(Text of CORA Statement at the Book Party for The Laureates of the Nigeria Literature Prize 2025)
By Toyin Akinosho
A WARM welcome to our guests of honour, the distinguished longlisted authors for the prestigious Nigeria Literature Prize and their families
I crave the indulgence of the Chairman Board of Trustees CORA, Chief Kayode Aderinokun and members of the CORA Board of Trustees, the CORA Governing Board as well as the leadership of the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Limited.
Welcome our friends, book lovers, book readers, literary enthusiasts, plain well-wishers and everyone here present, to the 16th edition of the Book Party organised by the partnership of CORA-The Nigeria Prize for Literature
We are here because a profitable Nigerian gas company decided that a way to spend some share of its profit is to enable the Nigerian reading space.
The last time we got together was August 17 2024, at the Shell Hall, which has found a way to take over from the National Theatre as the primary site for cultural engagement.
I want to congratulate NLNG Ltd, who are currently expanding their factory by 35% for the opportunity that the global market for gas continues to provide them, so that they have the incentive to continue to sponsor the Prize.
The NLNG runs the largest midstream hydrocarbon plant in Sub-Saharan Africa, and it is a dutiful payer of taxes into the Nigerian treasury.
Perhaps one story that they don’t tell enough is this: almost half of the cooking gas that we consume in this country comes from their plant in Bonny. They would like to supply more, but vandalism of pipelines in the Niger Delta basin has constrained how much gas they can receive at the Bonny factory. And as you know, it is the processing of this gas that gets us cooking gas.
So thank you NLNG
Now let’s get back to the Prize.
This year’s competition is perhaps the most fiercely contested NPL in the Prize’s 22 year history. The best writers in Nigeria’s literary firmament are included among this 11 star writers we are honouring this evening
The list includes Chioma Okereke, who penned Water Baby; Chigoze Obioma, who laid out The Road to the Country; Yewande Omotoso, who examines An Unusual Grief; and Michael Afenfia, whose protagonist warns: Leave my Bones In Saskatoon.
There is Linda M. Masi, who dreamt up Fine Dreams Ayo Oyeku, returns to the Longlist for the second year in a row, this time with Petrichor: The Scent of a New Beginning; Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, who won this award nine years ago, comes back with When We Were Fireflies; Chika Unigwe, is another returnee. She won the NPL in 2012 and we all went to Nsukka to witness her acceptance. This time, her fare is titled The Middle Daughter. We also have on the Longlist Oyin Olugbile’s Sanya.
Nikki May points directly to This Motherless Land and Uwem Akpan has written of New York, My Village.
These novels, written by authors who hail from all the corners of Nigeria, east, west, south-south, middle belt, and core north, present fictional accounts that take us on different journeys to the Nigerian heartland. We witness a Nigerian family dispute in South Africa; the stories walk us through the anxieties of a school-minded teenager getting pregnant in Eastern Nigeria. We engage with the frustrations of a visa applicant whose request is dismissed on the basis that he is of a minority tribe.
Just as you’d encounter deeper, nuanced interpretations of the lives of individuals caught in the middle of fatal raids on farming settlements, and the imagined telling of the spiritual basis for a south westerner deeply entrenched in fighting the Biafran war against Nigeria, you’d also be entertained by historical narratives of the grandeur of old pre-colonial African empires. You’ll read about the adventures of a visual artist painting carcasses of the old railway facilities in the middle of the country. And there are narratives of a simpler, more innocent period in what have become our chaotic overpopulated cities, there are also social enquiries about today’s youth angst against repressive authorities.
Some critics have returned to the old, settled argument regarding the dichotomy between foreign-based Nigerian writers and at –home Nigerian writers. All I can say is that we shouldn’t seek to re-Villagise the Nigerian debate.
Concerns have also been expressed about winners returning to contest. My answer is that those lamentations have not taken cognizance of the advantages of community building.
At the book party last year at Shell Hall, I pointed out that Ndidi Chiazor Enenmor, a short story writer who was on the 2019 Long List with A Hero’s Welcome had returned to the list with A Father’s Pride
Henry Akubuiro competed for the for the 2023 NPL right until the last day, with the text Yamtarawala, the Warrior King. He showed up on the Long List in 2024 with Mighty Mite and Golden Jewel
Jude Idada, whose book, Boom Boom won the Prize in 2019, had been in several rounds of this same competition before he won. So was the 2023 winner of the NPL, the poet and dramatist Obari Gomba. Before Gomba won the prize in 2023, with the political drama, GRIT, his works were longlisted four times.
Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike, who was on the 2023 longlist was also part of the long list in 2011. In 2021, he won the Nigerian Prize for Criticism, which is a newer prize in the Nigerian Prize for Literature system.
The current chairperson of the prize advisory board, Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, and a member of the board, Ahmed Yerima, both professors, have been winners of the award. Ahmed Yerima competed for the prize more than once. He won at the first time he competed and then he tried again.
I have gone to this bit of historical excursion to highlight the fact that the NPL has become an enabler in the Nigerian literary ecosystem.
But at CORA, we see an opportunity for the creation of an entire economy around the book trade. The NPL cannot alone wipe out all the entrenched dysfunctions of the Nigerian publishing sector, but it goes far. And those who are comparing it with book prizes in countries with structured book industries are grossly unfair.