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By Nasir Kura
President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday conferred the 2018 Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM) award on Professor Olufemi Obafemi, a playwright, poet, author and Professor of English and Dramatic Literature at the University of Ilorin.
The award, instituted in 1979, has a N10 million cash prize.
Bon in April 1950 in Kogi state, Obafemi is the 76th and sole recipient of the 2018 NNOM award for initiating an experimenting tool and theory of analysis for revolutionary aesthetics in Africa exemplifying the plays of second generation Nigerian and African dramatists, among other things.
He also fashioned dialectical materialistic theoretical canon that has influenced the interpretation of radical drama among theatre scholars in West Africa in the 80s and 90s, and configured fabulist aesthetics/fabulous aesthetics theory for the interpretation of stagecraft and radical ideology.
Obafemi also advanced the discourse on a post-feminist aesthetics in Nigerian drama and the engagement in a materialist perception of society exemplified in the plays of Tess Onwueme as the alter-native interpretation to the liberal/individualist ideological direction trodden by the pioneer female theater practitioner, Zulu Sofoluwa.
He has been an editorial consultant and columnist for no fewer than eight national newspapers.
Speaking at the investiture of the award at the State House in Abuja, the President urged academics to sustain scholarship and research in their contributions towards national development.
The President said the federal government would study the report presented to him by the Nigeria National Merit Award (NNMA), the body that selects recipients of the NNOM award, with a view to addressing some of its recommendations.
He said the NNMA’s request for better funding would be particularly looked into, as the contributions of the awards to nation building can not be over emphasised.
Also speaking, chairman of the Governing Board of NNMA, Professor Shekarau Aku Yakubu, said the NNOM remains the highest award for intellectual academic and creative achievement given by the Nigerian state.
Stressing that Obafemi is a promoter of social justice and builder of bridges across classes, cultures and races, Yusuf described his choice for the award as apt and deserving.
