ANA receives N3million grant for literary awareness campaign

The Association of Nigerian Authors has secured funding for the 7th year for the ANA/Yusuf Ali nationwide literary awareness campaign.

The Association received the sum of N3m earlier this February from Ilorin-based lawyer, Yusuf Ali, (SAN) an author and philanthropist. The money, according to the association, will be deployed to “facilitate a comprehensive media supplement on the projects executed over the years since 2012 to date and a 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 is according to the associations Publicity Secretary, Wole Adedoyin.

This will mark a departure from the regular use of the grant over the years since the lawyerphilanthropist started the scheme.

The Grant was first secured by the National EXCO in 2012 and all state chapters of the Association received sub-grants of N150,000 at various times between 20122014 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 Abdullahiled 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.

While in 2017 the grant was used to publish three (3) children’s literature titles under the Nigerian Writers Series(NWS).

Yusuf Ali, a Principal Partner at the Law Firm of Yusuf O. Ali & Co in Ilorin and associate lecturer at the University of Ilorin, has pledged to keep the grant going for life.