Introducing Books.com

The new rave of the moment in the Nigerian books sector is Books.com.

It is an eight-page pullout published in the forthnightly pan-African newspaper, The Difference, by Sunbird African media.

In it are interviews, reviews, profiles, news and other titbits on the books sector in Nigeria. Ask your vendor in Accra, Lagos, Abuja, Owerri, Benin, Asaba, Onitsha, Lome, Cotonou, Abidjan today for it.

Reading Promotions Conference in September

The Reading Centre, in conjunction with Options Bookhouse, is convening a Conference of Reading Promotions Organisations in Nigeria.

The event holds at the University of Ibadan on Thursday, September 13, 2012.

It is holding on the sidelines of the Ibadan Bookfair which is being hosted by the Nigerian Bookfair Trust (NBFT).

Stay tuned for more reports on the event as the build-up intensifies.

For an end to fagging

I was at a Parents-Teachers Association meeting a few days ago and sat there wringing my hands over what we sometimes do to ourselves.

As you make your bed so do you lie on it that wise maxim reads. As a people and as a country, we are indeed getting a lot of what we ask and prepare for. So why blame the gods?

The discussion in question had to do with the practice of bullying and fagging. And as I sat there listening to speaker after speaker make their case for or against the practice, I heard different perspectives on the matter.

Some parents were bothered that it was a brutalizing experience and wanted the school to put its foot down and totally outlaw the practice while for others, they cited their own history and what they termed the natural seniority pecking (and I dare to add here for good measure, brutality too!) order in the larger society to justify why the practice existed and why perhaps it should continue to be tolerated.

I listened and waited to hear someone tell me about the pristine benefits of the system. But none came.

The world in which we live in today is clearly not that of yesterday. A lot has indeed changed and continues to change. And it is indeed only societies that very well appreciate this truth and strive to work with it that will get the best out of their own lived experience.

As a teen attending one of the government colleges in our country in the decade of the 70s and 80s, I was seriously bullied and fagged and it truly did not make sense to me and still does not today what benefit I was supposed to get and had indeed gotten from that experience.

On the contrary, what I got was discouragement and pain that it has taken the grace of God to help me work out.

I am therefore at a loss as to why parents and schools would continue to hide behind one finger and continue to condone and advocate a practice that they seriously cannot point to its benefits.

I think it is laziness to ask us to condone things because they always were there or that we can do nothing about them. The truth is that many of the things we think were always there were really not? Was fagging really always there? My understanding of history does not support this.

Relatedly, is it indeed true that there are things that we really cannot change if we set our hearts to do so? Evidence around us also points to the contrary.

The nearest that has come to an intelligent defense of these obnoxious practices is that it prepares the children to be tough. Perhaps they are right, but is this the only way to toughen children? If we must toughen our kids can we not work out more ennobling systems and clearly measured and beneficial structures to do that?

And then we must ask the other point whether it should indeed be a policy to go all out there and just toughen them for toughening sake. Do the streets in which they live today not naturally hand them tough choices? Does life not throw one tough spell or the other from time to time even as they grow up? What indeed is to be gained from a state policy to just go out there and toughen them? What is the content of the toughening programme. What is the end result?

 When I look around me, I see the literal example of what Jesus meant when he said that I see  the literal example of what Jesus meant when he said that ‘I see my people going about as sheep without shepherd.’ This I believe is the bane of our society and why relatively puerile debates like this and unhelpful perspectives as the ones I am addressing now continue to fester.

In countries around the world, people and systems are put together at all levels of the development matrix by their properly burdened leaders, read shepherds, to meet and achieve set national goals and objectives that are derived from the lived experience of the people.

When Israel for example found out that it was surrounded by relatively hostile neighbours that would rejoice vigorously over its extinction, it elevated security and compulsory military service for all of its adult population to the level of state policy. When India and China saw that they needed to catch up with the rest of the world, they went for cultural nationalism and longer hours and years in school, You just do not enshrine a policy for history’s sake, you do so with a specific appreciation of what you want to achieve in mind. And it must be quantifiable and measurable.

Maybe it is time some parents look back to see how maladjusted they yet remain today, some of which may be traceable to some of the brutal experiences of their past, fagging inclusive? Maybe it is time for some forward-thinking university to commission a study on the short and long-term negative implications of the practice on our national economy and the psyche of our people? Maybe it is time to check and trace the connections between such emasculating and dehumanizing practices and the continuing inability of our people to stand up for their rights, speak truth to power and tame the excesses of leaders, which has led to the deepening of other social vices as unbridled violence, corruption and non-accountability. For if as seniors and school fathers and mothers are permitted, and as is the case now, even encouraged by parents to get away with literal murder because it is a fact of life that ‘seniors would be seniors,’ why would our seniors in government and our offices not think they can continue in the self-same mould in which we had cast them?

