Notice to Publishers

Stopped by at the South West zonal office of Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) the other day to make some enquiries.
Among other things, I learnt this: the Council maintains libraries in its offices in Abuja, Lagos and Kano which are open to the public and expects publishers to forward to them 5 copies of their titles. This is not to be confused with the mandatory Legal Deposit copies requested by the ISBN/National Library authorities.
Thought some follower of this blog might want to know or be reminded about this.

The best time to read

The best time to read

One of the trouble people have with reading particularly when they are out of the formal school environment is that not having examinations and the like to compel them, they try to read anytime they feel like and can find the time too. It does not work like that. In the modern world in which we live, reading like every other activity has to be scheduled. And as behavioural researchers would tell you, those things which you schedule, you are more likely to take serious. And the things you take serious are more likely to yield dividends. It is therefore important that you find your most convenient time to read and proceed to use it maximally

When you adopt this attitude, you would be saving yourself two hassles. First, you would be getting out of the trap of those who read whenever they find the time and really never find it, and second, your dedication to specified reading hours would mean that you can then add all other off-plan reading opportunities that you then find and utilize as bonus sessions.

My best reading time for example is when I am traveling (and this could simply be whilst commuting to and from work in a busy and traffic-stressed city like Lagos). Of course this is virtually impossible when you are the one driving or quite difficult when you are in the company of one or more people with whom you are burdened to sustain social talk. But even at that you would need to call up your sense of discipline and look for ‘polite breaks’ even whilst socializing knowing the value reading and precisely also, what you are reading at that time, is bringing to your entire life!

Next it is Saturday afternoon and then Sunday after church.

From time to time also, I also snatch hours after work in the evenings to do some more reading.

One other helpful tip: if you are one of those having problems presently with sustaining a reading habit, my candid advice to you is that, at this point, do not read just anything that you find. Rather, go the extra mile to seek books on the subjects and areas that you enjoy and read them. Once the habit is structured, you can then venture further a-field into other areas. How long this would take depends on the individual case scenario but you can be sure that I am available to review the details of that situation if you send a detailed off-blog mail to richard.mammah@gmail.com

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What books sell?

Selling books in Nigeria does have its issues. However, i got this interesting report from a field marketer and you will do well to pay attention. The said marketer had taken books to sell at the just ended Convention of the Redeemed Christian Church of God and came back with these:

1. Some potential buyers came to ask booksellers to help them pick which books to buy. One or two confessed that their children wanted books to read and they did not have an idea where to begin.
2. Some went for catchy titles or colourful graphics.
3. Some bought on account of low prices.
4. Others bought because they had seen promotional posters highlighting the book displayed all around the camp
5. A few came with predetermined titles they were looking for and did not spare a thought on the issue of pricing. They had to have the books and that was that.

e-books in Nigeria

I am tracking the development of e-books in Nigeria today. In a year when amazon.com is reporting that it is selling more Kindle Books than hard print books, it would be quite interesting to crunch the figures for e-books in Nigeria?

call for info

Years ago, i did a book 'the nigerian books directory and guide.' I am presently working on an update to incorporate newer entrants and trends. Thought you should know and perhaps you may want to answer a few questions as my research progresses if you do not mind. Be well. So leave a note dear reader and i will get back to you. Thanks.

cban fair

CBAN National Bookfair/Convention comes up from Mon October 31 – Sat 5^th Nov,  2011

 

VENUE:    RIZ PLAZA, ALONG STADIUM ROAD, PORTHARCOURT

 

TIME:  8.00 a.m. – 6.00p.m. Daily. 

The fact and the fiction: Christian bookselling in Nigeria

I have seen, read and heard a couple of remarks about the fact that Christian books may be the best guaranteed to sell in Nigeria today. But what are the numbers?

I went out then to see those who could help out with some insights at the National Secretariat of the Christian Booksellers of Nigeria (CBAN) My findings are interesting, but i am not publishing them here now because i am yet on the field doing more interviews.

