By Henry Akubuiro
Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Yusuf Ali, has once again donated 3 million naira to the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) to prosecute its annual reading campaign.
The General Secretary of the association, Maik Ortserga, in a statement, said that the grant was released on Thursday, February 10, 2022, by the book-loving legal luminary.
Barrister Yusuf Ali has been sponsoring the ANA/Yusuf Reading Awareness Campaign since 2012 at a ceremony where an Ilorin-based lawyer declared his full commitment to assist in promoting literacy in the country.
ANA scribe has expressed the association’s gratitude to the generous benefactor for his constant support towards the yearly literary awareness campaign.
He enjoined well-meaning Nigerians to follow Yusuf Ali’s footstep, even as he lamented “more than 85 percent of Nigerians have never read a book from cover to cover since they left school, and no nation can live above the level of literary awareness of its citizens.”
Hence, it is “not out of place that this lack of literary awareness is causing sleepless nights to a patriotic and deep-thinking mind, like Barrister Yusuf Ali (SAN), who believes that catching them young will help in producing imaginative leaders and great thinkers in time to come.”