On the contrary however, societies that would be great do set up very high and ennobling standards and strive to reach them. When the average accident happens in Lagos, you see crowds form in o no time with almost no intention to do anything practical about the victim! This is not the case with societies that take human life more seriously. When someone adulterates fake drugs in Onitsha, he gets a chieftaincy title to boot. In China, it is the death sentence for corruption, and in Abuja, Senior Advocates of Nigeria fall over themselves to clinch the juicy account! We have badly made our beds!

What about an alternative schema where we teach the strong, read seniors, to stand up for the weak, read juniors? What about teaching these uppity upstarts (excuse my French) whose only claim to power and privilege in the school environment is the historical circumstance that they were born first or got admission before the juniors that real grooming and success in life which they had come to school in the first place to be equipped for is more than skin deep? What about beginning to model for them, even at this formative stage, that the doctrine of ‘equality before the law’ - which is a critical sine qua non for effective democratic practice- is far more than one line in their Civics and Government textbooks.  And finally, why do we not elect to fill their minds and heads with liberating visions and possibilities of the life not yet lived rather than compel them to stagnate in old moulds that have essentially not led us very far? The choice dear reader is ours to make.

Children's books on my mind

Two meetings in recent days with some stakeholders in the books and reading promotions circuit in Nigeria have set the stage for this entry.

The first was with Mrs. Moore and the Bookfair committee for the annual Lagos Television-organised Lagos Bookfair and the other was with Mrs. Funke Adeniji of Achievers Educational Services.

First LTV. Regular readers of this blog would know that I do not only make a point of duty to follow on bookfair events in Nigeria, but that I also go the extra mile to both critique their output and make recommendations on how they can do better. It is in this mould that I decided to pay the LTV organisers of the Back-to-School leaning Lagos Book Fair a visit at the close of the month.

The first thing that I find impressive about the LTV event is that they have presently reconstituted their LOC to ensure an even better event this year. Great. Talking with two members of the team, I am encouraged by the fact that they have presently begun to take steps to deal with the content shortfall of that event which I commented on after viiting the fair last year.

Second is the fact that the current team appears to be more disposed to receive and consider inputs from outside the LTV enclosure.

As  for Mrs Adeniji and the Achievers project, I had been informed about her project on a visit to my son’s school. His proprietress, Mrs. Oladeji, who very well knows of my interest in books and reading had mentioned her to me in the course of that visit and I promptly decided to see her.

The visit was very rewarding.

On the heels of planning for a Conference of Reading Promotions Organisations to hold on the heels of the Ibadan Bookfair on September, 13, 2012, I had been on the lookout for organisations that were currently doing impactful work in the Nigerian reading promotions circuit.

Seeing and talking with Adeniji confirmed that the idea of the conference was indeed a most timely one. Before meeting adeniji, a second recent confirmation for this had come out of discussions with the University of Lagos Chapter of the Reading Asociation of Nigeria (RAN) and Dr. Chiji Akoma of the University of Villanova who is currently involved with a reading project in Yola, Adamawa State, Nigeria. I shall return to the Yola project in a future post.

Back to Adeniji and my impressions from our meeting. With an office in the Yaba area of Lagos, Achievers Educational Services is engaged in bookselling, library development and consulting. What had actually taken me there was their novel reading initiative and this is what I found out.

The project is structured as a resource development initiative for participating school children built around books. The Achievers team visits schools and signs on interested ones to their combined library development and reading promotions resource initiative.

It involves helping schools develop and stock their libraries, scheduled reading and resource development sessions with the children and developing their capacities in the areas of feedback-giving, independent reading, book reviews, ethics, accountability, the use of the library and creative writing and expression.

And would you read better if you are the subject of the text?

My encounter with the promoters of the personalized book concept in nigeria is the motivation for this post. Here is how it works: to get children reading voraciously, put them and their associated environment into  the content of the books.

Project Coordinator, Uncle Jeff, is sure doing some work here. Keep it up sir.

And CORA makes a Hay trip

Through a facebook post, I learnt that the Committee for Relevant Art is observing the Hay Book fairthis year.

This is great. Exposure and training would continue to be given elements in the bookfair arena and other Nigerian bookfair organisers would do well to similarly broaden their diet.

What does Cape Town offer this year?

There may be a debate about whether between NIBF and CTBF which is the biggest African book event. But it must not be reduced to the pedestrian logic involved when the PDP and the ANC jostle for the political party captainship in Africa.

It is rather content and impact that is king.

While NIBF has been growing notably its Indian link even in the face of reduced governmental and sub-regional participation which it needs to check), Cape Town with an eye on impact and the bottom-line - and hopefully yet with the continued strong support of the global bookfair avatar, Messers Frankfurt Bookfair  GMBH - has recently adjusted its fair to hold every two years.

The Return of ZIBF

Great news, a smaller version of the once imperial Zimbabwe International Bookfair  (yes, I was lodged at the Hotel Ambassador during my 2000 visit!) now takes place in the traditional July/August period.

