Nigerian writer wins German literature award

 A Nigerian author, Chigozie Obioma, has won the 2020 Internationaler Literaturpreis Award through the German translation of his second novel, ‘An Orchestra of Minorities’.

The award was founded in 2009 and has since been honouring outstanding contemporary works especially first-time translations “to rack up voices of relatively unknown authors in Germany”.

In the past, the winning duo for the best novel and the best translation are honoured with a major celebration in which other authors and translators of the books nominated for the final round are invited .

There is usually a cash prize of €20,000/$24,000 for the winning author and €15,000 for the translation.

But this year, in its 12th edition, Germany’s national centre for presentation and discussion of international contemporary arts, Haus der Welt der Kulturen (HKW), alongside the seven-member jury, decided not to honour a single book.

There are six titles on the shortlist. Organisers say there will be 12 winners instead of 2, among whom the prize money of £36,000 will be divided.

“In the current precarious situation for many people working in the cultural field, the organisers wanted to honor the work and voices of many, rather than a single work,” a statement by the organisers said.

Mr Obioma’s book, whose German title is “Das Weinen der Vögel” was among the six books selected from a diverse list and recognised by the German literary community.

The novel follows the story of Chinonso, a hardly surviving poultry farmer who stops a woman from committing suicide, his quest for material advancement and the unsettling end to his dream as a Nigerian on a foreign land.

A jury member, Daniel Medin, considered “An Orchestra of Minorities” to be a philosophical novel “of rare ambition and breadth that questions the freedom of the human will with relentless precision."

Praising the Nigerian author for capturing African religions which are “firmly anchored in Igbo cosmology” in the novel, Mr Medin described Mr Obioma as an innovator of the African novel, also with his debut novel, “The Fishermen.”

“An Orchestra of Minorities” was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2019.

Elated

Winning the International Literature Award for Mr Obioma amidst coronavirus blues is pleasing.

“The past few months have been difficult for me, following the lockdown, coming down with the virus myself and the recent events. But I’m happy to share this bit of good news: the German translation of my second novel, DAS WEINEN DER VOGEL, has won this year’s Internationaler Literaturpreis, Germany’s prestigious prize for foreign fiction,” he said in a Facebook post.

“While I’m grateful and elated, I owe this win to my wonderful translator, Nicholai von Schweder, a remarkable man and the very best. Also, my wonderful publisher, Piper Verlag. Thank you to all who continue to support my work. It means so much to me!”

Previous winners of the award have included Teju Cole, Indian-French author, Shumona Sinhaand, and Mexican Fernanda Melchior.

By Aishat Babatunda

Premium Times

Nigerian women are taking to the streets in protests against rape and sexual violence

Protesters have taken to the streets in cities across Nigeria to demand urgent action to combat rape and sexual violence against women.

In Lagos on Monday a coalition of rights groups marched to the state parliament calling for it to declare a state of emergency on rape and sexual violence. The march followed the gruesome death of 22-year-old student Uwaila Vera Omozuwa -- and the rape and killing less than a week later of another student, Barakat Bello.

University student Omozuwa died after she was attacked in a church in Benin City where she had gone to study on May 27, while Bello was raped and killed during a robbery in her home in the southwestern city of Ibadan on June 1, according to Amnesty International.

The students' killings, which happened as citizens were still reckoning with a spate of violence against teenage girls in May, have sparked calls for government action on gender-based violence in the country.

"These unfortunate events are not a standalone, rather they are a culmination of unhealthy cultural practices," the Women Against Rape in Nigeria group said in a petition submitted to lawmakers on Monday.

WARN is pushing for all states in Nigeria to have a sex offenders list -- and for it to be made public -- as well as other measures to name and shame perpetrators of sexual violence.

Sexual survivors silenced

Ebele Molua, an activist and one of the conveners of the protest, said Nigerian women have long been violated and harassed because authorities still perceive rape as a "women issue" leaving women vulnerable to their abusers.

"In Nigeria, you see men catcalling, and groping women in the market and they become violent once they don't respond to their advances. You find men dismissing the accounts of sexual violence. This has to stop," Molua told CNN.

Nigerian celebrities have also denounced the latest sexual violence cases on social media and citizens continue to gather in several cities, demanding law enforcement bring the women's killers to justice.
Nollywood actress Hilda Dokubo joined a women's group demonstration to the police headquarters in Lagos on Friday in the wake of the killings and a group of students protested in Benin City on June 1.

Efforts to combat violence

One in four girls in Nigeria has experienced some form of sexual violence, according to UNICEF.
Meanwhile Amnesty International, which has launched petition demanding justice over the killings, said femicide and rape cases go under-reported in the country, allowing perpetrators to go unpunished.

However the latest cases have forced authorities to reckon with the scale of the problem.
Nigeria's Human Rights Commission has launched a social media campaign to educate men about consent and the country's police force, whose officers have been accused of gender violence in the past, has announced plans to allocate more officers to tackle cases across the country.

By Bukola Adebayo 

CNN

Over half of April's unexplained deaths in Nigeria's Kano state due to coronavirus, health minister says

More than 50% of the unexplained deaths in the northern Nigerian state of Kano in April were due to coronavirus, according to Health Minister Osagie Ehanire.

Ehanire said a government team sent to investigate a spike in deaths in the state during April showed that 979 people died in eight municipalities at the rate of 43 deaths per day.

