Poet, songwriter and PR specialist, James Eze was honoured in his home town, Alor-Agu in Igbo Eze South Local Government Area in Enugu State at the weekend.
He was among other distinguished sons and daughters of the town who were recognised by the prominent, 45 year-old Alor-Agu Top Stars Club.
In a letter informing Eze of its intention to honour him, the Chairman of the Organising Committee of the club, Callys Alumona, a retired Assistant Commander General of Narcotics with the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, said: ‘This prestigious award recognises your outstanding achievements and contributions towards the development and positive projection of our community to the outside world. Your commitment towards a better life for our people, has significantly impacted positively on the Community and her people’.
Eze’s award plaque recognises him as “an ambassador of Alor-Agu Community”, underscoring his status as a role model in the community.
According to Alumona, the club also honoured other individuals from Alor-Agu who had shown commitment to community development, scholarship, public service, philanthropic service and entrepreneurial excellence.
‘We must put on record that the selection process of individuals for these awards and recognitions was rigorous’, he emphasised, pointing out that the club had its sights set on maintaining the highest standards of transparency in deciding who deserved its honour and recognition.
With this recognition, Eze has joined the eclectic list of professionals who have been honoured at home and away from home.
He told newsmen that ‘nothing compares to the joys of being honoured at home by your own people who watched you grow. I am grateful for this honour and I promise to work harder to justify its weight and to do more for Alor-Agu community’.
Eze, who is also a journalist, is a winner of a national poetry prize and a recipient of “the Distinguished Commander of Anambra State” medal for his outstanding performance as a Chief Press Secretary and Speechwriter to the then Governor Willie Obiano of Anambra State.
Over the years, he has shown himself as a thoroughbred professional with a gilt-edged career that spans banking, telecoms and the public sector, winning special commendations at Fidelity Bank Plc where he was the Manager of External Communications and at C & F Porter Novelli, a Lekki-Lagos based PR firm, where he was the Media Relations Manager .
Last July, Eze successfully chaired the inaugural edition of the hugely impactful Things Fall Apart Festival, organised by the Centre for Memories, which attracted a record crowd of art aficionados, literary scholars, writers, storytellers, poets, painters, sculptors, students and public intellectuals across Nigeria and in the diaspora. The keynote address of the festival was delivered by renowned novelist and global icon, Chimamanda Adichie and instantly became the most trending material online in Nigeria and across Africa.
Shortly after the festival, Eze travelled to the United States to teach at a six-week workshop on African storytelling traditions, organised by the New Immigrants Multi-Service Centre Inc under the sponsorship of the city of Boston, Massachusetts.
His impressive curatorial achievements also cover his active involvement in the promotion of literature and the arts, culminating in his co-founding and co-curating Return to Idoto, a poetry festival in honour of Christopher Okigbo, and his poetry projects, A Flutter in the Woods which hosts an evening of poetry and songs and the Udala Nation Crew which offers a platform to young and gifted singers to incubate their dreams.
Eze had also found enough creative space to deliver lectures at Coventry University in the United Kingdom, University of Nigeria (Enugu campus) and Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka on topics cutting across leadership, community service, education, youth mentoring and the imperatives of a politically engaged citizenry in a nascent democracy.
