Ogaga Ifowodo has won the 2026 Nigeria Prize for Literature, together with the $100,000 in prize money. His winning entry is a poetry collection titled Why Does God Need a Gun?. Purses on that scale make the award one of the most sought after literary prizes in Africa. Verse takes the spotlight this cycle, since the prize rotates between genres from one edition to the next. Ifowodo's name now joins the roll of past winners in the award's recent history. The result was reported by Punch, which pointed readers to its full story online. For a poet working in Nigeria's crowded literary scene, the recognition marks a real milestone.