By Olayinka Akanbi
Oyin Olugbile’s Sànyà wins the 2025 Nigeria Prize for Literature, celebrating Yoruba mythology and myth-based storytelling
The Nigeria Prize for Literature, for much of its history, has favoured works grounded in realism, social critique, and historical reckoning.
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Stories of war, politics, migration, and moral crisis have long shaped the kind of prose that reaches the final shortlist and often claims the top honour.
Against that tradition, the 2025 outcome was striking.
In October, the prize was awarded to Oyin Olugbile’s Sànyà, a novel that does not merely reference myth but is built upon it.
Drawing deeply from Yoruba cosmology, oral tradition, and speculative imagination, the book places the mythic at the centre of its narrative architecture rather than treating it as metaphor or embellishment.
In doing so, it marked a rare moment when Nigerian myth, presented without dilution, was recognised as a serious literary structure.
In its citation, the Prize jury, led by Professor Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, praised Sànyà’s “distinct and daring” approach to retelling mythology, reimagining Yoruba myth within a coherent narrative framework, a quality that helped it stand out among a shortlist of internationally recognised writers.
This win indicates a possible shift in how Nigerian literature is currently being read and evaluated.
Myth has always existed in Nigerian writing, but often on the sidelines.
It appears in allegory, in fragments, or as atmosphere within realist narratives that prioritise social commentary.
Sànyà challenges that order.
The supernatural is the world of the novel. Destiny, ancestry, spiritual consequence, and power operate as lived realities, shaping characters with the same authority that politics or economics might in another book.
Sànyà’s imaginative commitment was central to its emergence as the winning title.
The jury had also characterised the book as “a fascinating novel” whose plotting remains pacey and intriguing, qualities that set it apart on a shortlist crowded with established international voices.
What ultimately distinguished Sànyà, was the clarity and assurance with which its mythic vision is sustained throughout the narrative.
“Olugbile’s mythology retelling approach is distinct and daring for casting Sango as a female and for the projection of Yoruba mythology through a story that captivates and meanders into a fantastical world.
Olugbile achieves this through lucid and straightforward language, making for easy reading”, the jury’s final report read in part.
That distinction matters.
For years, African mythic and speculative writing has struggled for institutional recognition, often dismissed as genre fiction or culturally interesting but critically lightweight.
By awarding its highest honour to a novel so deeply rooted in mythic storytelling, the Nigeria Prize for Literature signalled a subtle but meaningful shift in literary values.
Reflecting on the origins of Sànyà, Olugbile, who earned a Bachelor’s degree in Creative Arts from the University of Lagos, explained that knowledge “comes in the form of a seed you don’t even know is there,” referring to how early engagement with Yoruba mythology gradually inspired the novel.
The author’s intent was not to feminise a male legend but to reimagine traditional narratives for contemporary audiences: “Our myths have evolved through oral storytelling, so I thought, why not imagine them differently? Could a modern audience find the same fascination with Sango as with Marvel’s heroes if we gave his story more emotional depth?” she said in an interview.
Her voice echoes that of several others within Nigerian and African literature.
A growing number of writers are increasingly comfortable working across forms, blending oral tradition with speculative futures, folklore with feminist reimaginings, and spiritual cosmologies with contemporary questions of identity and authority.
These writers are less concerned with proving literary seriousness to external audiences and more invested in expanding what seriousness itself can look like.
Awards do not merely recognise excellence; they signal permission. By elevating a mythic narrative, the Nigeria Prize for Literature has widened the space for stories that resist strict realism, that centre indigenous cosmologies, and that trust African narrative traditions on their own terms.
However, this does not denote a rejection of social realism or political writing.
Rather, it expands the field.
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That a mythic narrative claimed Nigeria’s most coveted literary prize in 2025 is a moment of recognition for an older way of storytelling that never disappeared but waited for the right moment to be taken seriously again.
