Truth is, where there is a dearth of books, foolishness abounds. Foolishness multiplies because scientific enquiries and breakthroughs are stifled, while artistic endeavours are also neglected.
We live in strange times indeed, but they are not interesting ones. You know the times are strange when you are getting one hour of electricity supply to your house from your own clodhopper Disco in seventy-two hours. You say that is not strange? I’m sure I beg your pardon. I forget that there are people who are not supplied any electricity in six months. Ok. Let me try again. You know the times are strange when apartments that should hold clothes and furniture hold bales of bank notes; and banks that should hold bank notes are holding empty vaults.
It is a little like a story I once told but for the sake of those of us who were not there then, I will delightfully tell it again. There was once a rich man who had a grown up son. But this man was desperate to have his son become a renowned violinist. The young man had no such ambition but you know, when you are a rich man… Anyway, to realise his dream for his son, this rich man paid, blackmailed or convinced a renowned violinist to endorse his son’s violin playing abilities by accompanying him (the son) on the piano in a public concert. The violinist in turn convinced a pianist friend of his to turn the pages (of his music sheets) for him while he played.
Well, you can imagine the result of this talent mix but this is what a music reviewer wrote. ‘Last night, I was at a strange concert. The man whom we admire when he plays the violin played the piano. The man whom the world recognises as a renowned pianist turned the pages.
But the man who should have turned the pages played the violin. What could they have been thinking?’ Yes, indeed, what could anyone have been thinking leaving these bags and bags of foreign and local currencies in an apartment in Lagos? Worse, what could any civil servant have been thinking, as I heard it, cutting grasses instead of… well, serving?
Then, to top it, what could our whistle-blowers have been thinking snitching on their fellow Nigerians? Oh, we’ve talked about whistle-blowers? So sorry. Imagine, snitching is not only a virtue now, it even pays! Can you hear someone ask, ‘how did he make his money? Oh, he blew the whistle on his boss’. Clearly that is one group smiling to the bank legitimately. The wonder is that the rest of us are not seeing anything wrong with this picture. Instead, we are all too busy holding our hurting stomachs because of hunger and deprivation and envying whistle-blowers.
Anyway, it is time again to celebrate books and copyright this year, but we can hardly raise any toast. There is a standard joke among academics. It is said that when people become professors, they no longer want to read books; they want to ‘read’ money. Just think, if they all now go to read money, who will profess for us, particularly in books? No sir, we do not need them to ask us the rhetorical question: who steals N15b and keeps it in an apartment? We know the answer to that: a Martian. What is going on inside his head? We also know that: Martian music that he alone is hearing and dancing to. We also do not need them to ask for us, who cuts grass with millions of naira? We know the answer to that too: a confused Martian pretending to be a Nigerian.
The other day, someone tried to explain to us that Nigeria is poor because it had not paid much attention to studies in science and technology. I laughed with only one side of my mouth. I believed that man had only a hammer in his hand, so he tended to see the problem as a nail, as the Chinese would say. He was partially right; but from my little study, I would say that Nigeria is poor because it has not paid any attention to anything that is not printed in Naira notes.
Nigerians only pay attention to anything that carries a price tag to it. They are not interested in any scientific breakthrough. They are not interested in any artistic endeavour. All, to a man, are only interested in making money illegitimately; in fact, the more illegitimate, the better the sum.
Truth is, where there is a dearth of books, foolishness abounds. Foolishness multiplies because scientific enquiries and breakthroughs are stifled, while artistic endeavours are also neglected. So yes, we need writers of books to show us to ourselves. The writers would tell exactly why laying so much emphasis on controlling either the country or billions of sums usually would make the individual or entity come up empty handed. It never has brought out any tangible results. We learn through books that having inordinate ambitions for oneself or one’s tribe never augurs well. Nature will always correct any imbalance resulting from falsity and injustice.
Books are man’s veritable source of truth and justice. There is no greater destruction to the human society a government can do than to deprive it of books. The Nigerian government is actively destroying the Nigerian society by denying it free access to books; it’s worse than book haram is doing. Lack of access to books is the sure pathway to lack of knowledge and a highway to a closed mind and ignorance. Ignorance cannot benefit anyone, least of all the ignorant. If the ignorant had access to knowledge, I bet you he would not be happy with his ignorance. Now, I have no idea what that means but no matter.
Anyhow, a walk through any bookshop in Nigeria reveals a very sorry state. It will reveal the leftover pickings of an era of dependency on foreign books. In other words, once upon a time, our bookshops sold nearly only foreign books. But now, since dollars are no longer available, there is a diminished supply of these books to sell. Unfortunately, there are no Nigerian-made books to take their place on any subject, just name it, even in light reading materials. Why is this so?
As we said earlier, people are not writing. Everyone in the land is encouraged to go after counting or ‘reading money’ rather than go after seeking and disseminating knowledge or information. Have you noticed that instead of books, people keep shops? Have you noticed that writers of books are not celebrated? The only people given chieftaincy titles are kidnappers (high on the list), well-established armed robbers, politicians, top-ranking soldiers, etc. These are the ones people call to their events. Poor writers of books are hardly thought to be good for anything in Nigeria except to be shown to little children as something not to aspire to.
More importantly, most governments in the world recognise the importance of books; so they put as little restriction on its production as possible. Not in Nigeria though; the government seems to have gone all out to destroy the book industry since the seventies. It has done this by not only putting people lacking in the appropriate knowledge in charge of affairs concerning the book industry (or anything else for that matter), it has also used heavy importation tariffs to discourage local productions. It is time Nigeria started to put things right. In practically every sphere of public life, Nigeria has put the ignorant on the violin, the violinist on the piano and has made the pianist to turn the pages as our story illustrates.
We can go after money, but we must get knowledge first so as to know how to use the money rightly. Without knowledge from books, our monies will keep ending up in apartments and shops.
