Top 10 Richest/successful Authors in Nigeria 2024

Who is an Author? An author is someone whose written work has been published. In addition to producing published work, people who write are considered authors when they originate the ideas and content of their written work.

The terms “writer” and “author” tend to be used interchangeably. Even experienced writers and published authors may not know the difference between the two.

Many times people do belittle a being as a profession because they feel they don’t earn much just from publishing a book. But truth be told they are not universally, and not on average. Taking from looks from people’s comments, A person said; The average Author makes less than $28k a year from writing, which is the average individual income in the United States.

This makes the average writer poor. There are very wealthy authors, and they are often successful in other areas first. For a doctor writing a book can make a healthy side profit to put towards retirement. Such a person is likely already well off and writing makes them more so. Other writers churn out good work for decades without being noticed.

Success in writing is a combination of work ethic, luck, and talent. Many people have two of those, but it takes luck to get your work in front of the right eyes. Writing isn’t a good path to wealth, there are more dependable ways to get money. It’s a good way to develop better self-expression and satisfy creative urges.

Many burn the midnight oil working on the next great novel after working full-time to actually support themselves and their families. The million-dollar book deals are somewhat limited to people who are already known – entertainers, politicians, etc. Don’t fall into the illusion that with every copy of whatever, all of that money goes into the author’s pocket obviously, the publisher takes the lion’s share of the money. Many, if not most, authors have agents who get the books in front of the people that read the books at the publishers. Agents take a cut.

And, in one is fortunate enough to have a book made into a movie, that cut is larger. The economics are complex. But, bottom line, if you are thinking of writing as a way to support yourself, hang on to the day job for at least a little while. In today’s society, the trend is the other way.

The people of the world today believe everything should be free, including books. One need only look at the proliferation of free ebook sites. It’s a sense of undeserved entitlement that pervades our society today. Sad, really. Well in this article we will be taking you on an exhilarating journey on the top 10 Richest Authors in Nigeria. Let’s Discuss this!!!!

Top 10 Wealthiest Authors in Nigeria

In Nigeria today, it’s so shocking how we are so blessed with great men and women but unfortunately, some renowned writers like Chinua Achebe, Buchi Emecheta, and Ola Rotimi amongst others are no more, Nevertheless, the system is still very much more active ever. Let’s dive into the business of today’s richest authors.

Chimamanda Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Enugu, Nigeria in 1977. She grew up on the campus of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where her father was a professor and her mother was the first female Registrar. She studied medicine for a year at Nsukka and then left for the US at the age of 19 to continue her education on a different path. She graduated summa cum laude from Eastern Connecticut State University with a degree in Communication and Political Science.

She has a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins University and a Master of Arts degree in African History from Yale University. She was awarded a Hodder fellowship at Princeton University for the 2005-2006 academic year, and a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute of Harvard University for the 2011-2012 academic year. In 2008, she received a MacArthur Fellowship.

She has received honorary doctorate degrees from Eastern Connecticut State University, and many other reputable universities in the diaspora. Ms. Adichie’s work has been translated into over thirty languages and as of the time this article was published she has an estimated net worth of $8 Million.

Adichie’s novels;

• Purple Hibiscus (2003)
• Half of a Yellow Sun (2006)
• Americanah (2013)
• The Thing Around Your Neck (2009)
• We Should All Be Feminists (2014)
• Dear Ijeawele (2017)
• Zikora (2020)
• Notes on Grief (2021)

Awards and Recognitions

• 2002 nomination for Caine Prize for African Writing
• 2002/2003 David T. Wong International Short Story Prize (PEN American Center Award)
• Commonwealth Writers’ Prize: Best First Book (Africa)- 2005
• Commonwealth Writers’ Prize: Best First Book (overall)- 2005
• 2008 nomination for International Dublin Literary Award

Wole Soyinka

Wole Soyinka was born on 13 July 1934 at Abeokuta, near Ibadan in western Nigeria. After preparatory university studies in 1954 at Government College in Ibadan, he continued at the University of Leeds, where, later, in 1973, he took his doctorate. During the six years spent in England, he was a dramaturgist at the Royal Court Theatre in London from 1958-1959. In 1960, he was awarded a Rockefeller bursary and returned to Nigeria to study African drama.

