The Nation Newspaper

Tag: reading

  • What do you read?

    The world would definitely be drab if reading and writing had not been invented. Well, at least for some of us. I often times wonder what one would do with the twenty four hours of a day without reading, even if for a few minutes. And for those who have the ability to read and don’t one should ask why they are wasting this God-given talent.

    In the line of duty, I once went to an office to keep an appointment with someone. On getting there I was told he won’t be available until a certain hour. I was on appointment; I did not just barge into the place. Nigerian officials hardly keep to time. I looked at my wristwatch and I noticed that I had about three hours to wait! What do I do? Do I leave and come back later? The legendary Lagos traffic snarl made that option impossible. I’d three whole hours to wait!! The reception hall where I was asked to wait was bare with some dog-eared, smelly magazines on the table for waiting visitors. You can tell from their looks that they had been there for ages. I was turned off. So, what next?

    From time immemorial, I never stepped out of the house without a book or something to read in tow. This is because I am a restless soul who can never sit in a place idle. I must find something to do. Or how do you go to a public office waiting and just sit idly or sleep off?  On this particular day, I went back to my car and was saved the long hours of waiting with the reliable company I keep – a book.

    The assistant to the person I went to see after contacting her boss later came and apologised that she had contacted her boss and that he would soon be around. She asked if I’ll like a cup of tea or coffee. Of course I opted for coffee. A young man later came in to see the same person I was waiting for. He was busy browsing through his phone while waiting. He had no book to read, I was sure he was only chatting and he did this until his phone battery kaput. He frantically looked for a charger to use fretting that he forgot his at home.

    Of course I couldn’t help him, neither could the receptionist. A few minutes after hissing and shuffling his legs annoyingly on the floor, he slept off. His deep snores enveloped the whole room. I was incensed. What sort of youngsters are we breeding? An illiterate population hooked on reading Facebook, WhatsApp and other distracting social media?

    As we marked another World Book Day on April 23, I enjoin us all to pay more attention to reading and how to make our children a reading generation.  April 23 is a significant day chosen according to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) because of its importance. William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes (remember him?) among others are identified with the date. Cervantes’ novel Don Quixote has been translated into over 140 languages. It is considered to be the most-translated book in the world, after the Holy Bible.

    The essence of the day UNESCO added was “to discover the pleasure of reading and gain a renewed respect for the irreplaceable contributions of those, who have furthered the social and cultural progress of humanity.”

    In her message, Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO said, “Books are a form of cultural expression that lives through and as part of a chosen language. Each publication is created in a distinct language and is intended for a language-specific reading audience. A book is thus written, produced, exchanged, used and appreciated in a given linguistic and cultural setting. This year we highlight this important dimension because 2019 marks the International Year of Indigenous Languages, led by UNESCO, to reaffirm the commitment of the international community in supporting indigenous peoples to preserve their cultures, knowledge and rights.”

    Reading as a way of escape must be returned to just as we find ways to make our indigenous languages matter in the world of reading and writing. Cervantes didn’t write in English neither did many of the Russian writers, but their books have become world classics. We don’t have to write in English to become world famous. Where are our translators? They have disappeared because we have rendered them idle.

     

  • ’32 million Nigerians suffering from reading, comprehension challenges’

    About 32 million Nigerians suffer from reading, learning and comprehension disabilities, a non-governmental organisation Dyslexia Found has stated.

    The organisation attributed these challenges to dyslexia, which affects reading, spelling, writing and comprehension.

    Chairman Board of Trustees of Dyslexia Found Ben Arikpo at a briefing disclosed one in every six students in the country has dyslexia.

    He explained the disability challenge was more endemic than autism, which has only one victim in 80 persons.

    Arikpo noted that dyslexia had become the most common learning disability in the world with over 15 to 20 per cent of persons in any given population affected.

    He regretted despite the seriousness of the problem among children of school age, awareness had not been created for teachers to know how to handle children diagnosed with the condition.

    According to him, the lack of awareness among teachers, parents and peers had resulted in abuse of victims with the condition who lose their self-esteem in the process and sometimes, drop out of school.

    He called on government to take over the license for training of teachers in primary and secondary schools on dyslexia to correct the condition among students.

     

  • Reading, literature and corporate sponsorship

    A few months ago, a colleague whose friend had just published a book to rave reviews took to his Facebook page to complain about his friend’s frustration. How could someone who had just written a book with “rave reviews” in the media be frustrated? According to the colleague, his friend had approached a big company that was known for supporting and promoting events with millions of naira. He was asked to submit a proposal and he did what he considered to be a watertight and brilliant one. He was asked to return in a few weeks.

