The Association of Nigerian Authors has unveiled a new award category for the ANA Poetry Slam 2025: the ANA/Lady Ejiro Umukoro Emerging Poet Award.

The endowment fund, provided by Lady Ejiro Umukoro, Founder and CEO of LightRay! Media, offers emerging Nigerian poets a N100,000 cash prize and certificate of recognition.

In announcing the award, ANA President Dr. Usman Oladipo Akanbi emphasized the significance of the partnership: “We are proud to partner with Lady Umukoro in celebrating Nigeria’s emerging literary griots. Her vision, passion, and generosity have inspired a new generation of Nigerian writers and poets, and we are confident that this prize will continue to promote literary excellence and creativity among our youth.”

Lady Umukoro framed the endowment as part of a larger imperative for the creative sector. “Creatives must drive investment, sustainability and support for the creative industry, and more so in literary projects and publishing for it to thrive from one generation to another,” she stated. “In this global community, only countries who invest in literature will control the narrative and perception index.” Her words underscore a vision of literature as both cultural heritage and strategic asset in shaping how Nigeria is perceived globally.

The ANA Poetry Slam 2025 held on Saturday, November 1st, 2025, at the Mamman Vatsa Writers’ Village in Abuja, and Sa’ada Yahaya emerged winner of the 2025 ANA/Lady Ejiro Umukoro Poetry Slam, amongst eleven contestants.

Lady Umukoro brings considerable credentials to this initiative. An award-winning journalist, communications entrepreneur, and writer, she is the bestselling author of the mental health true crime novel Distortion. Her recent novel The Distortion of Hadassah won the Regional Winner designation for the TYB Young Adult Literature Prize.