Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - STAR AWARD: Prof. Niyi Osundare Gets Nigerian National Order of Merit Award 2014 !

The lyrical poet who sings with words and kneads words as a tailor would, to and on a cotton, surely deserves this award.

Perhaps this is one award that can give meaning to awards- this later times of many questionable awards.

Congrats to the renown minstrel who ministers life and laughter with words !

Lawrence Ogbo Ugwuanyi.
GZU-Zimbabwe.






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On Tue, 11/25/14, olugbenga Ojo <olugbenga.ojo@gmail.com> wrote:

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - STAR AWARD: Prof. Niyi Osundare Gets Nigerian National Order of Merit Award 2014 !
To: "usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday, November 25, 2014, 4:12 PM

congratulations!!!!!!

On Tue, Nov 25, 2014
at 8:32 AM, Mobolaji Aluko <alukome@gmail.com>
wrote:


Great news, thoroughly merited by a great fellow -
 Olu Rasco, my "senior college brother"!

_______________________________________________
November
25, 2014  |  By
Staff Correspondent

Professor Niyi Osundare has
just been announced the sole winner of this year's
prestigious Nigerian National Order of Merit Award.

The lyrical poet, teacher, scholar, public intellectual,
humanist and citizen of the world hails from Ikere-Ekiti.

Wikipedia states : "Niyi Osundare (born in 1947 in
Ikere-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria) is a prolific poet,
dramatist and literary critic. He gained degrees at the
University of Ibadan (BA), the University of Leeds (MA) and
York University, Canada (PhD, 1979). Previously professor
(from 1989) and Head of English (1993–97) at the
University of Ibadan, he became professor of English at the
University of New Orleans in 1997. Niyi has a wife, Kemi,
and three children, two girls and a son who still lives in
Nigeria. His deaf daughter is the real reason Niyi settled
in the United States. She could not go to school in Nigeria
so they found a school in the U.S. for her. They moved with
her so Niyi and Kemi could be closer to her.

He has always been a vehement champion of the right to free
speech and is a strong believer in the power of words,
saying, "to utter is to alter". Osundare is
renowned for his commitment to socially relevant art and
artistic activism and has written several open letters to
the former President of Nigeria (Olusegun Obasanjo), whom
Osundare has often publicly criticised.

Osundare believes that there is no choice for the African
poet but to be political."

Publications include: 

Songs from the Marketplace (1983)[2]
Village Voices (1984)
The Eye of the Earth (1986, winner of a Commonwealth Poetry
Prize and the poetry prize of the Association of Nigerian
Authors)
Moonsongs (1988)
Songs of the Season (1999)
Waiting Laughters (1990, winner of the Noma Award)
Selected Poems (1992)
Midlife (1993)
Thread in the Loom: Essays on African Literature and Culture
(2002)
The Word is an Egg (2002)
The State Visit (2002, play)
Pages from the Book of the Sun: New and Selected Poems
(2002)
Early Birds (2004)
Two Plays (2005)
The Emerging Perspectives on Niyi Osundare (2003)
Not My Business (2005)
Tender Moments:Love Poems (2006)

The Chairman, Governing Board of the Nigerian Merit Award
(NNMA), Prof. Etim Essien, who disclosed this in Abuja at a
press conference to announce the recipient of the 2014
Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM) award, Essien said:
"Prof. Niyi Osundare who through outstanding scholarship,
researches and service to humanity in the field of
humanities has successfully carved his name in gold in the
hearts of people of this nation and many nations of the
world.

"Osundare, a poet, dramatist and an essayist, has been
Nigeria's noted nature poet of English language
expression, and an accessible serious poet who sets out to
engage the reader, and has made most significant
contribution to the Nigerian poetic English diction."

The Board Chairman said that President Goodluck Jonathan at
the Council Chambers, Presidential Villa, would decorate
Prof. Osundare with the NNOM award on December 4.

_________________________________________________________________



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