Oris Aigbokhaevbolo


Oris Aigbokhaevbolo is a Nigerian writer, critic, essayist and the winner of an All Africa Music Awards for Music/Entertainment Journalist of the Year. Since 2023, he has been a Golden Globes international voter.

Early life and career

Aigbokhaevbolo studied pharmacy at the University of Benin, Nigeria.
He voted in the annual Sight and Sound Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time for 2022, putting Citizen Kane and Viva Riva! on his list. He has contributed to The Guardian, The New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, Sight and Sound, and The Africa Report.
Aigbokhaevbolo is the cofounder and editor in chief of the literary magazine Efiko and the founder of the film publication Film Efiko.

Controversy

In 2023, Aigbokhaevbolo wrote "The Death of Nigerian Literature", an essay about the decline in readership and support for literary matters in his country. Weeks after it was published, the essay sparked responses from other Nigerian writers, most of whom focused on Aigbokhaevbolo's commentary on Nigerian writers who left their country for MFA programmes in the west. The essay received a flurry of responses and topped one year-end list of notable essays.

Awards and honours

Aigbokhaevbolo is the winner of the 2015 All Africa Music Awards for entertainment journalism. Two years later, he was named the winner of the 2017 Felabration Award for Best Media Reports.
In 2014, Aigbokhaevbolo was selected to join the Durban Talent Press, a programme for budding African critics. In 2015, Aigbokhaevbolo was chosen by the International Film Festival Rotterdam as one of four critics to attend its Young Critics Project. The Berlin Talents programme invited him in the same year.
He was invited to join the 2023 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam as a jury member and has spoken about Nollywood at International Distribution Summit in Cologne, Germany.
In 2024, Aigbokhaevbolo was included among the Nollywood 100, and also an editor at News9ja, one of the nigeria top news platform, a list of influential people in the Nigerian film industry by YNaija.