At the same time, he taught drama and literature at various universities in Ibadan, Lagos, and Ife, where, since 1975, he has been a professor of comparative literature. In 1960, he founded the theatre group, “The 1960 Masks” and in 1964, the “Orisun Theatre Company”, in which he produced his own plays and took part as an actor. He has periodically been visiting professor at the universities of Cambridge, Sheffield, and Yale.

In 1986, Wole Soyinka made history as the first sub-Saharan African to win a Nobel Prize for literature. The renowned author who began his career in 1957 has also won an Academy of Achievement Award, Benson Medal, and Anisfield-Wolf Book Award amongst others. Soyinka’s first novel in nearly half a century is published in the UK this month.

It is a high-jinks state-of-the-nation novel that follows a religious leader, a politician, a media baron, and a group of university friends as they scheme their way through a version of present-day Nigeria. The satire and the commentary on Nigerian politics and society are trademarked, Soyinka.

Below are some of his works;

Poems

• A Scourge of Hyacinths (radio play)
• The Beatification of Area Boy (1996)
• Document of Identity (radio play, 1999)
• King Baabu (2001)
• Etiki Revu Wetin
• Alapata Apata (2011)

Novels

• The Interpreters (1965)
• Season of Anomy (1973)
• Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth (2021)

Films

• Kongi’s Harvest
• Culture in Transition
• Blues for a Prodigal

Poetry collections

• Telephone Conversation (1963)
• Idanre and other poems (1967)
• A Big Airplane Crashed into The Earth (1969)
• A Shuttle in the Crypt (1971)
• Ogun Abibiman (1976)
• Mandela’s Earth and other poems (1988)
• Early Poems (1997)
• Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known (2002)

Awards and Recognitions

• Nobel Prize in Literature (1986)
• Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature (1990)
• Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award (2009)
• Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, Lifetime Achievement (2012)
• Europe Theatre Prize – Special Prize (2017)

Ben Okri

Ben Okri is a poet, novelist, short story writer, essayist, aphorist, playwright, and writer of film scripts. His writing challenges perceptions of reality. He is also a cultural activist. He was born in Nigeria and came to England as a child. He went to school in London and returned to Nigeria with his parents on the eve of the Nigerian Civil War.

The war made a defining impact on his life. He finished his secondary school education and wanted to study physics and become a scientist. But he was deemed too young then for university and that summer he read his way through his father’s library and found his true vocation. He began writing at a very early age. He began with poetry and then published articles and essays about the living conditions of the poor in the slums of Lagos.

Then he wrote short stories and eventually what was to become his first novel, ‘Flowers and Shadows. He is also widely known as a poet. He thinks of himself as primarily a poet, and he maintains that his artistic response to life expresses itself most naturally through poetry. His first book of poems, ‘An African Elegy,’ contains some of his best-known poems, including the title poem, which is a set text in schools, and ‘ To an English friend in Africa.’ His epic poem, ‘Mental Fight,’ has been widely read and embraced. Quotations from it are regular on the internet. ‘ Wild,’ published in 2012, is perhaps his most diverse and life-affirming volume of poems.

His essays have also been widely read and influential. ‘ A Way of Being Free,’ published in 1997, contains some of his best-loved meditations on the power and magic of storytelling. And ‘ A Time for New Dreams,’ published in 2011, was the titular mascot of Grace Wells Bonner’s exhibition at the Serpentine in 2018. It was also a personal book recommendation by the great artist David Hammons in a New Yorker profile of him in 2019.