    After waiting for months and ‘going and coming’ like an abiku, a wait that looked more like Waiting for Godot, he decided to go ahead with his event without the company. He had planned a public reading at bookshops, schools and festivals around the country and had approached the company to support his noble ideal. When the company was not forthcoming he had to scale down his programme to just a public presentation at which most of the dignitaries, who had promised to attend never came anywhere near the venue.

    A few weeks after his event, he strolled to the company’s headquarters and was told his proposal was still “under consideration”! However, he decided to engage a mutual friend he had cultivated in the company during his constant visits there. It was this friend who told him the home truth about his proposal. According to him, the friend confided in him that “Our company doesn’t sponsor book events because Nigerians don’t read!”

    My friend’s colleague was shocked to the marrow. He walked away from the company totally disappointed. But his disappointment was just a tip of the iceberg as he later discovered that the company was supporting an event he considers vain. This brings me to the issue of today. Our country has become so vain that things that should attract sponsorships or attention have been totally relegated. Nothing excites us all again except the banal and inconsequential.

    Although the colleague didn’t name the company that turned down his request to sponsor the book reading, I won’t have been surprised if the company was one of the sponsors of Big Brother Naija (BBN) which ended last weekend! That is how much we value intelligence and knowledge in this clime. Companies have been known to shun anything that has to do with knowledge but put lots of money on vainglorious events. That is why a so-called Beauty Queen would get a car, millions of naira, opportunities to travel around the world and meet showbiz leaders and so on while a champion of a Mathematics competition would only go home with a few miserable notes of naira, cartons of drinks, boxes of milk and notebooks.

    We have so made education and being intelligent so attractive that our children today prefer to indulge in betting than reading or working out mathematical solutions. Gone were the days when children return to school to boast of the numbers of books they read during the holiday. Today they are busy talking about BBN, social media, Instagram, Facebook and other such things that contribute little or nothing to intellect.

    However, the fault is not entirely that of the companies. The media are all part of the rot. Last week Sunday, when the BBN winner was announced, many of our newspapers, radio, and television made the item one of their leading stories. I was aghast. The Nigerian Literature Prize, which is our country’s (if not one of the world’s), biggest literary prize does not command such mention when the winner is announced!! But BBN?  There is no doubt that advertising revenue drives such publicity and focus but can’t we also give publicity to reading and other intellectual events to attract advertisers?

    The rot is deep and far reaching. Post anything intellectual on your Facebook wall or tweet anything elevated. You’ll hardly get ten responses. But post or tweet anything vain, you’ll be surprised at the numbers of likes, comments and retweets you’ll get.

    I got this from a Whatsapp group I belong to and it speaks to the heart of the matter: “Organizers of BBNaija made N5 billion, N30/vote from the 170 million votes they got from Nigeria. They gave the winner N25 million. So calculate the gain. This is a big business. Now I know why Zain Brain Challenge (The Inter University competition of West African Universities) went to extinction with no sponsor for it. Sad world!” To vote for a BBN winner you had to pay, yet we want to get a book free. Which contributes to our lives better?

    See how we continue to kill intellect and intellectualism with the choice we make. Sorry, my colleagues’ friend for your disappointment. That’s the way we are.

     

    • First published on April 29, 2018, and republished today as a mark of honour to NLNG and all the its longlisted laureates hosted yesterday in Lagos.

  • Still on reading and corporate sponsorship

    Since my intervention entitled Reading, literature and corporate sponsorship was published, I have received so many calls, emails and text messages. The messages are varied and very thought provoking, showing that the issue I wrote about was of concern to many and that it is a topic that one could not have thought has been exhaustively discussed in one article.

    However, some of the responses I got still shows that the kernel of my argument is still lost on a few people. I’ll explain: when I wrote about reading and lack of sponsorship I was not talking or writing about reading to pass exams or for anything official or preparing for a job interview. If you board a train, bus or aircraft in Europe or America there is the assurance that a sizeable numbers of the commuters in the train, bus or aircraft would have a novel, magazine or at least a newspaper clutched in their hands reading. Most times they could be so engrossed that you would hardly hear anyone mutter a word until you get to your destination.

