‘This literary campaign must go round’
Posted By: Edozie Udeze On:
April 22, 2018 In: Arts
& Life, Sunday magazine
In this encounter with Edozie Udeze,
Mallam Denja Abdullahi, the President of Association of Nigerian Authors throws
more light on the grants that have helped to extend the frontiers of Yusuf Ali
literary campaigns to the grassroots
How has this grant endured?
The ANA/Yusuf Ali literary awareness
campaign has endured because the funding has been constant and comes at a
predictable time every year. That enables us to plan ahead each year and gives
us room to innovate and create a sustainable pattern across the country. The
literary philanthropy of Yusuf Ali met a robust structure of ANA on ground
which covers the whole of Nigeria. It is therefore possible to create impact at
the same time with the project across the country. The project has also
introduced healthy competition among our chapters across the country as they
overreach themselves to do better each year. The monitoring process that we
have introduced along the line has also contributed to the project
sustainability.
What year did it start?
The ANA/ Yusuf Ali literary
awareness campaign actually started in 2012 when I was Vice President of ANA.
There was nothing as sustainable as that in the history of ANA except for
our annual convention which we are often not too sure of each year as we fish
around for funds to host it unlike the ANA/ Yusuf Ali literary awareness
campaign with sure funding. The campaign has impacted positively in the area of
mentoring the young and school going populace by encouraging them to read and
write. We cover nothing less than five thousand students in 100 schools across
the country each year in the course of executing the campaign . At the
beginning the focus was on secondary schools for some years, then we had
focused workshop for universities students and we later moved to focusing
on tertiary institutions, then into the publication of children titles
which we have used to drive another by-project called A-Book-A-Child nationwide
project. From all these activities including what we are using the fund for
this year( capacity building workshop on innovations in contemporary literary
awareness campaign and media awareness) you could see that the ANA/ Yusuf Ali
literary awareness campaign has been very impactful nationwide.
How did you arrive at the projects
to embark upon with the money?
The brainstorming to get new things
to do with the grant each year ad-infinitum is what we are gathering to do in
the capacity building workshop. For ANA chapter chairmen we will be having in
Ilorin later this April 2018.Mind you, we do not just receive the grant from
Yusuf Ali and go to sleep. Our chapters do provide matching grant to whatever
they receive as sub-grant from the Yusuf Ali main grant. Yusuf Ali gives us
N3million each year which is not small at all considering the regular brick
wall you meet whenever you try to raise funds from governments and other
corporate bodies. By the time you add or cost what our chapters raise to do
their bits with the seed sub-grant received, the total money spent each year
may translate to about N10 million naira or more. But without the initial
grant from Yusuf Ali, the build up would not have been possible.
So the grants have prospered the
association?
From the success of the Yusuf Ali
grant to ANA, we have seen how helpful regular grant can go a long way to
stabilize an association like ANA and make it very functional and
accountable. And that is why we are all clamouring for the institution of
an endowment fund for the arts in Nigeria. The Western world is wizened
already on the importance of regular and sustained funding for the arts
by governments, individuals and public and private institutions. Governments in
the third world countries like Nigeria go about as if they do not owe the arts
anything. The arts, literature and culture of a country will
eventually go extinct if the government of a particular country
thinks they do not need special attention and dedicated intervention. Come to
think of it, some of the best features of our cultural heritage and creativity
are being kept alive by foreign grants and foreign funding facilitated by
those who know the importance of heritage sustainability. I always say the arts
always have a way of making indelible the contributions of those who support
it. Our use of the Yusuf Ali grant over the years has shown that you can do a
lot in the arts with a gift sincerely given and the reward to the giver will
definitely be more than whatever is given.Many Yusuf Alis are not there today
because people are afraid of poverty and they are ignorant of where they can
leave their indelible memories for generations unborn. Most people with money
in Nigeria hoard it for their immediate families or fritter it away on
mundane things that will turn to dust within a generation following their
demise.The kind of Yusuf Ali is rare in our clime as not many persons
are as astute and intelligent like him to know that life is
ephemeral and that what endures are the selfless pursuits you engage in. The
corporate bodies are not different, they are forever in search of profit
without thinking of responsibility to their communities. They commit huge funds
to beauty pageants and Ajasco dance shows on the streets but avoid the
theatre, film, literature and the likes because of their short-sighted thinking
that nothing will be gained in return.
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