ANA receives Yusuf Ali grant for literary awareness campaign

The Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) has secured funding for the seventh year towards the   ANA/Yusuf Ali nationwide literary awareness campaign. The association received the sum of N3,000,000 (three million naira) on February 5 for the 2018 project from the donor,  Yusuf Ali (SAN), an Ilorin-based renowned legal practitioner, author and dedicated  philanthropist.
 
According to a statement by the Publicity Secretary (South), Association of Nigerian Authors, Wole Adedoyin, 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 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, which submitted proposals on envisaged activities based on which they were assessed and sub-grants finally awarded to 16 chapters that met the requirements.

The competitive process was introduced to ensure greater compliance for the overall project vision and to improve on the process of monitoring, evaluation and reportage of the implemented activities. The grant was utilised in 2017 to publish three 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 ANA’s 36th International Convention, which held in Makurdi, Benue State in October, 2017.
 
For year 2018, the Yusuf Ali grant 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.
 
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 practising lawyers in 1997, when he was called to the inner bar as a Senior Advocate of Nigeria. He attended 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 serving as Editor-in-Chief of the Nigerian Bar Journal. He is also an associate lecturer at the Faculty of Law of the University of Ilorin.
 
In 2017 Ali presented a book Anatomy of Corruption in Nigeria to the public in 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.
 
ANA sincerely commends the donor for his consistent generosity in supporting Nigerian literature and we call on other well meaning Nigerians to emulate Yusuf Ali’s gesture of support for the literary arts.