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Tag: reading

Centre revives reading in Anambra

There is an effort in Anambra State to keep the reading culture from dying. The resource centre situated at Esther Obiakor Housing Estate in Awka, the state capital, built by the late literary giant, Prof Ezenwa Ohaeto, is credited with that effort.

•Dr. Mrs. Ngozi Ohaeto and a guest at the colloquim

The Centre’s contribution to reviving the reading culture was made known at the third edition of Ohaeto’s colloquium, led by his wife, Dr. Mrs. Ngozi Ohaeto, chief executive of the resource centre.

The event was chaired by another literary icon, Odia Ofeimun, who lauded those who pulled their resources together to establish the centre.

Ofeimun noted that Anambra is the gateway for African literature, because it is home to such renowned African writers as the late icons Professor Chinua Achebe and Christopher Okigbo, and Chukwuemeka Ike, now a traditional ruler, among others.

Anambra State Governor Willie Obiano was represented by his special Assistant on education Dr. Ifeanyi Paul.

The governor told the gathering that his administration was passionate about the education sector, the reason according to him, behind setting up of some reforms to encourage the students in the state.

Some of those reforms were the handing over of the schools back to the missions and making sure that the students do not lack anything in their different schools.

He also promised to encourage the use of the published books of the bi-annual colloquiums in schools across the state.

For Ofeimun, “literary endowment should not be allowed to waste or die rather, the state government should strive to create monuments to celebrate the literary icons found in the cultural environment of the state”.

The guest lecturer and professor of English language at the University of Lagos Akachi Ezeigbo, while delivering her lecture, advocated for the introduction of peace education in the country’s school curriculum.

Ezeigbo spoke on the topic “human rights, citizenship, culture, women empowerment and peace education in Nigeria”.

According to her, such introduction could come in handy in addressing major challenges facing the country including politics, economics, cultural violence, Boko-Haram, armed robbery, militancy, rape and kidnappings on the land.

According to the English professor, “peace education is the type of education that will raise awareness in the child about the issues of strategizing on issues of conflict resolution”

“It should be enshrined in the curriculum from primary to tertiary institutions, apart from introducing it into the school system, it should also be encourage and practiced at homes, in governance, markets and religious places and town unions” Ezeigbo said.

The participants at the colloquim, were moved including the senator representing Anambra central Dr. Chris Ngige and his counterpart from the south senatorial zone, Dr. Andy Ubah.

The embattled vice chancellor of Nnamdi Azikiwe University, (Unizik), Prof. Joseph Ahaneku was all, but clapping throughout the event.

Speaking with The Nation, the wife of the late Prof and literary giant, Dr. Mrs. Ngozi Ohaeto, said that the centre plans to hold literary competitions for secondary schools in the state any moment from now.

She said the place was established to encourage creative writing and reviving reading culture among children, exactly what her late husband had in mind.

But Mrs. Ohaeto did not stop there; she appealed to the state government and public-spirited individuals to support the centre in the interest of the youths.

May 22, 2015
Arresting declining reading culture
Reading, whether for pleasure or for academic purpose, is an essential habit that forms the bedrock of human greatness, regardless of age, gender or status. This fact is hardly disputed. A popular saying describes readers as leaders. However, imbibing the culture of reading and accepting its importance seem uncommon among the youth.

The habit of reading among students and even adults is gradually declining. Some stakeholders in education sector have attributed the drop in reading culture to the lack of adequate awareness on it importance, inadequate library facilities, poor access to books and other reading materials, among other factors.

Added to this are the distractive and wrong application of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) device and the high cost of books.

As good as ICT is, many observers say it has also caused some measure of negative effect on Nigerians, especially on their reading habit. This is more so, as internet obsession is making many students to waste valuable times surfing the web for wrong reasons.

The introduction of the Global System of Mobile Communication (GSM) in Nigeria has been viewed as one progress that has come with certain negatives tendencies that are detrimental to the culture of reading.

The Executive Director of Institute of Media and Society, Mr Akin Akingbulu, describes reading in two dimensions. To one end, he says reading is for self-development, and to the other, he thinks of it as a means to passing examinations. He said another factor that contributes to poor reading culture is the prices of books, which are on the high side.

Nigerian environment has also contributed to the decline in reading culture among youths. Young people have been exposed to culture of materialism, given their exposure to high-profile corruption by leaders, who embezzle public funds to expend on inconsequential things. The youth take the habit becoming indolent and resent hard work. They will say: “Let me just look at a short cut to make money and feel good.”

The youth now have time for foreign football leagues and spend their precious time at football viewing centres. Some play computer games for hours, with little or no time for reading.

A senior lecturer at the Department of Science and Laboratory Technology of the Federal Polytechnic in Bida (BIDA POLY), Niger State, Mr Demola Sadiq, said his experience as a teacher made him to discover that there is a decline in study and reading habit of students.

