Professor Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia Wins NLNG Prize for Literature

Professor Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia Wins NLNG Prize for Literature

Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia, an author and professor of Law at Babcock University, Ogun State, Nigeria, has won the $100,000 Nigeria Prize for Literature, for her book “The Son Of The House.” The prize was sponsored by Nigeria LNG Limited. This year, the contest was for Prose Fiction and a total of 202 books were submitted for the competition.

Onyemelukwe-Onuobia’s “The Son Of The House” won against Abi Dare’s  ”The Girl with the Louding Voice” and Obinna Udenwe’s ”Colours of Hatred.” 

Professor Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, the Chair of the Advisory Board for the NLNG prize, disclosed this at the award ceremony and public presentation of the 2021 winners of the three NLNG prizes at Expo Centre, Eko Hotel and Suites, Lagos.

Uchechukwu Umez Uwazurike was named winner of the N1 million award for the NLNG’s Prize for Literary Criticism, while there was no winner for the $100,000 prize for Science.

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According to Adimora-Ezeigbo, Onyemelukwe-Onuobia’s novel edged out not only because it was full of suspense and intrigue but for how it was able to “tell human and indeed universal stories of rural as against urban life, suffering and survival, loss and redemption, decline and renaissance, destruction and reconstruction, and death and rebirth.”

“The Son of the House’ is a profoundly unconventional novel that portrays the lives of two women in different worlds whose paths crossed during captivity. But they soon realised their path had earlier crossed at various points.

”The stories of Nwabulu, a one-time housemaid and now a successful fashion designer, and Julie, an educated woman who lived through tricks, deceits, and manipulations, are told through a mosaic plot structure against the backdrop of modernity and traditional patriarchy, poverty, and neglect.”

The NLNG prize was judged by a panel led by a Professor of Literature in English at the University of Ibadan. Other panel members include Professor Tanimu Abubakar, a Professor of Literature in the Faculty of Art, Ahmadu Bello University, and Dr Solomon Azumurana, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Lagos.

Congratulations to the 2021 NLNG Prize winners.