Ogaga Ifowodo Reveals What He’ll Do With $100,000 Nigeria Prize For Literature

Nigeria Prize for Literature winner, Ogaga Ifowodo, has revealed that part of his $100,000 prize money will go towards something many Nigerians can relate to — paying rent and buying petrol at ₦1,400 per litre.

But beyond taking care of immediate needs, the poet plans to use his win to help discover another generation of young writers.

Speaking exclusively to LEADERSHIP on what he intends to do with the prize money, Ifowodo responded with humour.

“I’d be able to pay my rent a couple of years or more ahead and afford petrol at N1,400 per litre until the promised relief comes!” he said.

He borrowed a line from Nigerian-British writer Ben Okri, recalling Okri’s response after winning the Booker Prize for The Famished Road.

“He said the prize would enable him to buy a few more pencils for his writing, or words to that effect,” Ifowodo recalled.

For the poet, however, the money will also take him back to where his own writing journey began.

Ifowodo said he intends to establish a poetry prize at his alma mater, Federal Government College, Warri, open to all students of the school.

It is a deeply personal decision.

He wrote his first poem there as a fourth-year student for the school’s annual festival of art and culture. The poem won joint first prize for Independence House, alongside a poem written by a sixth-form student.

Decades later, after reaching one of the biggest milestones of his literary career, Ifowodo wants to give something back to the place where the journey began.

“I would like to pay homage to the first step of my awakening as a poet with a poetry prize that would be open to all of the school’s students,” he said.

From paying rent and surviving ₦1,400 petrol to creating an opportunity for a schoolchild who may be writing their first poem today, Ifowodo’s prize money may end up telling a story much bigger than the win itself.