Wednesday 30 May 2012

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 This leaves many writers thinking whether it would not have been better to have left the manuscript unpublished rather than the huge drain of resources it has become! In the alternative, some consider handing over the unpublished stock to a school or public library, give it as a donation or to offer it as charity and earn blessings but not fame, popularity and money.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.


Monday 21 May 2012

‘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 20th 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