Ben’s Works;

Novel

• Infinite Riches (1998)
• In Arcadia (2002)
• Starbook (2007)
• The Age of Magic (2014)
• The Freedom Artist (2019)
• Every Leaf a Hallelujah (2021)

Poetry

• The Mystery Feast: Thoughts on Storytelling (2015)
• The Magic Lamp: Dreams of Our Age, (2017)
• Rise Like Lions: Poetry for the Many (2018)
• Prayer for the Living: Stories (2019)
• A Fire in My Head: Poems for the Dawn (2021)

Awards and Recognitions

• 2010 Honorary Doctorate, awarded by the School of Oriental and African Studies
• 2010 Honorary Doctorate of Arts, awarded by the University of Bedfordshire
• 2014 Honorary Fellow, Mansfield College, Oxford
• 2018 Shared winner of The Offies Award for Best Theatre Production for The Outsider
• 2019 BBC’s “100 novels that shaped our world,’ for ‘Astonishing the Gods.’
• 2020 Honorary Doctorate of Literature, Nelson Mandela University, South Africa

Teju Cole

Teju Cole is a novelist, photographer, critic, curator, and the author of several books. He was the photography critic of the New York Times Magazine from 2015 until 2019. He is currently the Gore Vidal Professor of the Practice of Creative Writing at Harvard. His novella, Every Day is for the Thief, was named a book of the year by the New York Times, the Globe and Mail, NPR, and the Telegraph, and shortlisted for the PEN/Open Book Award.

His novel, Open City, also featured on numerous book of the year lists, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award, the New York City Book Award for Fiction, the Rosenthal Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Internationaler Literaturpreis, and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the New York Public Library Young Lions Award, and the Ondaatje Prize of the Royal Society of Literature.

His essay collection, Known and Strange Things, was shortlisted for both the PEN/Diamond twin-screw Vogel Award for the Art of the Essay and the inaugural PEN/Jean Stein Award for “a book that has broken new ground by reshaping the boundaries of its form and signaling strong potential for lasting influence.” Known and Strange Things was named a book of the year by the Guardian, the Financial Times, Time Magazine, and many others.

Teju’s works;

Novel

• Open City(2007)
• Every Day is for the Thief(2016)
• Known and Strange Things(2017)
• Blind Spot(2017)
• Human Archipelago(2019)
• Fernweh(2020)
• Golden Apple of the Sun(2021)
• Black Paper(2021)

Awards and Recognitions

• 2011 Time magazine’s “Best Books of the Year” for Open City
• 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for Open City
• 2012 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award winner for Open City
• 2012 Ondaatje Prize shortlist for Open City
• 2012 The Morning News Tournament of Books finalist
• 2013 International Literature Award for the German-language translation by Christine Richter-Nilsson of Open City

Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani

Adaobi Tricia Obinne Nwaubani is a novelist, journalist, essayist and humorist from Nigeria. She is the first contemporary African writer to build a global career while remaining entirely domiciled in her own country, and she is based in Abuja, Nigeria.

Her first novel, I Do Not Come To You By Chance, received the Best First Book (Africa) Commonwealth Writer Prize for 2010 and was named one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post.

This author’s work focuses on humanitarian problems underreported. Her stories and articles have been published in several notable publications, including The New Yorker, the New York Times, and The Guardian. For BBC’s ‘Letter from Africa’, she publishes a monthly piece, also aired on Africa’s Radio Focus.

Adaobi’s works;

Awards and Recognitions

• 2010 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book (Africa)
• 2010 Betty Trask First Book Award
• 2010 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa finalist
• 2012 Nigeria Prize for Literature shortlist
• The Washington Post Best Books 2009
• 2018 recipient of the Raven Award of Excellence for her book “Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree”

Chris Abani

Chris AbaniNovelist, poet, essayist, screenwriter, and playwright Chris Abani grew up in Afikpo, Nigeria. Abani earned a BA in English from Imo State University, Nigeria; an MA in English, Gender, and Culture from Birkbeck College, University of London; and a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California.

