I began my career in journalism as a Sub-Editor at The Guardian and rose to become Political Editor of The Independent. Even earlier, in 1983, I had been an intern with the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria in Enugu. My entire professional formation unfolded under military regimes—Major General Muhammadu Buhari, General Ibrahim Babangida, and General Sani Abacha… These were years when writers and journalists were treated not as national assets, but as irritants—sometimes as enemies. Words were policed. Opinions were dangerous. Expression could carry consequences… In that climate, the idea that a nation could gather, celebrate a writer, and elevate literature to the level of national pride was not just distant.
I ARRIVED in London on October 17, 2001.
It was supposed to be a brief escape. A week carved out of a crowded calendar. Time to breathe, to think, to step away from the constant demands of work—and to honour a promise to spend time with my cousin, Nneka.
That evening, like millions of others scattered across time zones, I turned on the television.
The BBC was broadcasting the Booker Prize ceremony.
I had never watched it before.
Within minutes, I was completely absorbed.
The room glowed with quiet elegance. The air seemed charged with expectation. Names were spoken with reverence. Books were treated not as products, but as cultural monuments. Writers—living, breathing writers—were honoured like national treasures.
When Peter Carey was announced as the winner for True History of the Kelly Gang, the applause felt larger than the room, larger than the moment. It felt like a country affirming what it valued.
I watched everything. Every speech. Every pause. Every carefully chosen word.
And when it ended, I could not sleep.
I lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling, the question circling me, tightening its grip:
Why doesn’t Nigeria have something like this?
By then, Nigerian literature was not struggling for relevance. We had already given the world giants. We had produced a Nobel laureate. A Booker Prize winner. Our writers were studied, quoted, and celebrated far beyond our borders.
And yet, at home, there was nothing of comparable stature. No moment when the nation paused to listen. No grand stage where literature was lifted into the light.
For me, that absence was not abstract.
I had lived through a different reality.
I began my career in journalism as a Sub-Editor at The Guardian and rose to become Political Editor of The Independent. Even earlier, in 1983, I had been an intern with the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria in Enugu. My entire professional formation unfolded under military regimes—Major General Muhammadu Buhari, General Ibrahim Babangida, and General Sani Abacha.
These were years when writers and journalists were treated not as national assets, but as irritants—sometimes as enemies. Words were policed. Opinions were dangerous. Expression could carry consequences.
In that climate, the idea that a nation could gather, celebrate a writer, and elevate literature to the level of national pride was not just distant.
It was almost unfathomable.
Why?
The question refused to leave.
It followed me into the morning. It lingered through the week. It stayed with me for months, quietly insisting, demanding an answer.
What I did not know—lying awake in that London hotel room—was that this question would become a turning point. It would pull me into one of the most demanding, frustrating, and ultimately rewarding journeys of my professional life.
At the time, literature was the furthest thing from my immediate priorities.
I had just transitioned from Community Relations to Public Relations at Nigeria LNG. I had been brought in to help turn around the company’s poor public perception and to build a robust internal communications system. Both were considered urgent, and I attacked them with near-maniacal intensity.
At one point, I was overseeing the production of multiple publications simultaneously—The Bond, a monthly staff magazine; NLNG, the corporate flagship quarterly magazine; and The Host, a quarterly magazine focused on community relations. The pace was relentless.
In Community Relations role, I traveled constantly through the Niger Delta.
Emohua.
Abua.
Okrika.
Ikwerre.
Ahoada.
Each journey told the same story.
You did not need reports or data to understand it. You could see it in the roads, in the schools, in the faces of young people with nothing to do and nowhere to go.
Poverty.
Unemployment.
Frustration that hung in the air like humidity.
And everywhere, well-meaning interventions that barely scratched the surface.
The company was donating about forty thousand naira for community development projects.
It sounded meaningful on paper.
In reality, it was a temporary fix. A leaking roof patched. A few desks placed in a classroom.
Useful, yes.
Transformational, no.
I began to feel a growing unease. A quiet conviction that what we were doing, though well intentioned, was fundamentally inadequate.
We were addressing symptoms, not causes.
What these communities needed was not token support, but real economic opportunity—something that could shift trajectories, not just ease discomfort.
That conviction would eventually lead to a difficult confrontation with the General Manager, Fred Smeenk—and, ultimately, to the creation of a major microcredit scheme.
I still remember the day the NLNG Board approved the five hundred million naira fund for host communities. I shed tears of joy. It remains one of the achievements I am most proud of.
But at the time, I did not yet see how this same philosophy would reach beyond economics.
Because literature, I would come to understand, was facing a similar problem.
It did not need gestures.
It needed structure.
It needed visibility.
It needed aspiration.
Writers needed more than admiration in private circles. They needed a platform powerful enough to command national attention. A moment that said: this matters.
The Booker Prize had shown me what was possible.
Now came the harder part.
Convincing others.
Because all I had was a question.
No budget.
No approval.
No mandate.
No roadmap.
And absolutely no idea where to begin.
- To be continued…
- Ifeanyi Igwebike Mbanefo, CEO, Museums and Monuments Academy, lives in Montreal, Canada
