The Society of Young Nigerian Writers (SYNW) has set aside January 19-25, 2020 as a week to immortalise, remember some popular and prominent departed Nigerian writers through her annual project tagged “National Week for Remembrance of Departed Writers (NAWRED)”. The National Week of Remembrance for Departed Writers is aimed to remember and recall memories, profiles and works of famous and renown dead Nigerian writers.

This was contained in a statement recently made available to newsmen in Ibadan by the President of the Society of Young Nigerian Writers (SYNW), Wole Adedoyin.

National Week for Remembrance of Departed Writers (NAWRED) is an avenue for bringing back to the memory of the public the good works of our famous departed writers in the areas of literature, politics, medicines, history, economics, religion etc. It is also a way of intimating the upcoming ones to know and cherish the good works of our famous departed writers.

According to Adedoyin, who is also the immediate past National Publicity Secretary (South) of the Association of Nigeria Authors (ANA), “It is sad and disheartening that secondary school students of nowadays don’t know and have not read great works of dead writers like Olaudah Equiano, Abubakar Gimba, Chinua Achebe, Amos Tutuola, T.M. Aluko, Abubakar Imam, Pita Nwanna, Afolabi Olabimtan, Dennis Osadebay, Mamman Jiya Vatsa, Tai Solarin, Abubakar Gimba, Festus Iyayi, Buchi Emecheta, D.o. Fagunwa, Cathering Acholonu, zulu Sofola, Cyprian Ekwensi, Elechi Amadi, Obafemi Awolowo, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Tafawa Balew, Ify Agwu, Sesan Ajayi, Kolapo Oyefeso, Akinwumi Isola, Adebayo Faleti,Gabriel Okara, Folake Okediran to mention but few. They hardly know their names or read about their biographies. This is the gap we want to fill by bringing up this project. And we are currently compiling names of departed authors to be used for the programme come Jan 19-20, 2020.

“The National Week of Remembrance for Departed Writers will be an online programme where works, profiles and pictures of selected departed writers will be showcased. We have opened three different blogs and different social media platforms for the project.”

The National Week of Remembrance for Departed writers will be the latest project of SYNW and in addition to its Chinua Achebe Literary Festival, Annual Fagunwa Day programme, Read Across Nigeria (RAN), 2000 E-Books Per School (Digital Library Project) and series of Reading/Writing Correspondence Course.