The 2026 Nigeria Prize for Literature has reached its final stage, with James Ngwu Eze, Ogaga Ifowodo and Tares Oburumu emerging as the three remaining contenders. Their poetry collections – Unbind Me Now, Why Does God Need a Gun?, and Flora’s Love Colony – were selected from 223 submissions, following a longlist of 11 announced earlier this year. The winner of the $100,000 prize, sponsored by NLNG, is expected to be announced in the coming weeks.

The shortlisted collections approach Nigeria and its histories from different angles. Eze’s Unbind Me Now engages with violence, displacement, memory and environmental crisis, while Ifowodo’s Why Does God Need a Gun? examines the intersections of faith, conflict and political violence. In Flora’s Love Colony, Oburumu looks backwards, interrogating colonial history and the ways its legacies continue to shape relationships, culture and identity.

The final three now represent a cross-section of contemporary Nigerian poetry, where personal experience meets questions of history, power and society. As the prize moves towards its conclusion, one of the three poets will claim the $100,000 award, but their presence on the shortlist already places their work at the centre of Nigeria’s literary conversation in 2026.

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