Association of Nigerian Authors, ANA Abuja chapter has secured a free meeting venue for its literary and other activities at the Wuse area of the nation's capital FCT.

This is even as the chapter commends owners of the facility, Major General Mamman Vatsa Foundation for granting her opportunity to make use of the tastefully furnished structure in an effort to support knowledge acquisition and development.

Late Major General Mamman Vatsa, a former FCT Minister and member of ANA while alive made significant contributions to ensure the growth of the association, including donation of land along Mpape road FCT currently housing the national secretariat of ANA known as Writers' Village.

Executed on March 5, 1986, Major General Mamman Jiya Vatsa was passionate about education and human capital development in his native Lapai local government of Niger state and Nigeria at large.

With the desire of keeping some of the legacies he stood for while alive, his family set up a foundation in his honour which seeks to among other things advance the opportunity for the less privileged children in the society to have access to quality education and improve quality of life generally.

Speaking on Saturday at the location of the expansive edifice located at Zone 2 area of Wuse Abuja, chairman of ANA Abuja, Halima Usman described the late FCT Minister as a great supporter of education, noting that it is on the strength of a new understanding with the foundation that the chapter held her first official meeting in 2022 at the venue.

She said the dreams of the foundation of promoting education and humanity is in line with what ANA Abuja and the association generally stands for.

Prior to this moment, the FCT chapter of ANA holds its various literary engagements at rented venues with huge cost implications.

The chairman says the chapter is poised to do more with the resources that will be saved from payment of meeting venues and other logistics.

"The family has invested a lot to put up the structure you are seeing here. The intention is to continue to promote education, continue to support writers, continue to support less privileged children to make our society much better.

"That is why they have built this foundation and graciously said that the vision of Association of Nigeria Authors and theirs align. They have taken off a lot of burden from us especially in terms of sourcing for meeting venue for our monthly events," she said.

At the meeting which centered on reading and critiquing, members were unanimous that writers should invest more time and resources in research and innovation to churn out quality books.

While also decrying the activities of pirates, the authors want publishers to deploy more creativity in improving the aesthetics of intellectual materials.

In her remarks, the Director, Research and Documentation, National Council for Arts and Culture, Dr. Lizi Ben-Iheanacho emphasized the need for adequate marketing strategy to give writers reward for their works.

ANA Abuja had last year rounded off activities with a posthumous 81st birthday in honour of the late Niger born military officer, Vatsa where the family pledged to ensure the sustenance of his visions.

They had earlier donated a state-of-the-art ICT hub located at Government Day Secondary, Gulu Lapai local government area of the state.


https://www.statepress.ng/2022/01/ana-abuja-secures-free-meeting-venue.html

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