He further explained that there is a sharp difference between reading culture in the 90’s and what is obtainable now. He noted that there has been a drastic drop in time which students have to study their books and the urge to study, he said, is no longer strong unlike before.

These days, students prefer to spend time on irrelevant things like partying, watching movies, sleeping and watching soccer.

There is no cutting corner about success. If one is going to be successful, he has to work hard for it. Students should know that the primary reason they are in school is to study; every other thing is secondary.

The government and the school management also need to embark on value orientation. They must equip library and provide materials that will help students improve their reading culture. It is not out of place to organise symposium and talk show to encourage students on reading and we should adopt method where students will be encourage to participate in debates, competition and get good reward. This way, they can be encouraged.

An attempt to arrest the decline in reading habit made President Goodluck Jonathan to launch the “Bring Back the Book” campaign in 2011, with the aim to re-awaken students’ spirit and open their eyes on the importance of reading. A reading nation is an informed nation.
- Adaeze, HND II Mass Comm., BIDA POLY
April 16, 2015
‘I will stop reading when I die’

Martha Adegbe has just finished from the Department of English Language of the Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University (IBBU) in Lapai, Niger State, where she was the first woman president. She emerged third and won the Best Speaker Award at an international debate in Accra, Ghana. She tells NANSFIT MUHAMMED (300-Level English Language) what motivates her.

Can you tell us about your academic background?

I attended Saint Peters Primary School in Ajaokuta, Kogi State, from where I proceeded to Oxford Secondary School in Kaduna State. My father has always wanted his children to attend government-owned schools to make us compete with others from similar backgrounds. My dad would say ‘it is the only way you can know the true test of knowledge’. After secondary school, I was admitted into Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University in 2010.

Can you share your experience at the international debate in Ghana?

The event was held in Accra from October 13 to 16. I was reluctant to attend it because I did not prepare for it as the second semester examination that was approaching. But the Head of my department encouraged me to take up the challenge. The theme was: How the war on terrorism in Africa will be won. The topic was captivating and this was the reason why I accepted to attend. The debate was organised by Impact Africa.

December 4, 2014
BSN holds Bible reading

This year’s edition of Marathon Bible Reading by The Bible Society of Nigeria (BSN) takes off today.

Its Deputy Manager, Public Relations, Benjamin Mordi, said the event is scheduled to take place in Lagos from today to Friday, at 50 centres.

He said the unique feature of the event was that it gives the participants the opportunity to read the Bible aloud in their own native languages.

September 1, 2014
What are you reading, please?

Reading maketh a man. Books are the fertilising manure for the inner landscape of humanity. Just as a modern society cannot make much progress without requisite knowledge production, a person who has forsworn reading cannot make much progress in the development of the thinking faculty and the rational facilities that come with this. This is what separates humankind from the lower animals.

Increasingly, this is turning out to be the epoch of “bukuru” people. Our apian and simian cousins are also very smart and sometimes profoundly cunning, but the very idea of signifying monkeys and reading apes is a violent oxymoron. This is the bane of many of those who aspire to lead us in the millennium of increasingly sophisticated knowledge production. The rise of counter-hegemonic knowledge often makes our rulers very ordinary and sometimes downright stupid.

Thanks to the internet revolution, the reading and learning process has undergone some radical and even revolutionary restructuring. Nowadays, you can read whole books and articles on the net. But there is still no substitute for the solid tome in front of you with the raw smell of its powerful currency. There is an orgiastic dimension to the opening of a new book with its hint of conquest and power acquisition. In the copious mating of minds, certain authors and writers become lifelong lovers.

Snooper reads books as if there is no tomorrow, and with a punitive passion. It must be confessed that sometimes, a lot of these books are mnemonically stolen from libraries and bookshops, so to say, by standing for hours and absorbing their essential content. This was a habit acquired from desperate youth which has refused to go away. There used to be a legendary professor of Physics at Ife who was so poor as a youth that he acquired his tertiary degree by going to the library and directly downloading the abstruse and impossible equations into his brains.

Yours sincerely is currently reading two books. Frank Kokori’s memoir on the express orders of Aremo Olusegun Osoba, and a beautiful twin-tome from Chuka Momah, one of Nigeria’s greatest sports writers ever. There will be more on these books in this column. In the last 12 months, Snooper has read the memoir of Justice Somolu, Ambassador Oladapo Fafowora, Smolette Alamu, Chief Akindele and the war memoir of General Alabi-Isama among others.

In Pa Akindele’s memoirs, the most hilarious but chilling moment came when the tempestuous and irascible Brigadier Murtala Mohammed blitzed into his office service pistol blazing. Without any formality, Mohammed warned the old man that he would shoot him anytime he had the temerity to query his memo again. Akindele wondered whether if his military commission had come through, Mohammed would have had the audacity to threaten his superior officer. As head of state, the general later duly apologised to the old man.

