‘Children have stopped reading, writing’

Dianah Ngamdy, founder of Stark Pages Literary Students’ Initiative, a not-for-profit organisation, says children are no longer interested in reading and writing. Briefing newsmen on Thursday in Abuja on the sidelines of a sensitisation programme on creative writing for secondary school students, Ngamdy said her team’s mission among others was to engage students in workshops […]

Dianah Ngamdy, founder of Stark Pages Literary Students’ Initiative, a not-for-profit organisation, says children are no longer interested in reading and writing.

Briefing newsmen on Thursday in Abuja on the sidelines of a sensitisation programme on creative writing for secondary school students, Ngamdy said her team’s mission among others was to engage students in workshops and coaching sessions in secondary schools across Nigeria.

She said her organisation had launched a competition inviting secondary school students to submit prose and poetry.

“We have launched a competition inviting submissions in prose and poetry from secondary school students across the country.

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“Prizes will be won by the top three winners and corresponding prizes for their respective schools after the submissions have gone through a screening process,” she said.

According to her, the top 50 submissions will be published in an anthology with the bios of each student in photobook.

She said: “It’s something we want to continue. This is the first one we’re doing, but it’s something we are going to continue.

“We want to have several volumes of submissions from students.”

On what motivated the initiative, she said: “I saw poetry London. They are, I think, the 129th volume of submission. And these are not with secondary school, but submissions from all over.

“But I realised when I was much younger that the secondary school students are at the pace where their creative juices are pumping, but they need to be stirred in the right direction before they lose sight of it.

“That’s why my focus is on the secondary school students before they go to university and get distracted. We just want to catch them young.

“We want them to open their eyes to the opportunities. We’re not trying to take them away from the core of what they want to study or whatever they want to do with their lives. We want them to realise that writing is something they can still do.

“Whether you’re a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant, you can still be a writer.”

Continuing, she said: “There are a few kids writing. If we encourage them, they’ll keep writing, and people around that small space will read, and hopefully it just expands.”