By Elizabeth Uwandu

The author of “Ode to A Dancing Pen,” Brenda Nwafor has lamented funding as the major setback for authors to produce great works. She appealed to the federal government to create an endowment fund for writers to cushion the effects of the high cost of publishing in the country.

Nwafor made her plea at the launch of a collection of 52 poems recently that saw in attendance notable figures in the creative industry. “The Federal Government should support authors with endowment funds or grants to encourage them to write books that will educate and entertain the populace,” she said. “Similarly, the government should support in terms of reduced taxes, excise duties or waivers for publishers, so that the cost of publication is brought down.

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“This will make books cheaper and it will lead to higher sales for the publishers and high royalty for the authors. The government will also benefit because the publishers and authors will pay taxes to the government, thus boosting the revenue of the country,” she said.

Brenda also called on the government and other key stakeholders to put more effort into the area infringement on copyright and on plagiarism.

For the chairman of the occasion, a Psychiatrist and 1st Chairman, Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) Lagos Chapter, Dr Tolu Ajayi, there is need to stabilize the economy for an improved reading culture. He noted that economic hardship was responsible for dwindling reading culture,

On his part, the outgoing Chairman of ANA, Mr Yemi Adebiyi, lamented the low patronage of academic books, particularly poetry and literature books among Nigerians. “Unfortunately, reading culture is gradually dying in this part of the world. Those with the responsibility of seeing that our children begin to get it right in the home front – that is, the parents – have abdicated such duties,” he lamented, saying that students at almost all levels of Nigeria’s tertiary institutions read-only when they have exams to write or job interviews to attend. “Therefore, there is need for more advocacy programmes targeted at making students and Nigerians as whole to embrace reading culture,” he said.

Vanguard