From Poetry To Artificial Intelligence: NLNG Awards Celebrate Nigeria’s Power To Imagine & Innovate
A Night Where Different Worlds of Excellence Converged
NIGERIA’S literary, scientific and creative communities found common ground in Lagos on 9 October 2026, when Nigeria LNG Limited (NLNG) brought outstanding achievers together for its Grand Award Night. Beyond the glamour of the ceremony, however, the event raised a deeper question about the country’s future: how can Nigeria preserve its intellectual and cultural heritage while creating opportunities for the next generation?
The winners of The Nigeria Prize for Literature, The Nigeria Prize for Science and Innovation, and the inaugural Nigeria Prize for Creative Arts used the occasion to call for stronger investment in human potential, wider support for innovation and greater recognition of the country’s creative resources.
Among the celebrated achievers was poet and lawyer Dr. Ogaga Ifowodo, who received the $100,000 Nigeria Prize for Literature for his collection, Why Does God Need a Gun? Meanwhile, Mary-Brenda Akoda won the $100,000 Nigeria Prize for Science and Innovation for her artificial intelligence-powered medical imaging technology, GenScan AI.
In the creative arts category, filmmakers Peter Oghenetega Oke and Feranmi Abiola shared the inaugural prize. Their documentaries, Beyond Tarkwa Bay and Mara Mania, respectively, brought different dimensions of Nigerian experience to the centre of national recognition.
Although the winners worked in distinct fields, their achievements converged around a common idea: talent becomes more consequential when society recognises it, supports its development and allows it to influence the lives of others.
Heritage as a Responsibility to Future Generations
For NLNG Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Adeleye Falade, the theme of the ceremony, “Heritage”, offered an opportunity to reflect on the relationship between past achievements and future possibilities.
Falade argued that heritage should not remain a passive record of history. Rather, it should serve as a foundation upon which succeeding generations build new accomplishments.
He described the occasion as a celebration of excellence, perseverance and the courage to pursue a vision. At the same time, he reaffirmed the company’s commitment to sustaining a culture that recognises achievement in Nigeria’s literary and scientific communities.
To illustrate the importance of celebrating accomplished individuals, Falade recalled his secondary school days at Government College, Ibadan. He remembered an occasion when the institution honoured distinguished former students, including Dr Aribisala for his contributions to agriculture, Akinola Aguda, who served as Chief Justice of Botswana, and Nobel laureate Professor Wole Soyinka.
Seeing Soyinka again at the Lagos ceremony revived those memories and reinforced the importance of recognising people whose achievements can inspire younger Nigerians.
Indeed, such recognition carries significance beyond the recipients themselves. When institutions celebrate intellectual courage, scientific ingenuity and creative achievement, they also provide younger people with examples of what sustained effort can accomplish.
Falade connected this philosophy to NLNG’s origins. More than three decades ago, he explained, the company’s founders recognised the potential of Nigeria’s natural gas resources to generate economic value and support national development.
According to him, their vision involved transforming a resource that had often gone to waste into an instrument of economic growth, energy development and wider national progress.
He presented the company’s awards as an extension of that outlook: just as natural resources require vision and investment to generate value, human talent also needs deliberate support to produce lasting benefits.
Literary Recognition & the Duty to Remember
Ifowodo’s winning collection placed literature at the centre of a difficult moral conversation about faith, violence, captivity and human freedom.
In his acceptance speech, the poet explained that Why Does God Need a Gun? examines the contradictions that arise when people commit atrocities in the name of religion. Its central sequence, “From the Forest of a Million Demons (Leah Sharibu Lifts the Veil)”, culminates in the poem “Soon, Archangel Michael Will Free Us”.
Through the experience of a captive speaker who dreams of freedom, the collection interrogates the problem of theodicy: how societies reconcile belief in an all-powerful, loving and merciful God with the suffering inflicted by human beings who claim religious authority.
For Ifowodo, however, the question extends beyond theology. It concerns the human capacity to justify cruelty, restrict freedom and deny others the dignity that should belong to everyone.
He argued that humanity’s hope rests on the unequivocal recognition of the equality, dignity and freedom of all people, irrespective of gender, race, class, religion, colour or social identity.
Consequently, he described the poet as a witness whose responsibility includes preserving the memory of suffering and exposing attempts by religious and secular authorities to impose a single way of thinking, believing or living.
This understanding of poetry gives literature a public responsibility. Rather than serving merely as an aesthetic exercise, it can document human experience, challenge oppressive ideas and protect memories that powerful institutions might prefer to suppress.
Ifowodo dedicated the award to Leah Sharibu, whose refusal to renounce her Christian faith while in captivity inspired the collection. Her experience, he explained, compelled him to explore the relationship between religious conviction, freedom and the human cost of extremism.
He also urged NLNG to sustain its support for literature and the wider cultural sector, describing the recognition as a significant honour for Nigerian writing.
The award, therefore, celebrated not only a literary achievement but also the capacity of poetry to confront uncomfortable questions about belief, authority and humanity.
Soyinka Bridges the Sciences & the Humanities
While Ifowodo’s acceptance speech examined the moral responsibilities of literature, Soyinka’s address turned attention to the intellectual relationship between the humanities and the sciences.
With characteristic humour, the Nobel laureate welcomed scientists to an occasion he jokingly described as traditionally dominated by the humanities. He urged his fellow humanists to treat their scientific colleagues generously, referring to them as younger siblings.
Soyinka then recalled his difficult experiences with science and mathematics during his school years. He admitted that he had little affection for the subjects and their teachers, recounting how he discarded his scientific books after leaving school.
Yet his later encounters with scientific ideas gave him an unexpected reason to revisit that youthful hostility. Recalling an association with an organisation connected to transfigural mathematics, he described the irony of being involved in a field that had once seemed so distant from his interests.