    But what do we have here? If you board any of our public means of transportation the shout of the ubiquitous gbongbo nse (cure all) herbal hawker would make sure you can have a peaceful moment to read anything. It is perhaps worst with our elite when you board an airline, it does not matter whether it is local or international, majority would either be sleeping, chatting at the highest decibel of their voices or simply gossiping.

    The reading I wrote about last week was therefore not about people reading to pass exams or for promotion at work places. There is no doubt that the reading culture in the country, well and truly all around the world, has become so bad that we are perhaps holding the worst end of the stick.

    Perhaps the advent of the ebook has made matters worse. For instance, I was at an office a few weeks ago waiting to see an executive, as we sat at the waiting room waiting, about four young guys entered the waiting room and four about one hour that I spent there waiting the four of them were glued to their phones tapping and ostensibly sending Whatsapp messages. They were so engrossed with their phones that at a point one of them had to change her seat to move near to a socket where she could charge her phone and continue with her conversation with whoever she was chatting with.

    This reminded me of a conversation I once had with another young person who I once challenged why her eyes were always glued to her phone. Perhaps knowing me she replied that she had downloaded books on her phone and that was what she was always reading. I knew she was lying but I smiled and she knew I didn’t believe her! Nigerians read but what they read and for what is what matters. While reacting to my last week’s intervention, Eric Ikpah from Makurdi, Benue State had in his message written: “Don’t ever believe anybody who tells you Nigerians don’t read. If Nigerians don’t read, how come all the 10 national daily newspapers haven’t collapsed? How come people still graduate from University? If you don’t read, how will you pass university exam? Who buys all those 50 naira sports magazines? People read what interests them. Any Nigerian company that feels Nigerians don’t read either doesn’t have a research department or isn’t serious. Very soon all these cries about author’s not getting recognized will soon be a thing of the past.”

    Is reading to pass examinations part of what I wrote about last week? No. Reading for pleasure and learning about other worlds and not because you want to pass exams.  Anything other than that is not the reading we are talking about that is studying and it is different.

  • Reading, literature and corporate sponsorship

    A few months ago, a colleague whose friend had just published a book to rave reviews took to his Facebook page to complain about his friend’s frustration. How could someone who had just written a book with “rave reviews” in the media be frustrated? According to the colleague, his friend had approached a big company that was known for supporting and promoting events with millions of naira. He was asked to submit a proposal and he did what he considered to be a watertight and brilliant one. He was asked to return in a few weeks.

    After waiting for months and ‘going and coming’ like an abiku, a wait that looked more like Waiting for Godot, he decided to go ahead with his event without the company. He had planned a public reading at bookshops, schools and festivals around the country and had approached the company to support his noble ideal. When the company was not forthcoming he had to scale down his programme to just a public presentation at which most of the dignitaries, who had promised to attend never came anywhere near the venue.

    A few weeks after his event, he strolled to the company’s headquarters and was told his proposal was still “under consideration”! However, he decided to engage a mutual friend he had cultivated in the company during his constant visits there. It was this friend who told him the home truth about his proposal. According to him, the friend confided in him that “Our company doesn’t sponsor book events because Nigerians don’t read!”

    My friend’s colleague was shocked to the marrow. He walked away from the company totally disappointed. But his disappointment was just a tip of the iceberg as he later discovered that the company was supporting an event he considers vain. This brings me to the issue of today. Our country has become so vain that things that should attract sponsorships or attention have been totally relegated. Nothing excites us all again except the banal and inconsequential.

    Although the colleague didn’t name the company that turned down his request to sponsor the book reading, I won’t have been surprised if the company was one of the sponsors of Big Brother Naija (BBN) which ended last weekend! That is how much we value intelligence and knowledge in this clime. Companies have been known to shun anything that has to do with knowledge but put lots of money on vainglorious events. That is why a so-called Beauty Queen would get a car, millions of naira, opportunities to travel around the world and meet showbiz leaders and so on while a champion of a Mathematics competition would only go home with a few miserable notes of naira, cartons of drinks, boxes of milk and notebooks.

    We have so made education and being intelligent so attractive that our children today prefer to indulge in betting than reading or working out mathematical solutions. Gone were the days when children return to school to boast of the numbers of books they read during the holiday. Today they are busy talking about BBN, social media, Instagram, Facebook and other such things that contribute little or nothing to intellect.

