The quickest way to destroy a writer is to judge them by awards alone. This truth haunts every creative writing classroom, where students discover that good fiction resists neat definitions and simple measurements. Awards, for all their lustre, become golden shackles — elevating individual careers while leaving the literary ecosystem that nurtured those writers barren and abandoned.
In Nigeria, no prize illustrates this paradox more starkly than the Nigeria Prize for Literature. With a total prize value of US$100,000 to the individual winner, it stands as the biggest literary award in Africa and one of the richest literary awards worldwide.
Since 2004, this NLNG-sponsored prize has rotated among prose fiction, poetry, drama, and children’s literature, attracting thousands of entries and producing winners who have achieved international prominence. Several laureates have described it as life-changing. Yet, for all its monetary power, the prize remains disconnected from the reading lives of ordinary Nigerians.
The disconnect between recognition and reach
Here, the conversation must broaden — does winning a large cheque mean a book will live in the public imagination? When I spoke to educators and booksellers across Nigeria, a pattern emerged: a consistent disconnect exists between prize announcements and the actual availability of books in schools and communities. If your novel wins the Booker Prize, distribution and sales follow. The NLNG Prize, for all its cash, does not achieve the same multiplier effect in the Nigerian market. A winning title can enjoy a brief appearance on the front page and vanish from shelves thereafter.
This disconnect has structural roots. The prize is open to Nigerian authors worldwide, and the judging process is transparent, with panels of academics and literary experts producing longlists (eleven titles), shortlists and, finally, a winner announced in October. The organisers have withheld the award when entries did not meet the required standard (2004, 2009, and 2015 serve as reminders), and repeat appearances on longlists — Chika Unigwe, Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, Obari Gomba — show both sustained excellence and the limits of a small field. Yet the prize’s vast budget has not translated into a coherent strategy for nationwide readership.
The million-dollar question
If NLNG spends over a million dollars annually on the prize’s execution — a figure including the $100,000 winner’s purse, judging fees, ceremony costs, publicity, and administrative overhead — then the important question becomes: What happens to the money beyond the winner’s cheque and an awards ceremony? Current spending appears weighted toward the ceremonial: venue hire, media coverage, travel expenses for judges and dignitaries, and promotional materials circulating within literary circles. Meanwhile, the infrastructure that could transform a prize-winning book into a national conversation remains underfunded.
Here, proposals move from indignation to constructive demand. Imagine a purposeful programme — partner with JAMB, WAEC and federal universities to adopt the winning title into curricula for a year. The numbers are straightforward. If JAMB syllabus adoption and university and secondary-school requisition mean even a fraction of the national cohort engages with the text, you guarantee six- or seven-figure print runs and sustained classroom discussion. This is cultural infrastructure, not charity.
Learning from global models
International precedents show how prizes can achieve broader cultural impact. The Prix Goncourt, established in 1903, is considered France’s most prestigious literary award. What makes Goncourt remarkable is not its prestige but its ecosystem effects. Winning books reach sales of 400,000-500,000 copies, with some exceeding one million. The prize leverages France’s centralised cultural apparatus — state-funded bookshops, standardised curricula, robust literary journalism — to ensure winners reach readers nationwide.
The United Kingdom’s now-defunct Costa Book Awards (formerly the Whitbread) demonstrated how corporate sponsorship could build a reading culture systematically. The awards were discontinued in 2022 after 50 years, but the model had shown how prizes could integrate with daily cultural life through widespread retail presence and reader engagement programmes.
The lesson is clear. Successful literary prizes function as cultural infrastructure, not recognition ceremonies. They build bridges between literary excellence and reading communities, between individual achievement and collective cultural capital.
A blueprint for reform
Other practical interventions would multiply value — split the cash award across the top three places ($50,000, $30,000, $20,000), and devote the remainder to residencies, translation grants, distribution subsidies for small presses, and permanent support for regional bookshops and community reading programmes.
Consider the specific allocations: $100,000 for tiered prizes, $200,000 for guaranteed print runs and distribution (ensuring every winning and shortlisted title receives 50,000 copies distributed to libraries and schools), $150,000 for curriculum development and teacher training workshops, $100,000 for translation into three major Nigerian languages annually (Hausa and Yoruba, rotating with Igbo), and $50,000 for sustained digital promotion and audiobook production including free PDF access and social media campaigns. At current exchange rates, these interventions can expand each winning book’s reach within existing budgets.
