Ogaga Ifowodo Wins $100,000 NLNG Literature Prize for ‘Why Does God Need a Gun?’

Nigerian poet, lawyer and activist Ogaga Ifowodo has won the 2026 Nigeria Prize for Literature, taking home the $100,000 award sponsored by Nigeria LNG Limited (NLNG) for his poetry collection, Why Does God Need a Gun? The winner was announced in Lagos on Friday, October 9, after the work emerged from a field of 223 submissions in this year’s poetry competition.

Ifowodo’s collection was selected ahead of two other finalists: James Ngwu Eze, whose entry was Unbind Me Now, and Tares Oburumu, author of Flora’s Love Colony. The three books had progressed through a longlist of 11 titles before the judges made their final decision, in a contest that brought together different poetic approaches to Nigeria’s political history, social challenges and questions of identity.

At the centre of Ifowodo’s winning collection is a question that challenges the relationship between faith and violence: why would an all-powerful God need human beings to defend him with weapons? Through allegory and a structure built around the body, mind and spirit, the poems examine how religious belief can be manipulated to justify cruelty, persecution and the denial of other people’s humanity. The prize’s Advisory Board praised the collection for its treatment of religious and political violence in Nigeria and its wider resonance.

The collection draws on real experiences of violence, including the abduction of schoolgirl Leah Sharibu, who was taken by Boko Haram militants in 2018 alongside other schoolgirls in Dapchi, Yobe State. In an interview before the award announcement, Ifowodo explained that the title emerged late in the writing process as he revisited a poem that questioned the idea of killing in the name of God. His broader concern, he said, was the way people claim religious authority while using violence to dehumanize others.

The award adds to a career spanning poetry, law and human-rights activism. Ifowodo’s earlier collections include Homeland and Other Poems, which won the Association of Nigerian Authors Poetry Prize in 1993, and Madiba, which received the ANA/Cadbury Poetry Prize in 2003. His collection A Good Mourning was also shortlisted for the Nigeria Prize for Literature in 2017, making the latest victory a significant milestone in a literary career marked by sustained engagement with public life and political questions.

The Nigeria Prize for Literature is one of Africa’s most financially substantial literary awards, offering $100,000 to the winning author. Sponsored by NLNG, the competition rotates among prose fiction, poetry, drama and children’s literature, giving a different genre the spotlight each year. The 2026 edition’s 223 submissions also provided a broad field from which the judges selected works that approach difficult national and human questions through poetry.

For Nigerian literature, Ifowodo’s win is about more than the financial reward. It places a collection questioning religious intolerance and political violence before a wider audience at a time when such issues remain deeply consequential in Nigeria and beyond. By recognizing poetry that confronts how belief can be turned into a justification for harm, the award also underlines literature’s capacity to preserve painful memories, challenge prevailing narratives and create space for difficult public conversations.