A Closer Look At ‘2021 Nobel Prizes’
Here is a closer look at the 2021 Nobel prizes.
The globally treasured annual Nobel prizes for 2021 in the fields of literature and Peace came across three continents, Africa, Asia and Europe. Novelist Abdurazak Gurnah of Zanzibar won this year’s prize for literature for his, “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of refugees in the gulf between cultures and continents”. Maria Ressa of The Philippines and Dmitry Muratov (Russia) won the prize for Peace for their “courageous efforts to safeguard freedom of expression.”
These wins in the field of ARTS for this year have been profound in many ways. For former lecturer and immigrant to Britain, Gurnah comes to global limelight at a time of not only an economically and socially draining pandemic, this decade more than ever has seen the most heart-wrenching cases about migration, immigrants and refugees across the world. He had written 10 novels with deep rooted interests around migration and refugees; ”Memory of Departure, Pilgrims Way, Paradise, Admiring Silence, Desertion, etc., are all evocative of their content and import.
His historic win comes as the fourth by an African as well as the fourth black person in the more than a century history of the award. It also comes 35 years after Nigerian Wole Soyinka in 1986, Caribbean poet Derek Walcott’s and American Toni Morrison’s in 1993. His selection for the prize by the Nobel Committee must be applauded for its significance and global impact. The chronic resort to populist politics by leaders across the globe coupled with a series of internal, religious and externally instigated conflicts and wars have all contributed in creating a more unstable world and just more displaced people who in their quest for a better and more secured lives have to take to migration amidst some unwelcoming politically charged world.
His win would put a global searchlight on the issues of refugees and internally displaced people and colonialism and its negatives decades after. His win this year is equally inspirational to all of world writers and generations to come. It was not a smooth journey to the top, his initial effort at getting published was rejected, he had been nominated for various book prizes and never won. Coming from an ancestral community of about 1.5 million people, an immigrant in Britain with firsthand experiences about existence in a colonial enclave, a departure and a life as an African immigrant, his life odyssey remains a lesson in perseverance and what each experience can get us humans.
For journalism, this year’s Nobel Peace Prize seems a soothing balm for all that have befallen journalists around the world who have either been killed, kidnapped, maimed or tortured by those who abuse political power in all continents. Ironically, this award comes in the month of October that marks the 35th anniversary of the gruesome murder of Nigeria’s metaphor for investigative journalism, Dele Giwa, through parcel bomb and the third anniversary of the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, again in October 2018.
Ressa and Muratov are two journalists that have dared to live by the true tenets of the profession even at great risk to their lives. The Chair of the Nobel Committee praised the duo for “Their courageous fight for freedom of expression in The Philippines and Russia. These two countries have two of the most notoriously intolerant leaders in Rodrigo Duterte and Valdmir Putin.
Their Nobel Prize for peace comes at a time when some global leaders like former President Donald Trump of the United States, Victor Urban of Hungary and many others have been trying to delegitimise the media and journalists by trying to convince their followers that fake news has been made potent and is being pushed out by journalists.
Even in Nigeria, journalists have been killed, arrested and maimed in the course of doing their jobs. This award is not just a reward for the diligence of these two global journalists but affirms the role of the journalist in a world seeing more of authoritarian and repressive regimes.
We salute the Nobel Committee for speaking for journalism and free speech, one of the pillars of democracy around the world. We congratulate all three Nobel Laureates for being of value to the humanity we share.
