My Nigerian Story 1

I have a new work-in-progress ‘Nigeria: A Country, Its Origins, Inconvenient Truths and Prosperous Future.’ It is the story of Nigeria and I will be serving bits of it as I work through my blog richardmammah.blogspot.com as well as on my facebook page.

Bellow is a sample:

‘Where did Boko Haram and its later-day co-traveller, the Jama’atu Ansaril Muslimina fi Biladis Sudan (Vanguard for the Protection of Muslims in Black Africa, or simply “Ansaru”) spring from?

The jihad of Shehu Uthman dan Fodio is said to have largely side-stepped the Borno-Yobe areas that have since been confirmed to be the operational and logistical hotbed of Boko Haram. Is this then a catch-up moment for Islamists from the old Borno Emirate?

With the benefit of hindsight also, would things have been somewhat different today had the Nigerian political and security elite done much more to totally extinguish the fires of earlier conflicts like the Maitatsine uprising and the Gideon Akaluka saga?

Beyond his own words, what exactly was former Governor Sheriff Ahmed Sheriff’s association and involvement with Boko Haram?  Has that involvement now been confirmed to have fully ended?

The journey continues...'

The Joy of Reading

(Address delivered to the students, staff and guests at the Edgewise Reading Network’s Readership Promotion event held at Comprehensive High School, Isawo, Ikorodu on Wednesday, February 13, 2013, by Mr. Richard Mammah, MD, Sunbird African Media Ltd.)

Good Afternoon, Mr. Chairman, the Principal, guests, staff, students, ladies and gentlemen

Permit me to start this address by expressing my heartfelt gratitude to PreyeTambou and his team at Edgewise Reading Network for fighting so ebulliently to get this programme going. As a long-time devotee of the cause of reading promotions in Nigeria, I very well know what a yeoman’s task this has, and continues to be. I salute you.

Now, is there really joy in reading? And what kind of joy exactly would that be?

I will call to the witness box the child, aged four who has just been told his favourite bed-time story and is vigorously pleading for one more take. Is there joy in reading? Ask him!

My second witness would be that candidate in the university semester examinations who finds out in the course of answering a question that not only is he able to largely recall a lot of what he had read up from his course notes and texts, but that several other bits of information from other books and materials he had encountered at different times and seasons are easily returning to his mind at this moment to guarantee that he would no doubt get a very good grade in the course under reference. Is there joy in reading? Again, we request that you direct the question to him!

My final witness for now would be that Professor who has just finished delivering his inaugural lecture to find himself looking down - from his perch up there on the podium - at a packed hall full of applauding listeners much impressed with the depth of scholarship that he had so effortlessly handed down.

Interestingly, as I speak, my friend and fellow champion in the course of the book in Nigeria, Professor Remi Raji is at the moment putting finishing touches to a paper in that mould that he would be delivering at the Trenchard Hall of the University of Ibadan. Is there joy in reading? You can ask the good Professor, who is also the current President of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), after he has finished his lecture tomorrow.

I have called up these witnesses to make the first basic point that contrary to what many of us have been made to believe reading indeed is and should be fun.

So from where do we get the idea that reading equates drudgery and what should be done to help that student who finds reading as a boring chore to get over his erroneous feeling and begin to better appreciate the great bliss that is inherently contained in the reading enterprise?

Let us begin from trying to understand what reading is in the first place?

 The Oxford Dictionary of Current English defines reading to involve a process of understanding ‘the meaning of written or printed words or symbols.’ Whether it is in decoding bus-stop directions, instructions on a drugs’ pack or sifting through several volumes of texts to prepare a research paper that would help you get that certificate or degree, the reading enterprise always involves making meaning out of the processing of characters and alphabets that the reader can recognise.

Broken down therefore, reading would simply be an interface of words, recognition and meaning. You confront a text; you recognize the words, read them together and make meaning out of them.

From sentence to paragraph, chapter to section the process does not change. It is: Words-Recognition-Meaning.

