The award winning poet, Toyin Adewale-Gabriel and notable performance poet Dike Chukwumerije are the two non-academics that make up the prize jury this year for the coveted Nigeria Prize for Literature 2022 and Nigeria Prize for Literary Criticism 2022.

Professor Sule Emmanuel Egya will chair the three-man jury panel.

Recently, at a media session, Nigeria Liquified Natural Gas (NLNG) Limited, the prize sponsor, had hinted at the possible innovations being planned so as to make adjudication of the prize more inclusive and all embracing.

Entries for this year’s Nigeria Prize for Literature 2022 will be in poetry, while April 8, 2022 is the deadline for submission of entries. This year’s winner will be named in October.

Egya is a professor of African literature and cultural studies at Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University, Lapai. His research interests include, the intersection of literature and politics in Africa, feminism, cultural studies, and ecocriticism. Fellowships and awards he has previously benefitted from include PER SESH Writing Fellowship; the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship; the African Humanities Fellowship and the Humboldt Talent Travel Award.

He has written over one hundred scholarly articles and literary essays. He is the author of The Writings of Zaynab Alkali (2005), In Their Voices and Visions: Conversations with New Nigerian Writers (2007), Poetics of Rage: A Reading of Remi Raji’s Poetry (2011), Nation, Power, and Dissidence in Third Generation Nigerian Poetry (2014) and Niyi Osundare: a Literary Biography (2017). He is also a creative writer. His first novel Sterile Sky (2012) won the 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize for the Africa Region. Makwala (2018) is his second novel. His poetry volumes include What the Sea Told Me (2009, winner of ANA Gabriel Okara Prize), Naked Sun (2006), and Knifing Tongues (2005).

Born in Ibadan, Adewale-Gabriel is a poet and narrator. She studied Literature and English. She has also worked as literary critic in different newspapers of her country, among them The Guardian, Post Express and The Daily Times.

She was cofounder and coordinator for several years of the Association of Writers of Nigeria. Works: Naked Testimonies 1995; Breaking The Silence, 1996; Inkwells, 1997; Die Aromaforscherin, 1998; Flackernde Kerzen, 1999; 25 New Nigerian Poets, 2000; Aci Cikolata, Gunizi Yayincilik, 2003; and Nigerian Women Short Stories, 2005.

Above any consideration of gender, the poetry of Toyin Adewale outstands in the contemporary world as one of the most beautiful and outstanding voices of the new African poetry.

Her work is a kind of cultural mixture where the common issues of African poetry appear: the savannah the faunae, the beautiful landscapes and its surroundings, the geography of pain -Goree-, etc., and along with these elements there are others that belong to universal poetry, from other latitudes and cultures and that give as a result a unique mixture of great beauty and that have a strength which seduce us and integrate us in its poetic heartbeating.

Dike Chukwumerije is a Nigerian Spoken Word and Performance Poetry artist and an award-winning author. He has eight published books to his name including the novel, Urichindere, which won the 2013 Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) Prize for Prose Fiction and a poetry theatre production – Made In Nigeria – currently touring the country.

He was born in Lagos, and had his primary and secondary education in that city, before moving north to Abuja, where he studied Law at the University there. His interest in writing and Poetry came as a child from his elder brother, Che Chukwumerije, an avid poet and musician, and from a childhood friend, Onesi Dominic, who both shared their poetry with him. He was also heavily influenced by his father, Uche Chukwumerije, who published a pan-africanist magazine, Afriscope, from the 1970s into the early 1980s, and by his mother, Nwoyibo Iweka, a gifted and natural storyteller, who helped him see magic in every day things.

He is a member of the vibrant Abuja-based literary group, the Abuja Literary Society (ALS) and the host of the group’s Book Jam and Poetry Slam. He has won several poetry grand slams in Nigeria including the maiden edition of the African Poet (Nigeria) Grand Slam competition. Since 2013, he has hosted and directed the annual Night of the Spoken Word (NSW) performance poetry event.

As part of a movement to insert performance poetry into Nigeria’s mainstream pop culture He also hosts weekly Open Mic performances which include a mix of acts from readings of short stories by their authors to musical performances, poetry and spoken word acts.