Nigeria Prize for Literature

Nigeria Prize for Literature is a Nigerian literary award given annually since 2004 to honor literary erudition by Nigerian authors. The award rotates among four genres; fiction, poetry, drama and children's literature, repeating the cycle every four years. With the total prize value of US$100,000 to individual winner, it is the biggest literary award in Africa and one of the richest literary awards in the world.

History

The Prize was established in 2004 and sponsored by Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas company. However, the process and judging are administered by Nigerian Academy of Science with advisory board made up of members from Nigeria Academy of Letters and Association of Nigerian Authors.

The Prize was initially $20,000. This was increased to $30,000 in 2006, and again to $50,000 in 2008. In 2011 the prize was increased to $100,000.

Years with no winner

Since its inception, the award is normally awarded in October. However, on three occasions the panel of judges were unable to select a winner, with no prize awarded in 2004, 2009 and 2015. In 2015, chair of the judging panel Ayo Banjo noted: "Unfortunately, the entries this year fall short of this expectation as each book was found to manifest incompetence in the use of language. Many of them showed very little or no evidence of good editing ... Hence, there will be no winner this year."