, customised programme run by ICFJ, to help deepen future reporting that engages and empowers Africans.
The inaugural winner was BBC Kenya health reporter Mercy Juma.
Olanrewaju Tejuoso has won the 2nd prize of the Prix du Ministère Sénégalais de la Culture at Dak’Art 2018.
Theresa Lola, has been named joint winner of the 2018 Brunel International African Poetry Prize and awarded one of the three top prizes of £1,000. She shared the joint prize with Hiwot Adilow from Ethiopia, and Momtaza Mehri from Somalia.
She emerged winner out of over 1,000 other international entrants.
According to Theresa Lola:
“Winning the Brunel International African Poetry Prize feels surreal, it is an unwavering highlight.
I started writing after being inspired by Nigerian poets I saw during a school trip to the Lagos Poetry Festival when I was 12 years old, so to win the Brunel International African Poetry Prize feels like I am doing my job and responsibility as a poet and human in putting Africa forward where it rightly belongs.
Going through the awkward teenage reclusive phase, I wanted to document everything I was observing and started writing what I now knew as poetry.
I was inspired by the way poets articulated and condensed heavy stories and knew poetry was the mode of writing I needed.
As a poet it has definitely bolstered my confidence, and of course sheds more light on the possibility of a poetry career.”
Launched in 2012 by Brunel University London and judged by a panel of writers and academics, the Brunel International African Poetry Prize aims at providing a platform for Africa’s finest unpublished poets.
The Prize is open to poets who were born in Africa, who are nationals of an African country, or whose parents are African.
To encourage only serious entrants, organisers ask that poets each submit a pamphlet of their best 10 pieces of work.
Unlike last year’s shortlist that had four Nigerians on it, the 2018 shortlist has more poets from different African countries including Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Somalia, Egypt, Zambia and two poets from Nigeria.
The Prize is funded by the Commonwealth Writers of the Commonwealth Foundation.
Things Fall Apart, the first novel written by late Nigerian literary icon, Chinua Achebe, has made the list of 12 “Greatest Books Ever Written” compiled by Encyclopedia Britannica.
According to the compilation written by John Pecoraro, the book, which now exists in 57 translations across the world, is one of the greatest ever written novels on the website of Encyclopedia Britannica in recent times.
Things Fall Apart, often considered Achebe’s best, is the most widely read book in modern African literature.
Other novels that made the list include; “Anna Karenina,” by Leo Tolstoy, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” by Harper Lee, “The Great Gatsby,” by F. Scott Fitzgerald and “One Hundred Years of Solitu” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Others are “A Passage to India,” by E.M. Forster, “Invisible Man,” by Ralph Ellison, “Don Quixote,” by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, “Beloved,” by Toni Morrison, “Mrs. Dalloway,” by Virginia Woolf, “Jane Eyre,” by Charlotte Bronte and “The Color Purple,” by Alice Walker.
Things Fall Apart is regarded as an important novel and one of the greatest classics of our time. The story chronicles the pre-colonial life in Nigeria and the arrival of the Europeans during the late nineteenth century.
The novel interrogates the clash of cultures, traditional values and belief systems.
Odimegwu Onwuwere of Nigeria’s Africa Prime News has won the Pan African Journalist of the Year Award for the 2018 Pan African Re/Insurance Journalism Awards sponsored by Continental Reinsurance.
With three categories of the 2018 Pan African Re/Insurance Journalism Awards, Odimegwu Onwumere emerged the overall winner.
Continue reading Winners Of 2018 Pan African Re/Insurance Journalism Awards
Publiseer has become the first African publishing company to join the International Publishing Distribution Association (IPDA), an international umbrella organization for companies in the field of publishing distribution.
As part of its membership, the founders of Publiseer, Chidi and Chika Nwaogu, will be attending the 5th International Digital Distributors Meeting organized by IPDA, scheduled to hold on the 6th and 7th of June 2018 in Madrid, Spain.
The meeting will focus on issues like, “new business models in the publishing distribution sector”, “worldwide growth of self-publishing”, and “publishing and distribution of hypermedia content”.
Some notable companies already in the International Publishing Distribution Association (IPDA) are Bookwire (Germany), BookRepublic (Italy), Vearsa (Ireland), DeMarque (Canada), Overdrive (USA), Numilog (France), Cyberlibris (France), Hipertexto (Colombia), Netizen (México), PocketBook (Switzerland),Tolino Media (Germany), Books on Demand (Germany), Trajectory (USA), StreetLib (Italy), Libreka (Germany), ArtaTech (Poland), Ingram (USA), Publit (Sweden), Viz Media (Japan), GiantChair (USA), Nextory (Sweden), CB (The Netherlands), and Izneo (France).
Publiseer is a digital publishing company in Nigeria, focused on distributing the books and songs of independent Nigerian writers and musicians. The mission of the company is to promote the creativity of Nigerians to the rest of the world.
The publishing platform has announced it will commence print-book publishing and distribution of physical music CDs. It has also launched ‘Publiseer for Music Videos’, a publishing package that will help musical artists get their music videos on Vevo. Publiseer has also added ‘Pandora’ to the list of partner stores it distributes songs to.