    However, the fault is not entirely that of the companies. The media are all part of the rot. Last week Sunday, when the BBN winner was announced, many of our newspapers, radio, and television made the item one of their leading stories. I was aghast. The Nigerian Literature Prize, which is our country’s (if not one of the world’s), biggest literary prize does not command such mention when the winner is announced!! But BBN?  There is no doubt that advertising revenue drives such publicity and focus but can’t we also give publicity to reading and other intellectual events to attract advertisers?

    The rot is deep and far reaching. Post anything intellectual on your Facebook wall or tweet anything elevated. You’ll hardly get ten responses. But post or tweet anything vain, you’ll be surprised at the numbers of likes, comments and retweets you’ll get.

    I got this from a Whatsapp group I belong to and it speaks to the heart of the matter: “Organizers of BBNaija made N5 billion, N30/vote from the 170 million votes they got from Nigeria. They gave the winner N25 million. So calculate the gain. This is a big business. Now I know why Zain Brain Challenge (The Inter University competition of West African Universities) went to extinction with no sponsor for it. Sad world!” To vote for a BBN winner you had to pay, yet we want to get a book free. Which contributes to our lives better?

    See how we continue to kill intellect and intellectualism with the choice we make. Sorry, my colleagues’ friend for your disappointment. That’s the way we are.

  • NLNG holds reading for Ikeogu

    The Book lovers will gather at Ethnic Heritage Center, Ikoyi, Lagos, for a book feast featuring Oke Ikeogu’s The Heresiad the 2017 winner of The Nigeria Prize for Literature on Sunday, March 25, 2018, by 2pm.

    The book reading is being hosted by the Nigeria LNG (NLNG) Limited, sponsors of the literature prize and the Nigeria Prize for Science.

    According to Tony Okenyedo, the reading is part of the company’s support for literature.

    Since 2004, the literature prize has rewarded eminent writers such as Oke Ikeogu, who won the 2017 edition which was focused on Poetry with his The Heresiad; Abubakar Adam Ibrahim won in 2016, Prose, with Season of Crimson Blossoms; Sam Ukala (2014; Drama) with Iredi War; Tade Ipadeola (2013; Poetry) with his collection of poems, Sahara Testaments; Chika Unigwe (2012 – prose), with her novel, On Black Sister’s Street; as well as Adeleke Adeyemi (2011, children’s literature) with his book The Missing Clock.

    Others are Esiaba Irobi (2010, drama) who clinched the prize posthumously with his book Cemetery Road; Kaine Agary (2008, prose) with Yellow Yellow; Mabel Segun (co-winner, 2007, children’s literature) for her collection of short plays Reader’s Theatre; Professor Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo (co-winner, 2007, children’s literature) with her book, My Cousin Sammy; Ahmed Yerima (2006, drama) for his classic, Hard Ground; and Gabriel Okara (co-winner, 2005, poetry), Professor Ezenwa Ohaeto (co-winner, 2005, poetry).

  • ‘Social media is a set back to reading culture’

    ‘Social media is a set back to reading culture’

    Obiageli Okafor, a lecturer at the Federal Polytechnic Ilaro, Ogun State has called on government to stop sacking teachers rather they should be trained as this would improve the country’s collapsing educational system.

    Okafor made this call during a public presentation of English Language: Usage and Communication Skills, which took place recently in Lagos. Training teachers to become better, she said is a key factor that cannot be ignored.

    “You cannot just build schools without good teachers. The government should invest more on teachers, school, books and more in development so that we will have good teachers,” she emphasized.

    She noted that the internet, especially the social media, is contributing to the declining reading culture. “The internet and the phones are taking away our reading culture and the students don’t read any more. Give students assignment and they don’t want to go to the library, they go through their phones and get the information quickly without starting from the beginning.

    “In the past we didn’t have the internet, and people went to the library, every school in Nigeria had library and people were going there. But now the reading culture has really dropped. I don’t know if the social media is an encouragement, it’s the reason why you have all these abbreviations. This is slowing people down with reading. It does not allow them to read the way they are supposed to read. It’s not allowing them speak the way they should.”

    She advised government to encourage people to read and write by reviewing the type of materials available.

    What inspired her to pen down the book? “I have always had a flare to be an educationalist, I teach and because I teach that encouraged me a lot to write. And because I have seen how students speak, even the so-called graduates are not left out, the reading culture has dropped, people don’t read, they don’t even want to read.”