You however could post your views on the subject here and perhaps research findings too so we can share.

book events

For book lovers in the Lagos area, I am told there will be a bookfair at the Lagos Television grounds, Agidingbi, Ikeja from September 2-9. I will be there, and will post my comments here too.

And if you are also interested, Accra, capital of Ghana will be the venue for another fair in November. More details will follow.

PHCN: Prepaid meters as answer

Very rightly so, many Nigerians believe the Power Holding Coompany of Nigeria (PHCN), aka NEPA, to be about the most inefficient and corrupt public sector entity in the country. The challenge then is to do something about this over-amplified rot.

Days to the April, 2011 General Elections, yours truly attended a session at the Civic Centre, Lagos to brainstorm on new approaches to fixing the power problem. Speakers at the summit were the then minister of State for Power, Nuhu Wya, BPE Director-General Bola Onagoruwa and the then Special Adviser to the President on Power and now Minister, Professor Barth Nnaji.

Other participants included top-flight bankers with particular emphasis on power sector financing, the summit convener and Publisher of BusinessDay Newspaper, Mr. Frank Aigbogun, representatives of organized labour and my good friend, the Chairman of the National Electricity Regulatory Commission, Dr. Sam Amadi.

As the discussions flowed, it was clearly apparent that something was being done, and fairly systematically too, to fix the nation’s overarching power problems. There was talk of statutory weekly status review meetings with the President as well as serious engagements with the World Bank, the private sector, labour, state governments and other stakeholders. Targets were being set, monitored and followed up. Indeed, a lot, it was revealed at that meeting, was being done to reverse the ill-fortunes of the sector.

Weeks after that meeting this writer has personally witnessed some of the changes that he had been praying for. Electricity supply to both his home at Arepo, Ogun State and his office in Oregun, Lagos has improved (to near-‘frightening’ levels, the comedians would joke!) and we now read about managers being punished for failing to meet scheduled targets.

One other thing that critically has to be done however is a frontal re-orientation of all service providers within the system to recognize and live by the maxim that indeed, ‘the customer is king.’ And there would be no better way to get this done than to set targets for the abolition of all other forms of billing (estimated bills, meter reading, etc) and their replacement with prepaid meters. 

Within this scenario, the customer, like the GSM scratch card user, would now assume responsibility for, and control over how much power he wants to use or not use! And you can only imagine how much corruption would have been crushed in that process.

This writer is also not oblivious of the rumuor that some of the existing prepaid meters are being compromised. The answer? Strengthen the security systems. And what about the charge that PHCN does not have the infrastructure to manufacture such huge numbers to service all of its customers? Small matter? Outsource this to those who can and like ballot papers, you will get them in pronto!

The point in all of this really is this: if Goodluck finally delivers on stable power supply (as we pray he should), then the next challenge would be how to ensure that this power is served to the consumer most justiceably, at the right price and with his active participation in the process. We should also be talking of a time to come when PHCN would be sued and compelled to pay damages when convicted to consumers whose gadgets are destroyed in power outages. 

But can the administration in the first place deliver on the provision of more electricity to our homes and offices? The signs are already there that it would be done if they step up their focus and not be distracted by booby-traps as the 6-year single term (which by the way may be good per se, but whose timing is clearly way off and suspicious!!)

Overhauling Nigeria’s foreign policy: My view

As we write (August 2011), a conference to assess and review Nigeria’s Foreign Policy is under-way in Abuja. Convened by the Emeka Anyaoku-led Presidential Advisory Committee on Foreign Relations, that meeting would be expected to chart out an acceptable foreign policy thrust for the Jonathan years, and perhaps beyond.

As publisher of the bi-lingual pan-African newspaper, The Difference, this writer considers himself to be a stakeholder in this territory. And so he would be making this comments that follow from that prism. 

