The 2023 CORA-Nigeria Prize for Literature Book Party will hold today at the Shell Hall, MUSON Centre, Onikan, Lagos. The event begins at 2.00pm.

The Nigeria Prize for Literature is sponsored by the Nigeria LNG. It was inaugurated in 2004 and sponsored by Nigerian LNG Limited with $20, 000 prize money, which was later raised to $50,000 and now, it is a $100,000 prize – the biggest of its kind in Africa.

Initiated in 2010, by the country’s leading literary campaign organisation, the Committee for Relevant Art (CORA), the book soiree is described as an extension service to the campaign for literacy to advance Enlightenment, Education and Empowerment — CORA’s core commitment.

CORA is a group consisting of artistes, art enthusiasts, art promoters and art writers committed to the flowering of all the contemporary arts of the Nigerian people. It has organised, every year since 1999, the Lagos Book & Art Festival, (LABAF), critically described as ‘the biggest Culture picnic on the African continent.’ The 25th edition holds November 13-19 with theme: The Reset: History On A Darkling Plain.

The party is a platform where the reading public and literary activists engage writers of the 11 best texts (of the genre-in-focus for the year) in the country as determined, each year, by the jury of the Nigeria Prize for Literature (NPL).

It is the 14th since literature-loving gas company, NLNG, signed on to the programme to boost its $100,000 prize project, reputed as the biggest on the continent. This year’s genre is drama.

On July 20, the Advisory Board of the NPL chaired by professor of English, Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, announced 11 longlisted playwrights who made the cut from the initial 143 entries.

A statement issued by the CORA programme Directorate, observed that the submission of 143 entries for the drama genre this year is impressive, as it shows, “Nigerian writers are indeed very productive, contrary to impression that the genre is not as popular among creative writers.”

The directorate noted, “that the demography of the longlisted writers is cross-generational. It is encouraging that young writers are deeply interested in drama.”

The longlist this year, much like what happened last year when the poet Romeo Oriogun won, consists of old, midcareer and young writers, who are in contention for the biggest literary prize on the continent and one of the biggest in the world.

The 2023 longlist writers, in no particular order, comprise: Bode Sowande – a septuagenarian university don whose play, The Spellbinder is described by the NPL judges as “a psychological enquiry into cleansing of mental instability having forgiveness at the root of its resolution.”

Abideen Abolaji Ojomu’s The Ojuelegba Crossroads is said to take the reader “into a townhall to discuss in an engaging manner a metaphor of a society in dire need of purging, Olatunbosun Taofeek’s Where is Patient Zero typifies a play full of drama and humour. It is an engagement on international politics of disease and economy.”

Grit by the university teacher and a record fifth-timer on NPL longlist, Obari Gomba, “gives a deep insight into the destructive impact of soul-less politics which brings out the beast in man. The play is filled with conflicts that create the mood of the inevitability of tragedy. Tshe language is full of twists that entertain amid pains.”

Dance of The Sacred Feet by Ade Adeniji is concerned about “upholding the sanity of cultural tradition and yet making space to accommodate change and diversity for peace and progress.”
Yamtarawala – The Warrior King by Henry Akubuiro, an art journalist, is described as “a historical play garnished with fascinating tales and rituals.”

While Victor Dugga’s Gidan Juju dwells on “kingship and succession, revolutionising tradition and inviting post-modernity”, Olubunmi Familoni’s When Big Masquerades Dance Naked has an “insightful, socio-realistic subject-matter representing the dimension of systemic corruption and criminal alliance in traditional and contemporary political space.”

The Boat People by Christopher Anyokwu, an English and Literature lecturer, and a second timer on the NPL race, is described by the judges as presenting a “socio-culturally relevant subject-matter that is rich in techniques. An out-of-the-box crafting of the experiences referred to as Japa.”

Those that may be considered to fall within the young writers’ clique include: Cheta Igbokwe and Abuchi Modilim. An MFA candidate at the Iowa Playwrights’ Workshop and a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Department of Theatre Arts, University of Iowa, Igbokwe’s Home Coming is captured as “a play that gives profound understanding of tragic experiences and the psychological life of the people. It is philosophical and gravely entertaining.”

The Brigadiers of a Mad Tribe by the winner of 2021 Arojah Students Playwriting Prize, Abuchi Modilim, “is a discourse on the politics of marriage between science and voodoo.”

The list of 11 will eventually be whittled down to a shortlist of three. The eventual winner of the 2023 Nigeria Prize for Literature will be made public in a ceremony sometime in October.