21-YEAR OLD NIGERIAN EMERGES UK'S NO 1 BEST BLACK STUDENT

21 year old Nigerian Chibundu Onuzo recently added to her growing list of plaudits when she was voted the UK's No.1 Best Black student of 2012.


This was decided by a panel of leading black Britons at a glittering ceremony at the Houses of Parliament on Thursday 7th June 2012, in front of an invited audience of MPs, senior business heads, family members, friends and press. The award was given by Rare Rising Stars. By winning the award, she also became the first woman to come out tops in the list of the U.K.'s Best Black Students.

She became a focus of attention two years ago after signing a two novel deal with U.K. publishing heavy weight, Faber & Faber which has published books by 12 Nobel Laureates and 6 Man Booker prizewinners. 
By virtue of the deal, she became the prestigious publisher's youngest ever female author and she was featured on CNN during Nigeria's 50th year of independence.


Onuzo who has been writing since she was 10 just published her book, "The Spider King's Daughter", which was longlisted for the £10,000 Desmond Elliott Prize for debut novelists alongside a Booker prize-nominated Oxford professor.

She grew up reading classics like Jane Eyre and David Copperfield and those of Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Yipeee! Africans in diaspora are still hoisting the country's flag!

CHINUA ACHEBE DECLINES NATIONAL HONOUR AGAIN

Celebrated literary icon, Professor Chinua Achebe through a message to the Nigerian ambassador to the US, Professor Ade Adefuye has declined the Commander of the Federal Republic (CFR) honour made by the Nigerian government. 
According to Achebe who first rejected the offer in 2004, "The reasons for rejecting the offer when it was first made have not been addressed let alone solved. It is inappropriate to offer it again to me. I must therefore regretfully decline the offer again."
Achebe in year 2004 wrote thus to ex President Olusegun Obasanjo "I write this letter with a very heavy heart. For some time now I have watched events in Nigeria with alarm and dismay. I have watched particularly the chaos in my own state of Anambra where a small clique of renegades, openly boasting its connections in high places, seems 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.
"Forty three years ago, at the first anniversary of Nigeria's independence I was given the first Nigerian National Trophy for Literature. In 1979, I received two further honors – the Nigerian National Order of Merit and the Order of the Federal Republic – and in 1999 the first National Creativity Award.
"I accepted all these honors fully aware that Nigeria was not perfect; but I had a strong belief that we would outgrow our shortcomings under leaders committed to uniting our diverse peoples.  Nigeria's condition today under your watch is, however, too dangerous for silence. I must register my disappointment and protest by declining to accept the high honor awarded me in the 2004 Honors List".

Source: Sahara Reporters

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