    The co-authored book by he and her mother, Pat Okafor, “is here to teach how to speak effectively and communicate well.  It is for secondary school and higher institution. I did the major work and my mother did some of the chapters in the book and also the editing

  • Dwindling reading culture

    The World Culture Score Index recently released the result of its survey on world’s reading countries in which Nigeria was adjudged as unreading. Appalling as it is, it is not surprising to any keen observer of our social milieu. What is surprising, however, is how it has to take a seemingly obscure organization to get our media frenzied about our retrogression in that respect despite similar revelations by our local researchers.

    A couple of years ago (May 15, 2013), Mahmood Jega, the inimitable Daily Trust columnist, did an interesting piece about a young boy who opted to hang himself than read his books when his parents insisted. That poor lad is just a microcosm of how deep is the anathema among particularly young Nigerians. As an instructor and bitter complainant of our miserable reading habit, I nearly go to war with my students to get them read a few excerpted pages from a book. By God, sometimes out of rage you feel like breaking down to tears. For, these students will rather watch football and movies than read a book. Yes. They will rather worship P-Square and Justin Bieber. Yes. They will rather swing and swagger on the street with their bushy hair and comical sunglasses. Yes. They will rather go on 2go, Facebook and WhatsApp than of course, read a book! Nothing can therefore be axiomatic than the adage: if you want hide something from, actually northern Nigerian youths, then put it in a book.

    Sometimes out of consternation, you find yourself asking: When will this region produce another Muhammad Bello? Who will be the Zungur or Yusuf Bala Usman of this generation? When Prof. Ibrahim Bello-Kano told us in the privacy of his office that he had so far read more than 6,000 books and was aiming for 10,000 before he dies, we were astounded. But I was completely shattered when I later discovered that Muhammad Bello had read more than 20,000 books under the tutelage of his father, Shehu. Similarly, Zungur, according to his biographer, jilted his wife, Marka, because of persistently prolonged stay in the library. While in A Life of Commitment to Knowledge, Freedom and Justice: Tributes to Yusuf Bala Usman, the daughter of the late scholar told us that her father was terribly sick and could barely recognize those around him, but ‘a few hours, he became much better, he became himself again, asking for books, that they should bring his books’.

    In both their online and offline political engagement, the youths boil with revolutionary fervour. They want to be seen as prime movers of change without, ironically, minding what it takes. How one can be another Shariati or Fanon without the equipment remains a mystery to me. When you read the biographies and autobiographies of our founding fathers, for example, you find out that they were all voracious readers – Sardauna, Balewa, Aminu Kano and co. Sardauna used to sleep for not more than four hours! He was either reading or politically strategizing. The Honourable Gentleman, on the other hand, was said to have read virtually all the books in their library at Katsina College. Perhaps that informed his eloquence. And his fictional Shehu Umar further vindicates his unquenchable thirst for knowledge. What do I have to say with regard to Aminu Kano? If Gumi could attest to someone’s commitment to learning, we can only say sadaqallahul azeem.

    To be fair, I think people down here are generally dis-informed about the fact reading can be a form of entertainment, something that can be done in leisurely hour; which consequently stimulates the mind and enlarges one’s worldview. But sadly enough, even students think about it largely in the ‘precipice’ of test or exam where they grudgingly swallow instructor’s notes and regurgitate it verbatim. For this, they’re handsomely rewarded notwithstanding the paucity of originality and diversity of sources. A pedagogy that favours rote-learning, according to the Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, can only oppress rather than liberate the mind. The mind thus neither be creative nor critically reason. In a word, our educational system does not help matters in this regard. This probably explains our dismal performance in regional and international university rankings as well as repeatedly massive failures in Senior Secondary Certificate Examinations.

    Our public libraries aren’t better either, as they suffer aeon of neglect due to the cankerworm of corruption permeating not only the political stratum but the administration of public institutions. Hence attractive, up-to-date materials for academic and recreational purposes are sadly lacking.  However, the few classics of world’s literature available in such libraries, can be complemented with contemporary ones by personal efforts were we the reading type. For, despite precarious economic situation, people are still buying clothes, jewelries and other ornamentals. One therefore wonders why compromises are hardly made for the sake of books.

    Our upbringing may be another factor. Quite a lot of us didn’t have the privilege of growing up under such mummies as Chimamanda’s friend who ‘bribes’ her child with five cents for every page read. Nor did we have daddies like the one mentioned in Aaidh Al-Qarnee’s Don’t be Sad – a dad who would tell his child while returning from market, he should only rest before the shops of booksellers or newspaper vendors. We did not, again, have brothers like John Bright, a brother who would tell us that his greatest lamentation in the face of library shelves is that life is too short to allow him enjoy the treasures before him. Above all, we did grow up watching on TV, leaders like Abraham Lincoln, who ‘was devoted to verse (and) could repeat from memory whole pages of Burns and Byrons and Browning’.