Would you sometimes meet strange words? Yes. Would some passages sometimes not read like ‘Greek?’ Yes. Would some authors not sometimes be talking above your head? Again, my answer is yes. But the solution dear student is not to run away. And to help explain this point, I will take a slight detour into the world of driving.

If you ask the average driver on our roads, he would tell you that there was a time when he really did not think he would today be driving through the streets and highways of Lagos. But having come to grips with the fact that this was one vocation that he was almost compelled to master, he had no choice but to pick up the proverbial gauntlet and get on with it. Today, the rest is history.

Happily, the reading enterprise is not that ‘oppressive.’ Looking around you, you will find that there are indeed things that you naturally like reading. You may not be the greatest fan of bed time stories but your favourite could be poetry. You may just tolerate biographies but comics would make your day anytime!   And this indeed would be our first point in joy-reading: read a lot of what naturally excites and interests you! Indeed, in some situations, it would be from reading and continuing to read more and more of the stuff that interests you that you would find readily recognizable cross-reference material with which you would better explain yourself when you get up higher on the educational and career planes where the focus is on depth and breadth.

Let me illustrate this point some more with three references. One, as a journalist, who had to write an opinion essay on the level of corruption in the ruling People’s Democratic Party a few years ago when Ahmadu Ali was Chairman of the arty and Baba Olusegun Obasanjo was President, I drew upon my fictional knowledge of the story of ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves’ to caption my essay; ‘Ali, Baba and the Forty Thieves.’

Second, as a copy-writer for an advertising agency several years back, I chanced upon a spectacular piece of word-play in an advert about the satellite product, Capsat that took its bearing from the historical saga of the French Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte. It read: ‘If Napoleon had a Capsat, he would not have lost the Battle of Waterloo!’  I was impressed.

Days later, I was commissioned to write a copy for the public relations firm, Imprint Communications, and with the Capsat copy still reeling around my head for inspiration, I penned these lines: ‘Many years ago, dinosaurs roamed the face of the earth. We know about this today because they left their Imprint! Needless to say, my own word-play involved matching the name of the company with the saga of dinosaurs that had since gone extinct but whose tales I had read in some of my voracious life-long searches for story after story to devour!  So do not let anyone discourage you that you are reading too much of the stuff you like to read! Rather, politely tell them that ‘it would come handy someday!’

 That settled, our final point would have to do with what you have to read but do not like. Being in school as we currently are, I am sure that you will find situations like that. To address this, you could adopt one of two possible responses.  The first would be to appreciate the truth that there is indeed no hurdle under the sun that cannot be confronted and scaled. For example, people say that it is almost impossible learning new languages after childhood. Well, this speaker did learn to speak and write Deutsch at age 36! And he does not have the gift for languages per se as is apparent with his continuing battles with French and Yoruba. Beni!

The answer really to coping with tough and difficult reading encounters would be in finding an appropriate method with which to prevail.

In this, one first point that must be made is for the reader to recognize that escape would not be the answer. While the temptation would be strong to damn the subject because you do not enjoy it presently, the truth really is that it could be all-too-critical for your future that you must secure a credit pass in or you could find out in the course of time that ‘the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.’

This in a sense is the story of my relationship with Geography. After having dropped the subject because I had considered it ‘uninteresting,’ events and circumstances made me to do a u-turn in my final year in secondary school and I signed-in Geography as one of my Certificate Examinations subjects. I then proceeded to break it down to subjects and sections as contained in the syllabus, gave the subject more time in my private study time-table and thankfully also, the subject teacher, Mr. Kwame Ayekpa, kindly availed me all of his time and resources (including meals at his home in the staff quarters!). The result was stunning!        

So it comes down finally to the environment within which you read. Again, I repeat? Would there be difficult moments? You bet. Would reading be boring sometimes? Correct. Is it okay to shut the book and take a walk? Absolutely!

But even as you have your way and take that break when you must, you must also equally pay attention to that soft, nudging call from your books as they gently implore you long after you have rested: ‘can we please return to our world of study ...and fun! Respond to the prompting and you will ultimately find out like many others before you that truly, ‘reading maketh a man.’

I thank you for your patience and attention.

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.