Oyin Olugbile’s novel Sanya is the winner of the NLNG Nigeria Prize for Literature 2025. The announcement was made in Lagos, Nigeria, on Saturday, October 10, 2025.
The Nigeria Prize for Literature, worth US$100,000, has celebrated Nigerian authors in the four genres of fiction, poetry, drama, and children’s literature since 2004. Sponsored annually by oil firm NLNG, some of the winners have been Familoni Oluranti Olubunmi, Obari Gomba, Romeo Oriogun, Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia, Jude Idada, Soji Cole, Ikeogu Oke, Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, Sam Ukala, Tade Ipadeola, and Chika Unigwe.
The Nigeria Prize for Literature 2025, with Professor Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo chairing the Advisory Board, has a fiction focus with a jury chaired by Professor Saeedat Bolajoko Aliyu of Kwara State University. He is joined by Nnamdi Azikiwe University Professor Mbanefo Ogene and Channels Television’s Book Club host Olakunle Kasumu. University of the Witwatersrand’s Dr. Grace Musila serves as the International Consultant. The longlist was announced on Wednesday, July 23, before the shortlist was made public on Thursday, August 28.
Prof Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo announced that the winner is Oyin Olugbile’s novel Sanya at a ceremony in Lagos, Nigeria on Saturday, October 10.
“This prize is not only an honour but a message, our stories are not a footnote but on the centre stage,” said Oyin Olugbile of her win. “We are no longer waiting to be discovered; we have arrived.”
The Masobe Books published title comes with the following blurb;
Sànyà always felt different. And everyone that knew her—the people in the village she grew up in, her beloved brother, Dada, her Aunt Abike, and even her parents before she was born—knew that there was something special about her, too. After an unspeakable tragedy causes her to leave home and grow up too soon, she is devastated to find that her incredible powers are linked to a future which she must fight, even at the cost of her very soul. She begins life anew, hoping that the dark prophesy would somehow rewrite itself. Soon, however, her carefully crafted life and identity becomes the catalyst for a deadly war that will tear her family apart, and doom everything she holds dear. Oyin Olugbile’s masterful debut tells the story of dangerous love—lost, found, and lost again—all against the backdrop of a fantastical, enthralling empire that holds even the Òrìsà themselves spellbound.
She wins the US$100,000 cash prize and the honour of being recognised as this year’s winner of the NLNG Nigeria Prize for Literature 2025.
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