VEEP launches letter to Jomo(4/3/09)

Story: Musah Yahaya Jafaru & Jennifer Dornoo
THE Vice-President, Mr John Mahama, has launched a book, "Letter to Jomo", with a call on Ghanaians to cultivate the habit of reading.
The 324-page book is a collection of humorous news essays by Mr George Sydney Abugri, an accomplished journalist of the Daily Graphic, and published by the newspaper from the 1990s to date.
The essays, which use humour to examine and criticise serious social, political, economic and religious issues, appear in the Friday editions of the Daily Graphic.
Published by Illumin8, the book contains 120 collections of Mr Abugri's essays, including "My Beef with Ghana Journalists Association Awards", "Buy a Pen and Get a House Free", "A Dangerous Policeman", "Mike Visits JAK With a Gun" and "Kofi Annan for President?".
Mr Mahama, who described Mr Abugri as a "well-loved writer", said his writings were rare works of a literary journalist.
He noted that humorous writing was a talent that came from within and said Mr Abugri did it excellently.
He urged editors and columnists to identify journalists with talent for writing features and encourage them to do so to be able to take over after them.
He said there were a lot of constraints in writing columns in newspapers in terms of meeting deadlines, as he experienced when he wrote a column, "Power Point", in the Network Herald newspaper.
Mr Mahama bemoaned the poor reading culture among Ghanaians, which he said reflected in the performance of students in English language.
He urged Ghanaians to cultivate the habit of reading, since they could acquire more knowledge only if they read books, saying that "books are the food for the mind".
He noted that journalists had played a key role in advancing democracy in Ghana and asked them to work even harder to protect the democracy.
He said President John Evans Atta Mills was committed to the freedom of the media, hence his commitment to the passage of the Freedom of Information Bill and the proposed broadcasting law.
Mr Abugri said his motivation for writing the book was to share his style of writing and ideas with people, especially those interested in writing.
He explained that he used fiction to discuss factual social, political, economic and religious issues, with the view to correcting the wrongs in society.
He noted that column writing increased circulation of newspapers and stressed the need for editors to identify journalists with elegant writing skills and understanding of the English language and motivate them to go into column writing.
Mr Abugri said book-publishing was very expensive in Ghana and called on the government to revive the sale of the mutual book policy to help publishers to recover cost.
The Agogohene, Nana Akuoko Sarpong, who chaired the function, said he was one of the people who took Mr Abugri’s writings seriously and that he was at the launch to pay tribute to him.
The publisher, Mr Edmund Fianko, said the book was a masterpiece of literary work qualified to be sold anywhere in the world.