This much was confirmed to this correspondent at the 2012 NIBF by African Publishers Network Executive Secretary, Tainie Mundondo. As she put it ‘the good times are back again.’

And this is also praying that President Mugabe gives that country an even bigger break so some of us would yet find pleasure in visiting and participating in one of Africa’s most impact-ful book convocations till date.

And this time I plan to lodge at the even more majestic Monomatapa Hotel!!

  

Improving the Reading Culture

                                           

Guest contribution by Oritsetimeyin

Dear readers, if you all have noticed, the Nigerian reading culture is as poor and fragile as the economy or even poorer. How many Nigerians have heard of any Nobel Prize for Literature winner except perhaps Professor Wole Soyinka!

Most Nigerians do not even know the top and leading writers in the country or abroad or have read interesting books, stories, poems, written drama or prose in their personal libraries. But almost every week, I see people buying foods, snacks, drinks, compact disks (CDs), etc with only a few looking at or attempting to buy books.

Indeed, many Nigerians see buying books as a waste of energy, time and money. While some feel they have read enough books at school and that books are to be read only for tests and exams others aver that they have outgrown the reading of books which they see as boring.

This turn of events also has an impact on the entire culture of book-making, authorship and production. Young and budding writers for example are already being discouraged from writing their books because they are aware that almost no one or at best only a negligible few will buy, read or promote their books. The ones that can find the resources to do so, emigrate to countries like USA, Sweden, Norway, Japan, China, Hungary, England, South Africa, Germany and a host of other countries where they believe they will be better appreciated and have a basic chance to compete alongside other bright and famous writers.

The challenges writers who are based in Nigeria face are quite alarming. As things stand today, it takes a miracle, extra determination, wisdom, struggles, suffering and strength to go on to succeed as great writers in a country where very few will read or buy their books.

 You can publish a book in year 2000 and still have a massive stock of the same books not yet sold by year 2012 with about the only option being to reduce the price of the book in order to clear your stock while making a loss in the process. This leaves many writers thinking whether it would not have been better to have left the manuscript unpublished rather than the huge drain of resources it has become! In the alternative, some consider handing over the unpublished stock to a school or public library, give it as a donation or to offer it as charity and earn blessings but not fame, popularity and money.

The situation is embarrassing and alarming. The various governments in the land do not do anything to help writers and the books industry. They do not encourage competitions for writers or support promising writers which other governments elsewhere do,  encouraging writers by creating or supporting competitions for them and giving them working grants which enable them to work on their craft with maximum concentration

Sometimes I wonder if the our called democratically elected government know how to improve the reading culture or are aware of any young and promising Nigerian writers in the Local Government Area or State. How many Governors or President read a minimum of two novels a year?  Some may claim the pressure of the office is too much yet they still have time to make luxurious trips abroad. It is trite knowledge that if the governors takes some time to read books about the country and how to develop certain areas of the economy they will learn much and govern better. So why do they continue to resist such a commonsensical benefit?

The Nigerian people blame the Government for the poor reading culture in the country and I agree with them. The government has refused to assist young talented writers and sponsor competitions to improve the reading culture in the country. The Government should provide free quality books to schools and create more scholarship opportunities for those who have potentials to become great leaders but no money to pay their school fees.

The Nigerian people in themselves are not left out of censure. Many Nigerians still cannot read or write properly and don’t have enough money to buy books. Will a poor man buy a book of 100 naira when it can provide two square meals in a day for him?

Many Nigerians consider reading a book or even buying a book as a waste of time, energy and money but I assure Nigerians that reading the right books will enable them understand our social, physical, economical, political and business environment, feelings, emotions, health and tov learn better ways to improve your business and life.

Knowledgeable Nigerians should enlighten others about the gift a book can give to the soul, mind, heart and body. Nigerians who are talented writers should not quit writing in desperation but continue to explore more and more ways of combating the challenges. Things will definitely  get better.

Now, let begin to talk about the way forward to improve our reading culture. What can we as a people do to improve our reading culture and what are the measures government must take? The answers lie in what we are going to discuss now.

1.       Government should encourage competitions among writers and promote their books when published.

2.       Get schools to encourage students to read textbooks along with their notes and further study books about the subjects or topics taught them in class.

3.       Improve the educational system to encourage students to cultivate a habit of studying to make references from textbook or books about the lesson after each class.

4.       The Government should construct at a least one well equipped and quality library in each local government area.

5.       The Government should promote and advertise promising writers and their books.

6.       People should buy books about their jobs and areas of their interest.

7.       The Government should open and equip special schools for adults who cannot write or read.

8.       People should read poems and novels during their leisure periods.

9.       People should enlighten others on the leading writers and books in the country.

10.    The Government should give promising writers national honours and other rewards to encourage other writers.

‘It gets to you anywhere’: Frustrations of our post-colonial state (letter to Chiji Akoma)

I am writing this piece inside my mosquito net at 3a.m and very clearly to my discomfort and that of my wife and daughter with whom I share the space. Beds from the beginning were conceived as rest and not work places. I am not aware when that intention changed.

