The Nigeria Prize For Literature Announces 2021 Three Finalists

The Advisory Board for the Nigeria LNG-sponsored The Nigeria Prize for Literature, has announced “The Girl With The Louding Voice” by Abi Dare; “The Son Of The House” by Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia and “Colours of Hatred” by Obinna Udenwe as finalists for the 2021 competition.

The announcement was made by the Chair of the Advisory Board for the Prize, Professor Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo during a virtual press conference held Friday, August 27, 2021.

The announcement followed the longlist of 11 books released recently out of 202 entries on prose fiction, received for the Prize.

The Nigeria Prize for Literature, Africa’s most prestigious literary award, rotates yearly amongst four literary categories: prose fiction, poetry, drama, and children’s literature.

The three shortlisted novels revolve around strong female characters, different unravelling circumstances and experiences of women in the modern world.

The judges who will decide the winning novel, which will be announced in October 2021, disclosed that the selection of the three novels was unanimous.

The judges, in their report, described the novels as full of suspense and intrigue. They stated that the novels “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.”

The chairperson of the panel of judges, Professor Olutoyin Jegede, is 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.

The chair of the board, Professor Adimora-Ezeigbo, is a professor of English. She won the 2007 Nigeria Prize for Literature in the Children’s Literature category, alongside Mabel Segun. Other members of the Advisory Board are Professor Olu Obafemi, the 2018 recipient of the Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM), playwright, poet and Professor of English at the University of Ilorin, and Professor Ahmed Yerima, a professor of Theatre and Performing Arts, a playwright, theatre director, and a 2006 Laureate of The Nigeria Prize for Literature.

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