Ogaga Ifowodo has won the 2026 Nigeria Prize for Literature and its $100,000 prize money for his poetry collection, Why Does God Need A Gun?
The announcement was made on Friday, October 9, in Lagos.
Why Does God Need A Gun? was chosen from 223 submissions. The Advisory Board said the collection depicts religious and political violence in Nigeria in a rich allegorical style. It added that, through a tripartite structure of body, mind and spirit, Ifowodo interrogates the forces that emblematise the world’s challenging ethos.
The shortlist also included James Ngwu Eze’s Unbind Me Now and Tares Oburumu’s Flora’s Love Colony, narrowed from a longlist of 11 titles.
The 2026 edition was dedicated to poetry, as the prize rotates annually among prose fiction, poetry, drama and children’s literature.
Now in its 22nd year, it is sponsored by NLNG