I however have to do this not because there are no alternative writing spaces to use but because mosquitos are on rampage in my neighbourhood, no thanks to three other post-colonial afflictions. The first is that five decades after independence, we have in the main been saddled  - in our leadership spaces  - with what the writer, Ifeoma Okoye, very aptly depicted as  ‘men without ears.’  A more ‘hearing’ leadership would have since declared and vigorously prosecuted a real national war on mosquitos seeing their massive contribution to our burgeoning security crisis and indeed, GDP-flight!

The second affliction, the’ Up NEPA’ syndrome, may also be very familiar to the reader. Yes, electricity from the Power Holding Corporation is not available so I can use some of the electric fans in the house to ward off some of the onslaught from mosquitos (to think that it is the same mosquitos that were responsible for felling scores of men in Mungo Park’s expedition party three centuries ago!)  as I use a more comfortable table and chair to pen this (and my body is aching now as I pick up a hand-fan to stir some air around my now sweating self and adjust the pillows on my back to keep writing). Ah, Lamido!(which is another post-colonial tale to be told some other day).

Back to today, the third affliction is the penchant and practice of untramelled urbanisation, which has presently taken the form of very offensive, indiscriminate’ estates’ development in my once more habitable off-Lagos neighbourhood where monkeys and birds from the adjoining greens took turns to play with me on Saturday mornings. But now the unlicensed but untouchable lords of the manor (Twale!) - whose only real claim to their position other than their commitment to violently shove off all hindrances while the state looks on is that their ancestors were lucky to have fist set foot on the soil around here  - have decreed that everything green has to go to guarantee short-term economic gain for them a la land speculation. The emergence and proliferation of more ‘concrete jungles’ called estates, even when they encroach on other previous developments - like the one presently tearing through the middle of the one in which I live – has now become kind of given.

And as the trees are felled and the greenery violated, the once relatively sedate swamp mosquitos with whom we had a virtual MoU of sorts - to leave each other alone - have found it almost impossible to keep their side of the bargain (Now my daughter has awakened and I have to take a station break to pacify her…).

So what do all of these have to do with ‘the post-colonial state?’ I will tell you. As I had written in my earlier post on ‘Where Ibori came from,’ (which I was wisely counseled not to conclude!), the truth of our existence in Nigeria is one in which ‘the evils of our villians past’ continues to incubate new evils that we now have to grapple with. And these are the afflictions of our current existence.

But this piece was not supposed to be about my own share of the afflictions. It had really begun with the afflictions of someone else, an acquaintance who had schooled in Nigeria and left the shores of the old country to go and lecture in an American university. He had the other day been regaling me with the frustrations of his homecoming experience and his dilemma in accepting that the second generation federal university where he was serving  ‘time’ (thank God for ‘little mercies,’ as it may have been worse if he was practically grounded there!) could in all honesty be properly described as a university in the sense that he now knew it. This is really where this piece was born.

Indeed it is even part of the (mental and intellectual, this time!) failings of our system that we have to labour to establish the connections between our post-colonial grounding and the very many distortions that people our national space.

Take the case of the current doctors strike in Lagos, its very poor handling by a post-colonial political elite  and the very obfuscating explanations being peddled in the press by the regime’s chief and his henchmen about why the doctors should not have gone on strike in the first place. Coming from an administration which many regard, and very correctly too, as the finest expression of the democratic project in Nigeria at the moment, it will clearly be seen that the fault indeed is in our stars!

Man Chiji, Now I understand why Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka writes some of the stuff that he does. We really need to pull down all of the faulty foundations in the most systematic way yet possible  (and a honest and properly-intentioned national conference  - backed by a leadership in the mould of Mikhail Gorbachev that is altruistically committed to implementing its conclusions no matter which of our many live oxen is gored - is one). It is only then that we would return to the foundation block and start re-building this house once again to be ‘a nation where truth and justice reign.’

It is at such fora that honest and burdened professionals like you, my very good friend and indeed this writer, can be encouraged to share their thoughts for the system. As you know I have long had plans for, and been involved with  the promotion of books and the reading culture in our land. As part of these plans and activities for example, I am currently reflecting over how we can return to of a culture of school and public libraries as a basic foundation not only for growing a fully literate community in Nigeria but also to help tackle the very alarming wave of a-literacy as represented in the millions of certificated people that do not read again and else cannot express themselves beyond posting their photo albums online!

No, no, it is not that I am envious of the founders of Instagram and their recent creaming of a billion dollars for their photo apps. No sir, on the contrary I am encouraged that they could benefit so much from growing and developing their natural, God-given passions. But clearly, if we continue to use apps developed elsewhere to merely snap pictures of ourselves and post them on cloud computing systems that we have equally not made any national inputs into, does it not continue to situate us in the negative post-colonial reality of ‘formidable consumers and negligible players?’