The deaths peaked in the second week of April and mortality figures later fell to 11 per day in early May -- the state's typical daily death rate -- according to the minister.

Most of the deaths happened at home and in patients older than 65 and with pre-existing illnesses, he said.

"With circumstantial evidence as all to go by, investigation suggests that between 50-60% of the deaths may have been triggered by or due to Covid-19, in the face of pre-existing ailments," Ehanire told a Monday briefing.

Spike in deaths
 
President Muhammadu Buhari locked down Kano state for two weeks in April following reports of "mysterious deaths," and panic spread that the virus may have circulated undetected in the area.

While gravediggers told CNN they were burying more bodies, state authorities said preliminary investigations showed the deaths were unconnected to coronavirus, initially blaming them on meningitis, diabetes, hypertension and other ailments.

The state governor said a team of health officials from the World Health Organization had been sent to affected communities to probe the deaths.

During a daily presidential briefing on the country's response to Covid-19, Ehanire said the team had been able to provide support and strengthen the state's response to the pandemic.

Nigeria has record 12,801 coronavirus cases, with more than 1,000 cases in Kano state, according to the latest figures from the country's Center for Disease Control.

By Bukola Adebayo

CNN 

Dozens killed in attack in northern Nigeria

At least 59 people have been killed in a suspected jihadist attack in north-eastern Nigeria.

Gunmen entered a remote village in the Gubio district of Borno state on Tuesday afternoon, killing dozens.

The village was also razed, in what is believed to have been a reprisal attack, according to local reports.

No group has yet claimed the attack. The AFP news agency said that 59 bodies had been recovered, while Reuters reported that 69 people were killed.

Reuters reported that the militants suspected villagers of sharing information about their movements to security forces, while AFP said jihadist fighters had been killed by locals trying to protect livestock.

While it is unclear who carried out the attack, both the jihadist group Boko Haram and an offshoot which fights under the banner of the Islamic State group have carried out deadly attacks in the north-east of Nigeria.

Boko Haram, which sparked global outrage in 2014 when they abducted more than 270 schoolgirls in Chibok in Borno state, is also active in neighbouring Chad, Niger and Cameroon.

In March, its militants ambushed and killed at least 47 Nigerian soldiers in the country's north east, before killing almost 100 soldiers in Chad the following day.

The group's decade-long insurgency has left thousands dead and displaced many more.

BBC

Nigeria to cut healthcare spending by 40% despite coronavirus cases climbing

Plans by Nigeria’s government to cut healthcare spending risk undermining the country’s coronavirus response and severely impacting already strained services, health and transparency groups have warned.

Funding for local, primary healthcare services will be cut by more than 40% this year in a revised budget expected to be passed into law in the coming weeks.

The proposed cuts could affect immunisations, childcare, maternal healthcare and family planning services.

Nigeria currently spends less than 5% of its federal budget on health. Dwindling oil sales, the crash in global oil prices and the impact of the coronavirus pandemic are understood to be the reason for the cuts.

According to Prof Innocent Ujah, the head of the Nigerian medical association, the proposed cuts have come just as more investment in health is needed.

“Our budget for health is unacceptably low, under 5%. With the Covid-19 pandemic, it becomes even more serious,” he said. “It will have an impact on our response to the virus.”

Ujah said he was shocked at the announcement of the cuts, as it had been assumed health budgets would be ringfenced during the pandemic.

Fuelling criticisms of the healthcare cuts has been the 37bn naira (£75m) set aside for renovations to Nigeria’s National Assembly buildings.

“Whatever renovations they want to do in the National Assembly should be suspended,” Ujah said. “This is a global emergency.”

The legislative body is heavily criticised in Nigeria for the lack of transparency in government spending and for the high salaries of lawmakers.

Oluseun Onigbinde, the director of BudgIT, an organisation which tracks government spending, said that the budget cuts were not distributed fairly.

“The National Assembly budget was cut 10%, but the severe cuts were made to education and healthcare,” he said.

“It’s a bit shameful that Nigeria’s allocation for health and education has not gone above 5% of the total budget provision in the last five years. The government has really underinvested in healthcare.”

Nigerian authorities took early steps to try to contain the outbreak of Covid-19. But cases are steadily rising, doubling in the past three weeks to 12,000 infections.

A number of challenges have undermined its test and trace strategy, including too few test kits. Just 80,000 tests have been administered, far lower than the country’s health officials want.

The Nigerian Centre for Disease Control has said 75% of infections are occurring in communities without an identifiable trace.

Adding to the challenges are issues with morale among some health staff.

Fifty doctors and nurses at a key Covid-19 response centre in Lagos University teaching hospital say they have not been paid the allowances promised to workers caring for coronavirus cases since April. The allowances are paid on top of their usual salaries.

According to staff who spoke on condition of anonymity, the delay in receiving allowances was making it difficult to recruit health professionals to fight the virus.

“We were assured payments for the Covid response. We started in April, but we’re in the third month and we haven’t been compensated,” said one member of staff.

Many had not seen their families in three months to prevent spreading the virus, and were furious that their payments are not being prioritised.

“We’ve put our lives on the line here, now for us not to be paid is inhumane,” the health worker said.

Government officials said they are working to address the payment delays.

“They have assured us they are working on this but such issues are causing much disillusionment,” said Ujah. “No matter what, in a healthcare emergency, motivation is a very important component.”


The Guardian