Chimamanda rejected national award, says aide

Novelist, Chimamanda Adichie, has rejected the national honours award offered to her by President Muhammadu Buhari.

The author’s aide, Omawumi Ogbe, confirmed the development to TheCable on Friday but didn’t give reasons for the decision.

Adichie was to receive the order of federal republic award at the ceremony which took place on October 11.

Ogbe said Adichie neither attended the event nor accepted the award, conveying her non-acceptance “privately.”

“She did not want to create undue publicity around it, so her non-acceptance was conveyed privately,” Ogbe said.

In celebration of Nigeria’s 62nd Independence, 437 nominees had been shortlisted to receive national honours.

A list of the awardees, as seen by theeditorial.ng had five grand commander of the order of the Niger awards, 54 commander of the order of the federal republic, and 67 commander of the order of the Niger.

The list also includes 64 officer of the order of federal republic awards, 101 officer of the order of the Niger awards, and 75 member of the order of the federal republic awards.

Others are 56 awards for member of the order of the Niger and eight federal republic medal awards.

The presidency said the honour was in recognition of the awardees’ accomplishments in their fields and capacities.

Chimamanda, who had in the not-so-distant past aired her disapproval of the current government’s response to matters of public importance, would not be the first of her kind in the literary community to reject a national award.

Recall that the late Nigerian author, Chinua Achebe, whose works have continued to be at the receiving end of critical acclaim even after his death in March 2013, had rejected national awards on two occasions in 2004 and 2011.

Achebe said he rejected the commander of the order of the federal republic award in 2004 because he was dissatisfied with the handling of the country’s affairs by the Olusegun Obasanjo administration.

In 2011, Achebe would also reject the same award from the Goodluck Jonathan administration, citing that the reasons for which he rejected the previous offer when it was made had not been addressed.

Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, similarly rejected the centenary award from the federal government in 2014.

The professor said he did so as he could not share the same national recognition with Sani Abacha, the late military head of state, who he described as a “murderer and thief of no redeeming quality”.