Abuja, Nigeria — July 26, 2026 — Konya Shamsrumi, the Abuja-based poetry-only publishing house, is proud to announce that Adult Love: In the Childhood Garden, the latest collection by preeminent Nigerian poet Tanure Ojaide, has been named to the 11-title longlist for the 2026 Nigeria Prize for Literature, sponsored by Nigeria LNG Limited (NLNG).
The longlist was unveiled in Lagos on Thursday, July 23, 2026, by the Chairman of the Prize’s Advisory Board, Prof. Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, selected from a record 223 entries submitted for this year’s competition. Now in its 22nd year, the Nigeria Prize for Literature is widely regarded as Africa’s richest and most prestigious literary award, carrying a cash prize of $100,000 for the winning author. The prize rotates annually across four genres — prose fiction, poetry, drama, and children’s literature — with the 2026 edition dedicated to poetry.
Adult Love made its public debut at the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) Convention in Abuja in October 2025, where it was sold exclusively by Kairos Tablets and Scrolls. Konya Shamsrumi acquired the rights to the collection at a signing ceremony in Abuja in August 2025.
Konya Shamsrumi Publisher, Richard Ali, said, “Adult Love was always a significant addition to Professor Ojaide’s body of work, but this longlisting confirms what we believed when we signed the collection: that it stands with the very best being written in Nigerian poetry today. We are proud to have brought this book into the world. Konya Shamsrumi congratulates Professor Ojaide on a well-earned honour.”
This is not Ojaide’s first encounter with the prize: he was a finalist in 2017 for Songs of Myself: A Quartet, the year the late Ikeogu Oke won for The Heresiad. Born in 1948, Ojaide is one of Africa’s most distinguished literary voices, with a career spanning over five decades and more than 20 published books, including Children of the Iroko and Other Poems (1973) and The Fate of the Vulture. His work is known for its engagement with environmental justice, cultural memory, and political integrity, rooted in Urhobo aesthetics. His many honours include the 2018 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa, the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Africa Region (1987), the BBC Arts and Africa Poetry Award (1988), the Nigerian National Order of Merit, and the Fonlon-Nichols Award for Excellence in African Writing.
The Nigeria Prize for Literature will announce a shortlist of three titles on August 26, 2026, with the winner to be revealed on October 9, 2026.
Adult Love: In the Childhood Garden is available now through the Konya Shamsrumi Bookshop at shamsrumi.org/shop.
Adult Love by Tanure Ojaide
Adult Love by Tanure Ojaide has been longlisted for the 2026 Nigeria Prize for Literature.
In Adult Love: In the Childhood Garden, Tanure Ojaide recollects the “small things” of childhood and youth that would guide later adult life towards values that give meaning to humanity.
In seven movements, he affirms that poetry, like life, is movement for self-affirmation in humanity. Conscious of his heritage of udje oral poetic performance, the poet starts with invocation of his god of songs, Aridon, and then criticizes his caste of wordsmiths before taking on other issues.
Two movements relate to his lived experiences of childhood and youth. Other sections deal with nature and environment, “wondering” about the madness of society and national socio-political mismanagement and tempered by love.
The collection ends with hope, emblematized in the egodi bird (falcon) that disappears only to reappear every year. To the poet, life is a human struggle for fulfillment as one works against disappointments for a better state of things.
About Konya Shamsrumi
Founded in 2019 by Richard Ali and Umar Abubakar Sidi, Konya Shamsrumi has emerged as a vital platform for contemporary African poetry. Its allied collective includes poets Funmi Gaji, Rasaq Malik Gbolahan, Nasiba Babale, and Ismail Bala Garba. The publisher’s digital platform, www.shamsrumi.org, offers poetry content from Africa and its diaspora, while its Digital Editions chapbook series is curated by poet and critic Carl Terver.
Media Contact
Star Zahra
Email: star.zahra@shamsrumi.org
