“This prize declares that our stories are not footnotes; they are the main text.”
— Oyin Olugbile, Winner, 2025 Nigeria Prize for Literature.
When Oyin Olugbile received the 2025 Nigeria Prize for Literature, Africa’s most prestigious literary honour, the world celebrated not only another novelist, but also a writer who could rethink tradition through a woman’s voice.
Born on 21 January 1987, Oyindamola Olugbile is a Nigerian author whose work stands at the intersection of art, heritage, and social impact. A graduate of the University of Lagos with a B.A. in Creative Arts, she also holds an MSc from King’s College London, alongside postgraduate certificates from Lagos Business School, Harvard Business School Online, and the School of Politics, Policy & Governance.
Her debut novel, Sànyà, published by Masobe Books in 2022, won the Nigeria Prize for Literature 2025, carrying a prize of $100,000. The prose-fiction award was decided from over 250 entries, narrowing down to a final shortlist of three, before Olugbile’s work emerged as the final choice.
The judges described Sànyà as “distinct and daring,” praising its bold reinterpretation of Yoruba mythology and its emotional depth. The novel talks about the legacy of Sàngó, the Yoruba deity of thunder, but through a female point of view, retelling the questions power, gender, identity, and the price of destiny.
By giving voice to a mythology often told from the perspective of men, Sànyà entertains, as well as reclaims a narrative space. It reminds readers that culture evolves, and that women’s stories, once muted, can now thunder.
Beyond her literary acclaim, Olugbile is a social-impact management consultant and Chief Curator of The Experience Factory, an education initiative that provides out-of-classroom learning experiences for young people. Her work outside literature mirrors the same passion that shapes her art: to educate, to question, and to inspire transformation through storytelling.
With Sànyà, Oyindamola Olugbile has written fiction, built the connection between heritage and innovation, between the divine and the human, between history and possibility.