Back to where we are and given your appreciation of the close connections between reading, education, life-long reading, continuing education and GDP, you will agree that it is literally akin to an ‘eight wonder’ for our current leaders to want to leap-frog our country into being ‘one of the top twenty economies in the world. without addressing the currently most decripit reading and educational foundations that you have physically re-encountered in the course of this sabbatical year. So we must make plans to have functional print and electronic libraries (and reading clubs to boot) in every hamlet in the land like the Chinese are not only establishing, but which is also grossing for them the attendant lifestyle and GDP results that everyone can see. ‘Reading maketh’ a people, they always said.

And talking of fixing our reading problems, a second component of my proposal is to have a system of annual educational symbiosis where burdened patriots like you and my very good friend  - who are functioning so seamlessly in basically yet literate communities - would volunteer and take out time in the year to come to the homeland and participate in well designed reading re-immersion activities. I remember how very enthusiastic Professor Niyi Osundare was to sign up for and participate in the scheme when I first mentioned it to him a little over a decade ago. And I remain confident that with the right logistics in place, this is one project with a massive potential to put an end to the joke about ‘hiding truths from Nigerians by storing them up in books!’ Indeed, other than the power sector and mosquito wars, this is another well-deserving national emergency that our leaders should commit to. 

These are the issues that undergird my politics. And knowing the power of the state in helping to bring about this kind of society of my dream, I continue to canvass the right values and principles that will help post-colonial Nigeria, and particularly its leadership, get its moorings right.

Finally my brother, I remain upbeat (your very appropriate choice of word) and most resolute that even this current cup will pass. My attitude fundamentally then is that these are but light afflictions that will yet work out the exceeding glory that He has put in us. And I am fully persuaded that indeed, we have been built up for and despatched to our country ‘for a time like this.’ Fight on brother, we shall overcome. Make we dey go first.

The author can be reached on richard.mammah@gmail.com

   

APNET, African publising and the blurring industry lines: Re-Reading Richard Crabbe

In the course of preparations for the 2012 edition of the National Reading Week in Nigeria earlier in the year which he was convening, this writer had called on a number of industry players to solicit their inputs. One such visit was to the Ikorodu, Lagos operational base of Mr. Dayo Alabi, Chief Executive of The Book Company and founding Chairman of the Nigerian Bookfair Trust (NBFT).

It was in the course of the visit that he learnt that the former Chief Executive of the African Christian Press, Accra, Ghana, Mr. Richard Crabbe would be the keynote speaker at the 2012 edition of the Nigerian International Bookfair.

Richard Crabbe. Growing up in the day as a young student of the African book sector, I had come in contact regularly with the works of two activist-professionals in the African book trade. One was my fellow countryman and founding Chief Executive of Fourth Dimension Publishers, Enugu, the late Engineer Victor Nwankwo, and the other was Crabbe. From their writings, engagements and interventions, the two men came across as very well-reasoned but dogged and committed enthusiasts for the place of the African and Africa in the global book trade. Well-read and clear-headed, both men have not only contributed immensely to the body of scholarship on the book trade in Africa, they had also risen to the topmost echelons of the sector and served as Chairmen of the African Publishers Network (APNET).

Encountering Crabbe at the Lagos Bookfair in 2012 did not also disappoint. At the event, he spoke on the subject of ‘the state of infrastructural development in Africa and the future of the book trade’ and raised issues that reveberated far beyond the venue.

Electing to speak to the subject rather than read from his already prepared speech, Crabbe was able to set the subject free and approached his theme from the point of view of where his audience presently was. He spoke on the challenges of an industry that was in the midst of re-definition; of shifting and changing roles; and the pressure that was coming from literally, everywhere; on the need to constantly be on one’s toes, innovating, changing and transforming. Indeed it is quite some time to be a player in the book sector in the mother continent!

Quoting copiously from data released by the African Development Bank (ADB) on the prognosis for Africa by the year 2060, he affirmed that the indicators were quite upbeat with overall infrastructure and literacy rates expected to rise astronomically even as the population doubled. Underscoring that this scenario did indeed open up fresh vistas for particularly book sector professionals, he wondered how many in the hall  were going to take up the challenge of ensuring that they developed strong but flexible, sturdy and resilient,  assured but malleable, fundamentally grounded but creatively-astute and consistent but innovation-embracing systems that would profit maximally from this shifting scenario.

Even more frankly, Crabbe would go on during question time to break it down further. ‘This was indeed a different time and every one needed to claw his way around as best as the situation demanded.’ He counselled emphatically on the overall need to be open and amenable to change, affirming that a lot of solutions to navigating the challenge of the present may be lying in the hands of some young, untested and just-out-of-school entrants who on account of their being viscerally involved with the emergent generation may be better placed to connect with them on the primary level and design their own book needs and solutions.