Although Abani’s writing is inextricably linked to suffering experienced under Nigeria’s military dictatorship, the author once stated of literature, “The art is never about what you write about. Art is about how you write about what you write about. He was a writer before I was in prison.”

Read Also: Top 10 Richest Authors in the World 2023

In an online interview with Southern California Poetix contributor Carlye Archibeque, Abani further commented on his work: “The problem is we’re looking for something that doesn’t exist. We’re looking for authenticity. There is no such thing as authenticity. There is either good art or bad art.” Abani is a Board of Trustees Professor of English at Northwestern University.

Some of Chris Abani’s works;

Novels

• Masters of the Board (Delta, 1985)
• GraceLand (FSG, 2004/Picador 2005)
• The Virgin of Flames (Penguin, 2007)
• The Secret History of Las Vegas (Penguin, 2014)

Novellas

• Becoming Abigail (Akashic Books, 2006)
• Song For Night (Akashic Books, 2007)

Poetry

• Kalakuta Republic (Saqi, 2001)
• Daphne’s Lot (Red Hen Press, 2003)
• Dog Woman (Red Hen Press, 2004)
• Hands Washing Water (Copper Canyon Press, 2006)

Awards and Recognitions

• 2001 Abani received a Middleton Fellowship from the University of Southern California.
• 2003 he received the Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship
• 2006 Becoming Abigail was named an Editor’s Choice book for The New York Times
• 2007 The Virgin of Flames and Song for Night were Editor’s Choice picks for The New York Times.
• 2008 Abani received a Distinguished Humanist Award from the University of California, Riverside.
• In 2009, Abani received a Guggenheim Fellow in Fiction.

Sefi Atta

Sefi Atta was born in 1964 in Lagos, Nigeria. She was educated there, in England and the United States. Her father Abdul-Aziz Atta was the Secretary to the Federal Government and Head of the Civil Service until his death in 1972, and she was raised by her mother Iyabo Atta.

A former chartered accountant and CPA, she is a graduate of the creative writing program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. Her short stories have appeared in journals like Los Angeles Review and Mississippi Review and have won prizes from Zoetrope and Red Hen Press. Her radio plays have been broadcast by the BBC. She is the winner of PEN International’s 2004/2005 David TK Wong Prize and in 2006, her debut novel Everything Good Will Come was awarded the inaugural Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa.

Her short story collection, Lawless, received the 2009 Noma Award For Publishing in Africa. Lawless is published in the US and UK as News From Home. She lives in Mississippi with her husband Gboyega Ransome-Kuti, a medical doctor, and their daughter, TemiAtta was a juror for the 2010 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and has received several literary awards for her works, including the 2006 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa and the 2009 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa.

In 2015, a critical study of her novels and short stories, Writing Contemporary Nigeria: How Sefi Atta Illuminates African Culture and Tradition, was published by Cambria Press. Also, a playwright, her radio plays have been broadcast by the BBC, and her stage plays have been performed and published internationally.

Some of Safi Atta’s works;

Novels

• 2005 Everything Good Will Come
• 2010 Swallow
• 2013 A Bit of Difference
• 2019 The Bead Collector
• 2022: The Bad Immigrant.

Awards and recognitions

• 2002: Macmillan Writers Prize For Africa, shortlist
• 2002: BBC African Performance, 2nd Prize
• 2002: Zoetrope Short Fiction Contest, 3rd Prize
• 2003: Red Hen Press Short Story Award, 1st prize
• 2003: Glimmer Train′s Very Short Fiction Award, finalist
• 2004: BBC African Performance, 2nd Prize
• 2005: PEN International David TK Wong Prize, 1st Prize
• 2006: Caine Prize for African Writing, shortlist

Uzodinma Iweala

Uzodinma Iweala is the son of the current director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Also, he is the CEO of The Africa Center in Harlem, New York.

