Babcock Law Professor, Onyemelukwe, Wins $100,000 NLNG Prize for Literature

Author and professor of Law at the Babcock University, Ogun State, Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia, has been announced the winner of the 2021 Nigerian Prize for Literature for her book, Son of the House.

The Chair of the Advisory Board for the prize, Professor Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, made the disclosure at the award ceremony and public presentation of the winners of the 2021 edition of the three NLNG prizes at Expo Centre, Eko Hotel and Suites, Lagos.

The book, which had competed against 202 books submitted for this edition of the competition, edged out  “The Girl With The Louding Voice” by Abi Dare and “Colours of Hatred” by Obinna Udenwe entries in the shortlist of three, to clinch the prize.

In the presentation, Adimora-Ezeigbo, said the novel was chosen not only because it was full of suspense and intrigue but for how it was able to “tell human and indeed universal stories of rural as against urban life, suffering and survival, loss and redemption, decline and renaissance, destruction and reconstruction, and death and rebirth.”

Onyemelukwe expressing  her excitement, said “I am just so thankful. God has been good to me in a different way this year.”

She earlier told News correspondence that the novel was rejected many times by publishers before it was finally accepted by a Canadian publishing house.

The award will run concurrently with NLNG’s Prize for Literary Criticism. The literary criticism prize carries a monetary value of N1 million.

While it was announced that Uchechukwu Umez Uwazurike won the NI million Literary Criticism prize, there was no winner for the $100,000 prize for Science.

The prize was judged by a panel led by chairperson of the panel of judges, a Professor of Literature in English at the University of Ibadan. Other panel members include Professor Tanimu Abubakar, a Professor of Literature in the Faculty of Art, Ahmadu Bello University, and Dr. Solomon Azumurana, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Lagos.