Beneath the humour lay a serious argument. Soyinka insisted that imagination does not belong exclusively to writers, poets and artists. Scientists also need it to interpret facts, develop hypotheses, recognise patterns and imagine possibilities that existing knowledge has not yet established.
In his view, intellectual discovery begins with the ability to envision something beyond what is immediately apparent. Facts and figures remain essential, but imagination helps researchers connect them and pursue new directions.
His argument challenged the tendency to treat scientific and artistic intelligence as separate or competing abilities. Both disciplines require curiosity, observation, experimentation and the willingness to explore possibilities beyond familiar boundaries.
By introducing the Nigeria Prize for Creative Arts alongside its established literary and scientific awards, NLNG has created an occasion that brings these different forms of intellectual work into a shared public space.
Soyinka welcomed the development, suggesting that the new award could broaden opportunities for imagination and strengthen engagement across fields of knowledge.
Science & Innovation with a Human Purpose
Akoda’s victory gave the evening a practical demonstration of how scientific innovation can respond to human needs.
Although she had previously received international awards and recognition, she said winning a major prize in her home country carried a distinctive emotional significance. She also described the achievement as particularly meaningful because she was the first woman and youngest person to receive the Nigeria Prize for Science and Innovation.
Her hope, she explained, was that the recognition would encourage young Nigerians, especially girls and young women, to pursue ambitious goals in science, technology and entrepreneurship.
Behind the award lay the challenges of developing medical imaging technology through her work with GenScan AI. Akoda acknowledged the difficulties involved in the research and entrepreneurial journey, paying tribute to her mother and brother for encouraging her whenever progress seemed uncertain.
She recalled repeatedly telling her family that the project was the most challenging undertaking she had faced. Their response reminded her that she had overcome difficult situations before and could do so again.
That support helped sustain her determination, but Akoda emphasised that the prize represented a beginning rather than a final destination.
Her broader ambition is to make medical diagnosis more accessible and timely, reducing the suffering and loss of life associated with delayed detection. To achieve that goal, she called for continued support that would enable the company to deploy its technology in hospitals and extend access to patients in Nigeria and beyond.
Her appeal highlights an important distinction between rewarding innovation and ensuring that it reaches the people who need it. Scientific recognition can encourage research, but practical impact also depends on implementation, institutional partnerships, resources and access to healthcare facilities.
In this respect, Akoda’s award carried a message that reached beyond the laboratory. It underscored the need to connect scientific achievement with the everyday challenges facing communities.
Creative Arts as a Record of Contemporary Nigeria
The inaugural Nigeria Prize for Creative Arts expanded the ceremony’s reach by recognising documentaries that explore Nigerian lives and cultural expression.
Oke, joint winner for Beyond Tarkwa Bay, was represented at the ceremony by Rume Onosede. His documentary focuses on young Nigerians pursuing their ambitions despite difficult social and economic circumstances.
Through the film, Oke sought to draw attention to the resilience of young people while highlighting the need for a safer country, better infrastructure and stronger support for their aspirations.
He argued that Nigeria’s large youth population represents a considerable national resource, but that its potential cannot be fully realised without the conditions that enable young people to thrive.
The documentary consequently functions as more than a record of individual determination. It also raises questions about the responsibilities of institutions and society in creating opportunities for young people to turn their ambitions into sustainable achievements.
Oke expressed hope that the award would encourage continued efforts to build a country where future generations could find the support and infrastructure necessary to contribute meaningfully to national development.
Abiola’s Mara Mania, the other winning documentary, explored Mara, a street music and dance culture. She thanked the people whose experiences formed the heart of the project, as well as her production crew and family.
Her acknowledgement highlighted another dimension of documentary filmmaking: the responsibility to represent the people whose lives, traditions and experiences become the subject of a film.
By bringing a street-based cultural expression into the national spotlight, the documentary also demonstrated how creative work can preserve and reinterpret forms of culture that might otherwise receive limited institutional recognition.
Together, the two films illustrated the breadth of creative practice in Nigeria. One focused on youth resilience and the obstacles confronting people who seek to improve their circumstances; the other examined a cultural expression through music, movement and community participation.
Their joint recognition signalled that creative excellence can emerge from diverse experiences and that documentary filmmaking can contribute to conversations about both social development and cultural preservation.
Beyond the Awards: Building a Sustainable Culture of Excellence
The Grand Award Night brought together three areas of achievement that are sometimes treated separately: literature, science and the creative arts. Yet the speeches and winning works revealed significant connections among them.
Ifowodo used poetry to examine the human consequences of religious violence and authoritarianism. Akoda presented medical technology as a means of addressing delayed diagnosis. Meanwhile, Oke and Abiola explored youth resilience and cultural expression through documentary film.
Each achievement demonstrated a different way of applying knowledge, imagination and creative discipline to questions that matter to society.
Falade’s emphasis on heritage offered a framework for understanding those connections. Preserving heritage does not require society to remain fixed in the past. Instead, it involves protecting valuable memories, recognising present achievements and creating conditions for future generations to make their own contributions.
Nevertheless, awards alone cannot guarantee that Nigeria will realise the potential represented by its writers, scientists, filmmakers and young innovators. Sustained progress also requires educational opportunities, research support, functional infrastructure, access to technology and institutions willing to invest in emerging talent.
The winners’ appeals therefore gave the ceremony a significance beyond celebration. They called attention to the need to turn recognition into opportunity and individual achievement into broader social benefit.
Ultimately, NLNG’s Grand Award Night presented excellence as both an accomplishment and a responsibility. The challenge ahead is to ensure that the ideas, discoveries and stories celebrated on that evening continue to influence Nigerian society long after the awards have been presented.