     

    • Bukar wrote in from Gashua and can be reached at aabukar555@yahoo.com

  • Why I love reading

    A love reading, and whenever I see materials – books, magazines, essays and others – I ensure they don’t pass me by. It amazes me sometimes when I subconsciously use words and after crosschecking the dictionary for clarity, they’re oftentimes on point! I’m able to do this because I’ve dedicated and invested a substantial part of my life reading. I’ve made that clear through articles on this page. Today will be one of such days again.

    One of my favourite past times is critical thinking and interrogating things with the view of finding out why they are the way they are and not the other way round. During my university days, I – like most of my generation – leaned toward the left ideologically. That perspective gradually changed when communism collapse with the erstwhile Soviet Union and liberal democracy gained worldwide acceptability becoming the acceptable system of governance. But today, democracy itself is challenged by the gradual upsurge of pseudo-democratic forces.

    To assist is painting this picture appropriately is a new book by Edward Luce, a columnist for The Financial Times. “The Retreat of Western Liberalism: How Democracy Is Defeating Itself” is an insightful and harrowing book. Luce, in the book, issues a chilling warning: “Western liberal democracy is not yet dead, but it is far closer to collapse than we may wish to believe. It is facing its gravest challenge since the Second World War. This time, however, we have conjured up the enemy from within. At home and abroad, America’s best liberal traditions are under assault from its own president. We have put arsonists in charge of the fire brigade.”

    Do you not sometimes wonder, like Lude did about America, that we too in Nigeria might “have put arsonists in charge of the fire brigade” with the kind of political parties and politicians we have? When last did you hear of the ideological persuasion of our political parties or politicians? This makes me look back – with a tinge of nostalgia – to the second republic. During that era – imperfect as it was -, you can clearly distinguish a UPN state from an NPN state; the same applies to the political actors themselves.

    As some commentators have started seeing strains in their democracy, so do us. Luce does not see Donald Trump or populist nationalists in Europe, like Marine Le Pen of France, as causes of today’s crisis in democratic liberalism but rather as symptoms. Nor does he see President Trump’s victory last November as “an accident delivered by the dying gasp of America’s white majority -and abetted by Putin.”

    Instead, he argues that Trump’s election is a part of larger trends on the world stage, including the failure of two dozen democracies since the turn of the millennium (including three in Europe — Russia, Turkey and Hungary) and growing downward pressures on the West’s middle classes (wrought by the snowballing forces of globalization and automation) that are fomenting nationalism and populist revolts. These developments, in turn, represent a repudiation of the naïve hopes, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, that liberal democracy was on an inevitable march across the planet, and they also pose a challenge to the West’s Enlightenment faith in reason and linear progress.

    Most people – within and outside America – are still trying to come to terms with how a Trump became an American president. To such individuals, Luce’s book is timely and informed, providing an important overview of the dynamics in an increasingly interconnected and fragmented planet. He appeared to have seen this moment coming.

    Rewind to his 2012 book, “Time to Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent,” Luce uncannily anticipated the politics of resentment and the bitter fights over immigration that would fuel “Brexit” and last year’s American election. And in this new book, he lucidly expounds on the erosion of the West’s middle classes, the dysfunction among its political and economic elites and the consequences for America and the world.

    This dysfunction is also playing out in our country with angst in the land. Now the political elite are wondering – for instance – what to do with the emergence of populists like Nnamdi Kanu and his IPOB crowd. This dilemma makes me remember the 1960 book “Crowds and Power” by Elias Canetti. In that book, Canetti dealt with the dynamics of crowds and “packs” and the question of how and why crowds obey power of rulers. Canetti draws a parallel between ruling and paranoia.

    The book is notable for its unusual tone; although wide ranging in its erudition, it is not scholarly or academic in a conventional way. Rather, it reads like a manual written by someone outside the human race explaining to another outsider in concise and highly metaphoric language how people form mobs and manipulate power. Unlike much non-fiction writing, it is highly poetic and seething with anger.