Going further, Crabbe invited practitioners to see the continually changing trends in the book sector as less of a threat per se, but more of a challenge that needed to be embraced headlong. The times, he reasoned, were introducing shifting roles for everyone; with booksellers being invited to be content aggregators, with authors being far more assertive and personally taking charge of the ‘numbers’ side of the business; with  publishers increasingly being tasked to let go of some or more of the ‘global rights management’ they once took for granted; and librarians being pushed to rely more and more on electronic and not print book solutions in the course of their work with library users. With a lot of these adjustments being initiated, encouraged and demanded by the neo-emergent, and clearly unstoppable technologies of the day, the path of wisdom, he counselled, was for practitioners to continue to more confidently engage and interface with these technologies with a view to not only integrating them in their operations, but to get a grip of the better side of them, maximise their potential for reaching the new generation of readers,  and go on to break even newer grounds with them.

As APNET clocks two decades in its work of growing the African book space, it is only fitting that we pause at this moment to salute the work of pioneers and veterans like Nwankwo and Crabbe. Through their resilient contributions to championing the course of the African book, they have helped in giving further fillip to the sector and its issues. What remains therefore is for us to continue to keep faith with the global dream and grow the sector further in such a way that ‘the labours of our heroes, past and present,’ shall not be in vain.

Not one to leave his audience gaping without practical solutions, Crabbe in the self-same ‘Lagos Declaration’ spoke on how this can be best done, charging the profession’s current elders to be open enough in receiving and integrating novel inputs from younger and emergent professionals who in his view were clearly more abreast, not only with the new technologies in question but even more fundamentally also, with the new consumer.

This is clearly very  wise talk from an ‘elder’ in the business, and notably too, from one who – as we say in these parts - has seen it all. This writer very clearly then has no hesitation in identifying with, and indeed, ‘retweeting’ the kernel of Crabbe’s thesis for the maximal benefit of all stakeholders.

Another reason why Crabbe’s point makes a lot of sense is that it answers the creeping discomfort that had come to be introduced into the overriding framework of operational roles and relations within the industry. Here is how it plays out. When two players within the book sector meet for the first time and the inevitable business and social talk ensues, they ‘explain’ themselves in line with one of the compartments that the industry had grown to live with However this is not exactly guaranteed today with players increasingly finding themselves wearing more than one of the hitherto relatively exclusive labels that existed. Thus we now have Publisher/Editor, Bookseller/Librarian or Literary Agent/Book Scout/Editor/Publisher all rolled into one. And the lines are further blurring.

 This shifting delineation is also affecting association relations within the sector. Thus going forward, we now have players who take up and play multiple roles in the various associations or going on, we may even have more of the combined association frameworks as say the ‘association of booksellers and publishers.’ While this like every other change is sure to come with its own stresses, one of the side benefits that it promises is that it would address some of the tension existing between say for example, publishers and booksellers over issues like alleged role encroachment and off-schedule sales returns.

And what would be the fate of those players who insist that ‘the new technology is still a far-off and non-third world phenomenon?’ For this category, the answer is simple: look at the ADB report referenced by Crabbe and you will see that heads or tails, this new reality has virtually dawned on us. That dear reader, is globalization 102. 

Associated with this is the need to deal with what this writer considers to be one of the most fundamental imperatives facing the African Publishers network at this time, and one which may have come as a result of taking our eyes off the ball.

This is because from what we know and understand of both the spirit and work of APNET greats like Nwankwo, Crabbe and Woeli Deukutsy, the organisation was one that was not only expected to always remain at the cutting edge of trends and innovation in the book sector, but also one that would continue to tap into the richest dynamics of progress that the industry could find.

This much came across to this writer as he sat with late Victor Nwankwo in his study/office at Enugu in the concluding years of the decade of the 90s as well as from the treatises on the subject penned by the good man and other founding fathers of APNET.

At the core of the vision then, was a necessary - if not compulsive - emphasis on intellectual rigour, creativity, innovation and networking. Even when there necessarily was politicking, it was healthy, measured and most progressive, as it was built upon – and not expected to depart from - these quintessential principles and values that players and stakeholders were continually being challenged to buy into.   

As I see it then, one of the critical challenges facing APNET in this 20^th year, is to basically return to the spirit of this founding engagement. This is moreso when we now have – as enunciated by Crabbe in the paper under reference – a technology-dominated book space that - for good or otherwise – allows far more room for dissonance than convergence.

In practical terms then, I would be advocating an APNET which places a lot of emphasis on the re-development of the organisation’s intellectual space, with a view to ensuring that its lead journal, the APNET Review, is further strengthened and energised to very fully lead the debate around issues in the development of the book trade in the continent. There may also be the need for the establishment of a formal APNET Academy or - more like it – a B to B collaboration with a number of leading institutions in the continent with a view to developing and teaching more contemporarily, industry-relevant discourses, and training well-fitted and era-sensitive junior, medium and high net-worth personnel in the sector.