Uzodinma Iweala is an award-winning writer, filmmaker, and medical doctor. As the CEO of The Africa Center, he is dedicated to promoting a new narrative about Africa and its diaspora. Iweala was the CEO, editor-in-chief, and co-founder of Ventures Africa magazine, a publication that covers the evolving business, policy, culture, and innovation spaces in Africa.

His books include Beasts of No Nation, a novel released in 2005 to critical acclaim and adapted into a major motion picture; Our Kind of People, a non-fiction account of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria released in 2012; and Speak No Evil (2018), a novel about a queer first-generation Nigerian-American teen living in Washington, D.C. His short stories and essays have appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, and The Paris Review.

Iweala was also the founding CEO of the Private Sector Health Alliance of Nigeria, an organization that promotes private-sector investment in health services and health innovation in Nigeria. He sits on the Boards of the Sundance Institute, The International Rescue Committee, and the African Development Bank’s Presidential Youth Advisory Group.

Novel

• Beasts of No Nation (2005)
• Speak No Evil (2018)

Awards and Recognitions

• New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award- 2006
• Granta magazine’s 20 best young American Novelists- 2007

Helon Habila

Helon Habila was born in Nigeria in 1967. He studied literature at the University of Jos and taught at the Federal Polytechnic Bauchi, before moving to Lagos to work as a journalist. In Lagos he wrote his first novel, Waiting for an Angel, which won the Caine Prize in 2001. Waiting for an Angel has been translated into many languages including Dutch, Italian, Swedish, and French.

In 2002, he moved to England to become an African Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia. After his fellowship, he enrolled for a Ph.D. in Creative Writing. His writing has won many prizes including the Commonwealth Writers Prize, in 2003. In 2005-2006 he was the first Chinua Achebe Fellow at Bard College in New York.

He is a contributing editor to the Virginia Quarterly Review, and in 2006 he co-edited the British Council’s anthology, NW14: The Anthology of New Writing, Volume 14. His second novel, Measuring Time, was published in February 2007. He currently teaches Creative Writing at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where he lives with his wife and children.

Some of Helon Habile’s works;

Novels

• Prison Stories (2000)
• Waiting for an Angel (2004)
• Measuring Time (2007)
• Oil on Water (2010)
• Travelers (2019)

Awards and Recognitions

• 2007 Emily Clark Balch Prize (short story)The Hotel Malogo
• 2008 Library of Virginia Literary Award for Fiction- Measuring Time
• 2011 Commonwealth Writers Prize (shortlist)- Oil on Water
• 2015 Windham–Campbell Literature Prize (Fiction) valued at $150,000
• 2020 James Tait Black Memorial Prize (shortlist)- Travelers by

Buchi Emecheta

Buchi Emecheta, in full Florence Onyebuchi Emecheta, was born on July 21, 1944, in Lagos, Nigeria—died on January 25, 2017, in London, England, Igbo writer whose novels deal largely with the difficult and unequal role of women in both immigrant and African societies and explore the tension between tradition and modernity.

Emecheta married at age 16, and she emigrated with her husband from Nigeria to London in 1962. She began writing stories based on her life, including the problems she initially encountered in England. These works were first published in New Statesman magazine and were later collected in the novel In the Ditch (1972). That work was followed by Second-Class Citizen (1974), and both were later included in the single volume Adah’s Story (1983).

Those books introduce Emecheta’s three major themes: the quest for equal treatment, self-confidence, and dignity as a woman. Somewhat different in style is Emecheta’s novel Gwendolen (1989; also published as The Family), which addresses the issues of immigrant life in Great Britain, as do Kehinde (1994) and The New Tribe (2000).

Awards and Recognitions

• 2005 OBE
• 1983 Best of Young British Novelist
• 1979 New Statesman Jock Campbell Award for Commonwealth Writers

Conclusion

According to our research, these are the top 10 richest authors in Nigeria at the time this article was written. Do you have any addition or questions drop them in the comment section.

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