Indeed, this summit would not have come at a more auspicious time as in the course of traversing the West African sub-region where the paper has presently taken physical root, and interacting with both its peoples and the very large Nigerian communities that have since settled there, I has since come to a conclusion that there may be a more pragmatic need to now declare ‘West Africa,’ not all of Africa, as the new centerpiece of Nigerian Foreign Policy.

Going down memory lane, Nigeria’s foreign policy has seen some relative motion. In the days immediately following Independence, the Balewa administration defined its thrust to be ‘non-alignment,’ particularly as it had to do with the then raging squabbles between the historical ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ blocs.

On assumption of office in July 1975 and at the peak of the closing struggle for the decolonization of the continent, the Murtala regime swung heavily in support of the African liberation movements, strongly affirming that colonialism must be halted in Africa, that she has ‘come of age’ and that flag independence for all of Africa was now to be the centrepiece of Nigeria’s foreign policy engagements. The country, rightly then became a well-regarded and indeed much respected ‘frontline state,’ notwithstanding that a lot of the immediate theatre of war at that time was in the relatively distant Southern African axis of the continent! 

It is all now history, but coming also at a time when Nigeria witnessed its first oil boom, many of our brothers from the continent’s West Coast made their way into the country to partake in the goodies that God had so liberally bestowed on their big brother. Quite a handful of these were from the neighbouring countries of Benin Republic, Togo, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Mali and Senegal.

Today, with the country’s population almost bursting at its seams and with the very unfortunate leadership hiatus that has seen successive governments fail to translate boom eras into sustained prosperity, we have presently come to be faced with the reality of reverse migration with very many Nigerians traversing the coastlines of the sub-region in search of the better life.

As a nation that is clearly set for global heights once it puts its house in order, it is tempting for Nigeria to define its foreign policy to embrace all of the world. It is also possible to define this within the context of a now nebulous 'Africa-centredness,' Again, there may be flights of fancy to define it within the prism of the now most patronising 'search for foreign investments!' But this writer would allign more closely at this time with the Chinwezuan paradigm that if Nigeria must stand for anything at this time, it should be aspiring to be Africa's first renascent 'Black' power. And what better way (and easier also) does she have to start but through consolidating relations with fellow West African states in an expanded West African economy.

And the 'facts on ground' do aid our proposition. Undoubtedly today, Nigeria is already a foremost player in the West African sub-region in many respects. In terms of sheer numbers, its population of 150 million people is just under half of the overall figure of 300m for the entire sub-region. Its economy is the strongest and it not only plays host to the headquarters of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), it is the West African country with the most widespread diplomatic representation in the sub-region.

Further, when there are the occasional and sometimes perennial crisis situations in the sub-region, it is its soldiers that comprise the bulk of peacemakers that are drafted to contain the situations even as it equally towers over its neighbours in the sporting arena as well as in the influence charts of global diplomacy. Very safely then, Nigeria is unarguably a West African power.

But with power comes responsibility. Thus, as many of its neighbours see it, the challenge before West Africa’s ‘big brother’ is how it would harness its monumental God-given endowment and placement in the interest of all of the peoples of the sub-region. This I believe are the details that the Anyaoku-Jonathan conference should  be proceeding to fill at this point.

Why boys don't buy books

My friend, Jeremiah Adewale just reported this very interesting incident to me. He is a student at the University of Lagos and went the other day to see his book vendor (one of those bend-down bookshops on campus where you can be guaranteed of discount sales) to find what new titles he had on offer.
While the banter went on, the bookseller suddenly stopped and asked him a question: 'Why do boys not buy books?' Now this was new to him so he prodded further. ' I know what I am saying, I have been selling books for a while now and this is my experience.'
'And girls?'
'They buy. Once in a while they stop by to pick up a novel or two.'
The discussion next went into theorizing over possible reasons for this presumed gender disparity in reading and book-buying habits?
Dear reader, where do you stand in this debate? Would be glad to know.