    The fear of the “crowds” was what compelled the political elite in the north to “rein in” Emir Mohammed Sanusi II whose utterances they feel can stir a revolution with unimaginable consequences. The political elite in the east are facing such dilemma with a Kanu that has huge followers of fanatical dispensation. While the emir can be “reined in” how do you rein a Kanu who apparently has nothing to lose?

    Let’s get back to Luce. The strongest glue holding liberal democracies together, Luce argues, is economic growth, and when that growth stalls or falls, things tend to take a dark turn. With growing competition for jobs and resources, losers (those he calls the “left-behinds”) seek scapegoats for their woes, and consensus becomes harder to reach as politics devolves into more and more of a zero-sum game.

    Does this sound familiar? You bet it does. The rallying cry in Nigeria today is restructuring. In the past we’ve called for a sovereign national conference, resource control, true federalism etc, all in the bid to have a nation where equity and justice reign. But the bottom-line is that economic growth has stalled for a long time leading to acute unemployment and lack of opportunities.

    “Many of the tools of modern life are increasingly priced beyond most people’s reach,” Luce writes. “One study shows it now takes the median worker more than twice as many hours a month to pay rent in one of America’s big cities as it did in 1950; and the costs of health care and a college degree have increased even more. There is rising income inequality in the West; America, which “had traditionally shown the highest class mobility of any Western country,” now has the lowest.”

    Again, Luce could as well be writing about Nigeria here. How many Nigerian workers, after serving for 35 years can build a house or pay rent in a secured neighborhood? How many can even send their children or wards to many of the private varsities we have in the country? We know that the strategy is to ensure that public varsities die gradually while private varsities – owned by the elite – thrive.

    Luce pointed out that as nostalgia for a dimly recalled past replaces hope, the American dream of self-betterment and a brighter future for one’s children recedes. Among the symptoms of this dynamic: a growing opioid epidemic and decline in life expectancy, increasing intolerance for other people’s points of view, and brewing contempt for an out-of-touch governing elite clearly manifests.

    Luce’s conclusions are pessimistic but not entirely devoid of hope. “The West’s crisis is real, structural and likely to persist,” he writes. “Nothing is inevitable. Some of what ails the West is within our power to fix.” Doing so means rejecting complacency about democracy and our system’s resilience, and

    Quite apt; “understanding exactly how we got here” is what Nigeria too is presently grappling with. How the dynamics we now face is handled in the next two years will show the direction Nigeria is heading.

  • Ex-JAMB Registrar seeks reading culture among youths

    The immediate past Registrar of Joint Admission and Matriculation Board, Prof. Dibu Ojerinde, has given reasons why youths should have flair for reading, irrespective of their discipline.

    Ojerinde, who presented a paper: “Promoting reading culture among Nigerian youths”,  to officially declared open this year’s Nigeria International Book Fair conference, recalled his encounter with a lady, who refused to oblige him a material in her possession on a tour to a foreign land 46 years ago. He also described the ‘bring back the book’ initiative of ex-president Goodluck Jonathan, as remarkable. His experience and the initiative, he said, propelled his gospel of reading.

    He said: “At the end of the (bring back the book) campaign, questionnaires were distributed. One striking questions to me on that day was: ‘What will you do to promote reading culture in your establishment?’ My response was categorical ‘I will introduce a reading material in the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) questions.”

    Ojerinde, a professor of Test and Measurement, said he presented the idea to JAMB management, which was approved. In 2013-2014, Ojerinde said reading materials were introduced for all JAMB candidates in the English Language.

    The initiative, Ojerinde continued, had enormous challenges ranging from candidates’ unwillingness to identify with books, publishers/authors disagreement and piracy,  but he stuck to his guns.

    He recalled that the 2015 examination got positive responses from candidates, who eventually developed interest in reading, having gone through JAMB’s prescribed material.

    The Senate Committee Chairman on Local and Foreign Debts, Shehu Sani, corroborated Ojerinde.

    He said: “Our young people nowadays no longer read books, but enjoy posting messages on social media. Our public office holders too do not read. Many books in the house of politicians today exist as part of furniture because they do not read them. The declining reading culture affects the level of the intellectual and political discourse in Nigeria today. You hardly see politicians quoting great figures or writers. The only book they know are cheque book and facebook; and that is unfortunate.

    “Reading is indispensable for national development. When people do not read, they have nothing to offer and that is the issue we are having in the country today.”

    The Secretary of NIBF, Abiodun Omotubi, said the foundation would continue to support reading culture in the country.