The Fellowship of the Association of Nigerian Authors is awarded in recognition of service, and to signify respect for elders who have been devoted to supporting, the principles and objectives of the profession of authorship.
As such this undoubtedly prestigious designation carries a substantial burden of obligations for those who have been honoured. Since most of those who garner such an award might have been practicing their professional vocation for an extended period it is usually assumed that they have been granted the award because their opinions remain relevant to the profession. In that light the purpose that such awardees fulfil in responding to the recognition granted to them by the award of this honour is usually voluntary rather than obligatory.
It is usually assumed that those who have been awarded the Fellowship are people who have at least been devoted to the maintenance of high standards and positive principles of communicating ideas through the conduct of the profession of authorship and are likely to be willing to undertake the task of passing on the most profound legacies of the profession to subsequent generations. As a consequence, the growth and continuity of the professional legacy in the future can be defined as a major objective of the organisation that devises and donates the award and designates it a special honour.
By accepting the honour the awardee accepts the principles and objectives that the award promotes as a responsibility that he or she will be prepared to advocate.
However, in order to fulfil that pledge those honoured must be prepared to acknowledge the relevance of changing values to the fulfilment of that responsibility, The transmission of ideas and values from concept to reality is perhaps the major purpose of the profession of authorship. For this reason, the adoption of such western languages as English and French in the former colonies while not being ideal is understandable.
The advantage of literacy which these languages enjoyed
over indigenous languages because of their advanced orthography during the years of colonization is the foundation of the contemporary literary profession of countries like Nigeria.
The practical challenge facing every Nigerian author
regardless of subject matter is how to be genuinely original and fundamentally credible while narrating their vision or expressing opinions in an alien language.
The concept of alien thought as a fundamental value in linguistic expression is a
valid one and must be kept in circulation in the intellectual conversation of the nation.
This is an integral issue in the process of communication in Nigeria that all writers must be aware of not only when writing or assessing literary works. In
building a foundation for the conceptualisation of books about life in Nigeria the entire process of the exchange of ideas should be an accurate reflection of the nation’s socio-political realities.
Listeners may well ask how this relates to my theme today.
Well these are the kinds of ideas that those who are honoured with recognition as elders have the responsibility to encourage and even provoke in the next generation of Nigerian authors.
It is in fact a compulsive historic imperative
that those who receive honours today have a duty to ensure that new ideas will survive as vibrant realities in the future. In fact.one could say they are honour bound to be responsible for the survival of innovative concepts and values beyond
the era of their recognition. That is a primary responsibility of anyone honoured by any professional body in any field of endeavour in contemporary Africa today.
This article, the induction lecture for the ANA Fellowship Award Ceremony, was
delivered at the Mamman Vatsa Writers Village, Abuja on November 2nd this year.