ANA RECEIVES N3 MILLION GRANT FOR THE 2019 ANA/YUSUF ALI
NATIONWIDE LITERARY AWARENESS CAMPAIGN
The Association of Nigerian
Authors has secured funding for the 8th year towards the ANA/Yusuf Ali nationwide literary awareness
campaign. The Association received the sum of N3,000,000(Three Million Million
Naira) on the 7th of
January,2019 for the 2019 project from the donor, Yusuf Ali(SAN), an Ilorin-based renowned
legal practitioner, author and dedicated philanthropist, whose son Dr Yusuf Olanrewaju
Ali recently wedded Barrister Hasiya
Altine Nagode in a well-attended Nikkah wedding ceremony in Ilorin on the 29th
of December,2018.
The Grant was first secured
by the National EXCO of ANA in 2012 and all state chapters of the Association received sub-grants of N150,000 at various
times between 2012-2014 for local literary awareness campaigns involving
secondary schools across the country. In 2015, the grant was applied by the
then National Executive Council of ANA to host a workshop on fiction writing in
Abuja in which about 25 students, drawn from tertiary institutions across the
country via a competitive process, participated.
In 2016, the Denja
Abdullahi-led National Executive Council of ANA took the literary awareness
campaign a notch further by focusing on innovative literary awareness campaign
among tertiary institutions across the country through the States’ chapters. Chapters
submitted proposals on envisaged activities based on which they were assessed
and sub-grants finally awarded to 16 Chapters that met the provisioned
requirements. The competitive process was introduced to ensure greater
compliance to the overall project vision and to improve on the process of
monitoring, evaluation and reportage of the implemented activities. The grant
was used in 2017 to publish three (3)
children’s literature titles under the Nigerian Writers Series(NWS) which have
been distributed to chapters of ANA Nationwide to power ANA ‘s A-Book-A-Child nationwide project that
was flagged off at the ANA ‘s 36th International Convention which
held in Makurdi, Benue State in October,2017 and the phase two of it launched
by the wife of the Governor of Ekiti State,Erelu Bisi Fayemi, at the 37th
International Convention of the Association held in Ikeja, Lagos in
October,2018.
For the year 2018, the Yusuf Ali grant was deployed
to facilitate a comprehensive media supplement on the projects executed with the
yearly grants over the years since 2012 to date and an intensive workshop for
15 selected chairmen of ANA chapters focusing on ‘innovations in contemporary
literary awareness campaigns’ to deepen the execution of the project in the
coming years.
This year 2019 grant will be
devolved to selected State Chapters of the Association to carry out innovative
and cutting edge literary awareness campaigns in their domains as learnt in the
capacity building workshop held in Ilorin in 2018 .
Yusuf Ali, who in 2015
promised to sustain the annual grant to ANA for life, is a Nigerian lawyer who
received the highest honour available to practicing lawyers in 1997 when he was
called to the inner bar as a Senior Advocate of Nigeria. He attended the
University of Ife [now Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife] and is the
Principal Partner at the Law Firm of Yusuf O. Ali & Co in Ilorin. His
reputation in the Bar has been balanced by a deep interest in literature which
has seen him supporting the Kwara State Chapter of the Association of Nigerian
Authors as well as serve as an Editor-in-Chief of the Nigerian Bar Journal. He
is also an associate lecturer at the Faculty of Law of the University of
Ilorin.
Yusuf Ali in 2017 presented
a book “ Anatomy of Corruption in Nigeria” to the public in the Federal Capital
Territory, Abuja . He has also been consistently hosting the National Executive
Council members of ANA and chairmen and secretaries of chapters in his office
during their annual meeting in Ilorin since 2012.
We thank Yusuf Ali(SAN) for
his consistent and yet-to-be matched generosity in supporting literary
awareness in the country and we call on other well meaning Nigerians to emulate
his gesture of support for the literary arts.
Wole Adedoyin
Publicity Secretary (South)
Association of Nigerian
Authors
08/1/2019
