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!!
