IMPROVING OUR READING CULTURE.

Our country seems to have returned to the Dark Ages as reading, the habit that cultivates the mind and liberates it from the shackles of ignorance, is at its nadir. This disdain for reading has destroyed our educational fabric and the publishing industry. And the cumulative effect is the anomie in our society. The annual dismal performance of students in public examinations and the quality of our university graduates, who are barely literate, graphically illustrate the saga.

Gone are the days when parents used to buy novels for their children as gifts; or students addicted to reading newspapers bought with their pocket money, to keep abreast of global affairs. Schools quiz that exposes students to eclectic reading and, as a result, increases their cognitive quotient has waned. There are schools without libraries all over the place. This is in sharp contrast to four decades ago, when Eze Goes to School, a novel by Onuora Nzekwu and Michael Crowther, was a must-read by primary school pupils.

But we are now in an age when many finish schooling unable to read or write. The get-rich-quick syndrome of our society and scant regard for education have conspired with the obsession for films, football, internet/social media, telephone, television watching and video games to create this most debilitating sub-culture.

However, this decline has triggered some renaissance, typified in the Bring Back the Book Project and the book clubs scheme of the Koko Kolango-led Rainbow Book Foundation. It is in this context that we appreciate the ongoing World Book Capital festival in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.  Apparently, the city is now the centre of gravity of the global Republic of Letters, as scholars, students and other enlightened citizens visit to look out for the latest book on the shelf. The opening event coincided with the World Book Day on April 23, an annual event sponsored by UNESCO to celebrate books, promote reading culture, publishing and copyright.

The World Book Capital kicked off with the Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka’s philippic keynote address against a worsening social order that is inimical to knowledge, which Boko Haram terrorists represent. Reading of some select texts, each declared as the book of a given month, before a literary audience that includes schoolchildren and teachers, has been lined up for the year-long programme. Soyinka’s Ake, The Years of Childhood, has been picked as the book for July, while Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus will be feasted on in September. Books display by publishers, a nationwide book tour, mentoring sessions for young writers, planting of Reading Tree and the use of 300 teachers to sow the seed of book clubs in schools are among the other resurgent elements.

Last year, Nolue Emenyonu, a linguistics professor, screamed, “How Safe is the Book?” at a forum organised by University Press, Ibadan on the downturn in the publishing industry. His verdict was that Nigeria “is a bookless country.” Because of lack of reading, candidates in public examinations now abbreviate words in their answer sheets, much the same way they do in their telephone text messages and e-mails.

Watching of lewd musical videos from our local musicians, or those from Music TV, occupies the attention of many a student. The average Nigerian youth’s aversion to reading is evident in the conduct of Daniel Oikhena, the Benin teenager, who sneaked into the tyre compartment of a Lagos-bound aircraft last September. On the day of the incident, he reportedly watched films till the wee hours, a misdemeanour that had become part of him. During such hours, his ilk also watches pornographic materials.

In Britain, the government has taken steps to protect its youths from the deleterious effect of such exposure by introducing new rules on pornography on the internet. The material is now blocked out by providers except a household asks for it. Nigeria should do the same. According to the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, online pornography corrodes childhood.

  More reading time could be created for our youths if Nigerian parents could possess a Barack Obama particle in them, by limiting their children’s access to the internet and television. As President of the US, Obama still has time for Sasha and Malia, his two daughters; he always primes them for reading. Michele, their mother, attests, “We have rules about it. The girls have limited time for television and screen time… none during the week, unless it’s school-related…”

Fundamentally, functional libraries must spring up in our colleges; just as public ones too are imperative in every local government area. The various state governments should make the provision of a library a precondition for licensing new private schools. A school at whatever level in this age without a functional library is an anachronism. A British philosopher Francis Bacon’s advice that “reading maketh a full man” should be taken seriously as it harps on human development. How poorly we have fared as a nation on this score is evident in the 2013 United Nations Development Programme report, which ranked Nigeria 153 out of 186 nations in human development indices.

Surely, a society that cannot regenerate the Kenneth Dikes, Wole Soyinkas, Ayodele Awojobis, Chike Obis, Umaru Shehus and others of that fecund generation that were once the pride of the country has confirmed its eventual descent into the abyss  of ignorance. It is, however, not too late to begin how to reverse this frightening and barbaric possibility.

Punch.