The award rotates among four genres; fiction, poetry, drama and children's literature, repeating the cycle every four years.

The Prize was established in 2004 and sponsored by Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas company.

However, the process and judging are administered by Nigerian Academy of Science with advisory board made up of members from Nigeria Academy of Letters and Association of Nigerian Authors.

However, on three occasions the panel of judges were unable to select a winner, with no prize awarded in 2004, 2009[3] and 2015.

[4][5] In 2015, chair of the judging panel Ayo Banjo noted: "Unfortunately, the entries this year fall short of this expectation as each book was found to manifest incompetence in the use of language.