Stakeholders in the Nigerian entertainment sector have
reasons to celebrate as some of their own were proud recipients of prestigious
national awards conferred on them by the President, Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan
on Sunday, November 13, 2011.
Those conferred the award of Member of the Federal
Republic (MFR), include veteran actor, Olu Jacobs, actor turned
politician, Kanayo O Kanayo, one-half of the ‘Aki and Pawpaw’
duo, Osita Iheme, producer and director, Amaka Igwe,
and Nollywood divas Stephanie Okereke and Genevieve
Nnaji.
Meanwhile, respected pioneer African novelist and renowned
author of bestselling epic novel ‘Things Fall Apart’,
Professor Chinua Achebe, has again rejected the national award of Commander
of the Federal Republic (CFR) awarded to him by the federal government.
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| Chinua Achebe |
The professor of Africana studies at Brown University,
United States, rejected the award on the ground that the concerns he raised
when he first rejected the award in 2004 remain unresolved and it was
‘inappropriate’ for the government to offer him the award again.
It will be recalled that 81 year old Professor Achebe had
earlier turned down the same award by the Olusegun Obasanjo government
in 2004, lamenting the corroding influence of a certain ‘clique of renegades,
openly boasting its connections in high places’, who seem ‘determined to turn
my homeland into a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom. I am appalled by the
brazenness of this clique and the silence, if not connivance, of the
Presidency’.
Now that is one man I respect!
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