And then my final point. That there is a blurring of lines in the book’s landscape today is no longer news. What is at issue is how we are responding to it. Would this response - as it also has to do with APNET now - also require an adjustment either in the name of the organisation or its definition modalities to encompass some of the other players that have now ‘blurred into’ hitherto exclusive ‘publishing’ territories? Or do we continue to put our foot very strongly down that ‘publishing is publising is publishing is publishing!’

Not being an APNET leader, this is clearly not my call to make. But be rest assured that the thought is only being shared in the spirit of basically reviewing how far the APNET journey has come in the past two decades and how much further it could yet go in the years that follow. To provide more fillip for my thought, I will draw the reader’s attention to three realities of a near similar-frame.

The first has to do with the fact that in a number of territories in Africa and indeed the world over, there currently exist joint associations of sorts in the book trade, including in some instances, joint associations of publishers and book sellers. Are they working together in tandem? Does it look that they may be in a better position – conceptually at least – to better handle the challenge of blurring lines, having already been enmeshed in it?

Second, there are instances in our recent history where efforts at establishing even more dissonance may not have fully worked out or served its purpose. One example here may be the establishment of new associations to promote the interests of ‘non-ficion authors.’ With the benefit of hindsight now, what may have been needed could have been the expansion of the mandate of the existing ‘fiction-dominant’ national writers association to incorporate and accomodate this new focus.

And third, is the example of the founding origins of the book as we know it, where - in the pre-Gutenberg era - the bookseller was literally also the publisher, the librarian and the printer of the few books that were in existence? Did I just hear someone say Déjà vu?

Happy birthday, APNET. Longer may you live. Amen.

Richard Mammah can be reached at richard.mammah@gmail.com

       

Okonjo-Iweala: Gains of a loss

Now that the battle has been won and lost, it is time to do a post-mortem. What did every side in the abortive bid by Nigeria’s Finance/Coordinating Minister (of the Economy) really get in the keenly contested race to clinch the World Bank presidency?

First is President Barrack Obama, the World Bank institution and the victorious Kim.

In a US election year where the incumbent president faces a tough call on all sides, one more foreign policy success is a decided plus. However, going beyond this is the need for the Obama Presidency, the World Bank institution and the victorious Kim to heed the very loud protests of the ‘rest of the world’ that is growing more and more uncomfortable with Pax Americana. As history has showed us over time, even the most impregnable empire bult by men ultimately goes into decline.

The challenge before America therefore is whether it will voluntarily engineer the invitable power-sharing reforms that the times call for or be compelled to do so with of course greater costs. While the choice of the Korean-American Kim, in the first place suggests that the liberal wing of the foreign policy elite currently in charge in Washington remains aware of how the world sees it post-Iraq, the trouble however is that the Kim option may have been too little, too late.

Next would be the lessons of the loss for Okonjo Iweala herself, Nigeria’s President Jonathan and our own foreign policy elite. Rather than the current tendency to see the loss in a deterministic mould as a continuation of ‘the impregnable superpower conspiracy’ or in the equally obtuse consolatory and fact-spinning framework that ‘we gave as much a fight as they gave and the world order has definitely changed for good,’ this reviewer would prefer to see the loss for what it was: the outcome of very poor strategic planning ab initio.

Let me explain. When the news first hit the wires that Okonjo-Iweala was a decided candidate for the position, the word from her, her handlers and the government was between denial and mum. This was an initial mistake which communicated to the world and indeed the Americans that strong as Iweala’s credentials were, she and Nigeria were indeed not ‘sure’ candidates!

For a position that everyone had known (five years ago!) was going to be vacant this month, and which Nigeria’s Okonjo-Iweala was in a pole position to occupy given her placement in the World Bank system amidst other pluses, that error is a grave comfirmation that our foreign policy apparatchik is sadly no longer in the mould of the valiant warriors and planners that  against greater ‘cold war’ odds, literally secured the decolonization of Angola, Mozambique, Guineau Bissau, Cape Verde and Zimbabwe, and in record time too!

The unfortunate foreign policy faux pas was to be taken to a higher level when despite the glaring fact that America and her friends were going to ultimately carry the vote, we decided to take the rather antagonistic approach of confronting and not lobbying Uncle Sam! Pray, what point were we intent on making? And at what costs?

Matters of cost raise the other issue about how really inadequately, the campaign and indeed the affairs of the nation continue to be run. Rather than focus on the only realistic winning card in the game, namely, pressuring President Obama from publicly naming and endorsing an American choice which he was politically--bound to back to the end if he did, or in failing to get this, proceed to ceaselessly keep up the pressure on America and the American choice to voluntarily pull out of the race - as the third contender, Ocampo reportedly did – we preferred to endorse and despatch all kinds of low-weight lobby teams – at of course collosal costs to this poor third world country -  to junket the globe and get us the votes which only one man, America’s President Barrack Obama held!!