Imagine the practical impact of partnering with JAMB and WAEC to include winning titles in recommended reading lists. Work with the Universal Basic Education Commission to distribute copies to teacher training colleges. Collaborate with state library boards to ensure every state capital has copies available. These partnerships cost coordination time, not massive cash outlays, but create the systematic adoption, transforming individual literary achievement into collective cultural engagement.
This requires transparency and publication of detailed budgets showing where prize money flows beyond the winner’s cheque, report actual print runs and distribution numbers, and track which states and institutions receive books. Tie future funding to measurable outcomes — number of schools adopting winning titles into their curricula, library acquisition rates across the six geopolitical zones, translation completion and distribution statistics, and digital download numbers.
These modest but systematic changes, achievable within existing budgets, could transform the prize from a single instance of individual recognition into sustained infrastructure supporting Nigerian literary culture. The goal is not to spend more money, but to spend current money more strategically, creating a lasting impact rather than a temporary celebration.
Addressing the counterarguments
There are counterarguments, and they matter. Chika Unigwe’s defence, widely expounded, reminds us that the prize is for Nigerians, wherever they live. The fact that some books first appear abroad and are later reissued in Nigeria is not sleight of hand; it can mean better editorial polish, wider markets and, eventually, cheaper local editions. International models reinforce this plurality. Belgium and Denmark combine state support for writers with major prizes, and the Booker Prize has recognised authors more than once on merit. If we prize strictly on nationality or residency, we risk narrowing the field artificially.
Moreover, defenders argue that literary excellence cannot be measured by distribution numbers alone. A prize-chasing readership could compromise artistic standards, selecting commercially appealing works over challenging, innovative writing. This tension between literary merit and popular accessibility reflects deeper questions about culture’s role in society.
These concerns have merit, but they miss a crucial point. The goal is not to choose popular books over excellent ones, but to ensure excellent books reach the readers capable of appreciating them. Nigeria has millions of literature students, thousands of book clubs, and hundreds of literary societies. The infrastructure to support challenging, sophisticated writing exists, but lacks the systematic support of transforming individual brilliance into cultural conversation.
Beyond the individual genius
So, the debate is not binary. The point is this: If NLNG wants the prize to do more than crown an individual, it must recognise that a literary ecosystem requires deliberate scaffolding. Publishing is a business — yes, but businesses scale when investment targets distribution, marketing, and capacity building, and not ceremonial visibility. A prize of such scale should be an instrument of national cultural policy, not a high-value accolade.
There are also symbolic reforms worth considering. Make previous winners ineligible for a defined period, or introduce dedicated categories for emerging writers. Rotate the prize’s promotional thrust so one year concentrates on translations, another on regional publishing infrastructure. Use the longlist and shortlist as vehicles for guaranteed funding — each longlisted title could receive a small grant for reprinting and national distribution, ensuring they do not become brief candles illuminating the literary scene momentarily.
The current system, however well-intentioned, perpetuates a familiar colonial pattern: the anointing of individual excellence while ignoring the collective institutions sustaining cultural life. We celebrate the writer while neglecting the readers, recognise the book while ignoring the bookshops, and fund the ceremony while starving the schools and libraries serving as literature’s natural home.
The path forward
I congratulate every writer on the longlist. Talent should be celebrated, not policed. My frustration is with design, with the mismatch between the prize’s monetary power and its short-term cultural footprint. When Amos Tutuola’s ‘The Palm-Wine Drinkard’ achieved international recognition in 1952, it did so without major prize support but through sustained advocacy, classroom adoption, and critical engagement lasting decades. Today’s literary infrastructure should surpass what existed seventy years ago, not pale beside it.
Judging writers by prizes alone destroys the deeper work — it turns art into a headline and talent into a lottery. If NLNG wishes to move from spectacle to strategy, it must reimagine the prize as a durable instrument, one lifting winners and strengthening the field that is producing them.
Prizes matter. But more important is what we do with them. Anchor the NLNG Prize to the soil of our reading life, and it becomes a scaffold. Leave it adrift, and it remains a glittering balloon. And while balloons burst, books — if tended — last. The choice facing NLNG is not between recognising excellence and building infrastructure, but between creating momentary spectacle and lasting cultural change.
In the end, the true measure of any literary prize is not the size of its cheque or the glamour of its ceremony, but whether the books it celebrates find their way into the hands, hearts, and minds of the readers they were written to reach. This is the difference between destroying a writer with hollow praise and nurturing the ecosystem where writers — and writing — flourish.