Compounding the strategy crisis  is an initial tragedy of value. A friend who served in the top echelopns of the Obasanjo presidency had remarked to me in an airport-room chat years ago that ‘richard, one of the shocking disclosures I have made in government is the almost total absence of rigour in the decision-making process.’ This much was brought to play in the current situation under reference.

Let us play back the tape. In April 2011, President Goodluck Jonathan was elected for a four yearm term in office. Having promised to hit the ground running, Nigerians were encouraged when he soon after the election proceeded on a one-week-retreat to the hilly ranges of the Obudu Ranch Resort in a manner reminiscent of second-term American presidents moving to Camp David ahead of constituting and making public their cabinet. But Nigeria is no America and this President did not have the discipline to properly hang a ‘men at work’ sign on his door and so Obudu became another carnival.

Even after the Obudu fiasco and a team was eventually put together several weeks after his return to Abuja, the nation yet had to wait many other weeks for the single super-minister-nomineee that the president was counting on to drive the transformation agenda’ who you may have guessed is also our own Okonjo-Iweala.

Now to say that the task at hand for any leader in Nigeria today is not massive is to simply lie. It is. But it is even more puzzling that just  six months into the ‘strong woman’ settling into tackling this massive challenge, the nation and her quizzingly lean resources have being mobilized and deployed with neither rigorous analysis nor hint of caution into winning for her this clearly elusive and moreso essentially personal trophy!

For Iweala herself, the lesson if she would see it as dispassionately as she should, is all too clear. Madam, this nation has given you much and could have given you the World Bank presidency were it in our power to do so. But the nation and its people are now asking that beyond rhetoric, you should give them a few things.

One, you are a super-minister in a system that many Nigerians believe is yet the problem and not the solution. Being a super-minister is not just an ego-ride and is not also just about the access that guarantees the capacity to get the whole nation behind you as you prosecute your own personal career objectives as has just been displayed. More than this it demands that you change your wardrobe and get into grease and sand-attuned overalls.

If you have not been properly briefed by now, we will proceed to help you see yourself as many Nigerians see you. Indeed, the Nigerian people do not dislike you and would on an even day, back your strengths and guts where they are well-channeled. And rather than the ‘protestations of personal innocence’ you were making in the heat of the fuel subsidy fiasco, it is this ‘to whom much is given’ scenario that accounted for much of the negative bile that followed you and your government’s handling of the first phase of the fuel subsidy removal. 

But that they fought you on that very badly handled policy-correction process does not mean they will not back you when you now stand up to work for, and be seen as working in their interest.

One such recent example is on how your recent campaign and sad loss was handled. Almost to a man, and even when there was no real stake for them other than the emotional attachment of having ‘one of our own up there,’ they supported your bid and ignored the deeper reality that our lean resources were being deployed to pursuing it - without an initial budgetary allocation and almost without caps! Even for analysts like us who had seen through the gaffes and knew your bid was a still-born one, we out of personal courtesy tinged with a dose of national interest would not discuss it until now.

And so this is the message that the people would want to pass over to you. Madam minister, the battle for the World Bank presidency is over. You could have made it but you did not. However, since all things work together for good,’ you should see in this loss the fact that your current assignment as a minister handling very critical roles in the government requires even stronger attention, drive and action.

For example, we have heard you address the nation on the drawbacks of the present system where government players at different levels dangerously draw down on the treasury without any scant regard for tomorrow. Can you intensify this message and find practical ways to halt this abberant practice. The CBN governor is I believe in sync with you on this and I dare say that organised labour, civil society, the media, the masses and even the President (at least nicodemously) too. Can you be a more vibrant champion for this most deserving national crusade given that it would give a strong push to the imperative of expenditure-tracking at all levels. And this is not without precedent given the experience in the Obasanjo era when your former deputy, Nenadi Usman, regularly released data on allocations to different tiers of government.

You have also talked of other laudable change initiatives as the need for port reforms, the proper diversification of the economy, fighting corruption and a smaller and more attuned government bureaucracy. We agree with you on these and wonder why with your work so clearly cut out for you, you wanted to abandon your silent backers in this fight and ‘check out’ once again in the first place? Or have you not seen how long it takes for the system handlers to permit ‘one good person’ (like your good self now) to come up close to, and even join them there at the top where the opportunity cost to build or ruin Nigeria in any dispensation is decided?

Finally Doc, like many other Nigerians, I do believe that Nigeria is a great nation that has been so gravely abused. I also believe that this abuse is not irreversible and I see two critical segments that would get us to our promised land. One is visionary, nation and people-oriented policies; and the other is a hard-working, disciplined and focussed leadership. This is not the day to talk policy. But I have followed your story for well over a decade now and am personally satisfied that you fit into the leadership mould that we are talking about. I want to also assure you that, like the Lord told Elijah, you are not alone in this standing. ‘There are 7000 others that have not bowed their knees to Baal.’ So be encouraged, and continue to do your own bit. We shall overcome very soon.