Such are the joys of reading. If we are ever to achieve our potential as a country, we must bring back the old Public Library system in its modern incarnation. As usual, the proactive Lagos State government is already taking some steps in this direction.

August 24, 2014
Seshat revived: further thoughts on the state of reading and writing in our country

In the second segment of last week’s essay in this column, I joined my voice to the voices of thousands of those greatly excited by the declaration by UNESCO of Port Harcourt as the Book Week Capital for this year. In a move calculated to indicate how long and deep are the roots of writing on our continent, I pressed a drawing of Seshat, the Egyptian goddess of writing, knowledge and wisdom, into service as a photographic frame for my celebration of the achievement of the Rainbow Book Club and its efforts to revive reading and writing among schoolchildren and our youths. In order to reflect more deeply on the significance of that invocation of the Egyptian goddess of writing in last week’s essay, I wish this week to explore what it means in the contemporary period to go all the way back to ancient Egypt in order to give resonance to my encouragement of the yeoman efforts being made at the present time to revive reading and writing in our country.

I am sure that it could not have escaped many readers that it is because ancient Egyptian civilization was literate, indeed greatly treasured writing, that I invoked the goddess Seshat in last week’s essay. Shamanistic or miracle rainmakers are not found in desert communities and cultures; where rain hardly ever falls, a rainmaker will strive in vain and will starve. Although our continent invented some of the earliest writing systems and their enabling scripts, until the beginnings of the modern age, writing was not widely distributed in the vast majority of the societies and cultures of our continent. That is why gods and goddesses of writing do not exist in cultures in which writing does not exist. To give an apt and epigrammatic illustration of this observation, Orunmila of the Yoruba pantheon is the god of knowledge and wisdom; his divine patronage of culture and the arts does not include writing and writers.

Historically, Egyptian and Ethiopic writing systems were the main cultures of literacy and writing on our continent. Writing systems and scripts like Vai and Nsibidi in our own region of the continent did not develop into full scale and widely distributed regimes of writing and reading with consolidated extensions to processes and institutions for recording and preserving knowledge. In sum then, writing is both very ancient and very new in our continent, depending on which regions and cultures of Africa one is talking about. But this is not the main point that I wish to emphasize in this piece.

The main point that I wish to emphasize and develop into a full discussion in this essay is this: in the modern world, while it helps to have a long and ancient tradition of writing and literacy in one’s culture, it is not, and need not become a permanent cultural disability not to have had an ancient writing and literate tradition in one’s society. The deep historical truth is that once writing is introduced into any society, it becomes a considerably powerful means of recording and transmitting knowledge and experience across time and the generations; and it also becomes a powerful force for progress and the advancement of learning. But we must recognize that writing does not perpetuate itself, does not become a force for progress just by the force of its own intrinsic value. And writing systems change all the time; they are reinvented perpetually and in fact sometimes superseded by other writing systems and thereby go into oblivion. One graphic illustration of this historic reality is the fact that all the writing systems and scripts of ancient Africa have gone into oblivion and all the ideographic scripts like Vai and Nsibidi indigenous to West Africa before the introduction of the currently globally hegemonic Latin script have massively declined in the limited value and currency they once had. To put this observation across in concrete terms, other than cultural pride and the memorializing of past greatness, the Ethiopic scripts of Geez and Amharic confer no special advantages to modern Ethiopia and Eritrea over present-day Ghana and Nigeria. We must celebrate the achievements that produced the ancient writing scripts of Africa, even if they all now belong in the metaphoric museum of history, but what we make of writing and literacy in our age lies completely in our hands. This is why the title of this essay starts with the phrase, “Seshat revived”.

Let me give a concrete illustration of this phrase by alluding to my own experience and the experience of my generation with regard to reading and writing as inestimable vectors of pleasure, learning, enlightenment and progress, personal and collective. Today, the bookshops of the University of Ibadan and the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife, look like ghostly hulks of what they once were when I was an undergraduate at the former and a teacher and researcher at the latter. It used to entail such cultural and emotional anguish for me to visit these bookshops that I have completely stopped entering them. Indeed, the anguish has become so deeply ingrained in relation to the U.I. bookshop that I often quickly walk past it when, over a weekend, I am staying with the Osofisans on the campus of the University.

On a larger scale, with the exception of perhaps only Lagos and Abuja, bookshops in all Nigerian cities are today like gutted, emptied versions of what they once were. When I was reading for my GCE “A” levels, there was no book on my required texts that I couldn’t get in several bookshops in Ibadan. This is apart from books that I regularly bought just for my reading pleasure – the bookshops were well stocked with them. And yet the Nigeria of today, the country of my late adult life is immensely wealthier than the Nigeria of my early life and young adulthood. Bookshops throughout the country should be bursting with a cornucopia of books on all subjects as bookshops tend to be in the nations of the world that truly value writing and reading. But for the herculean efforts of intrepid and dedicated dealers in the book trade like Booksellers of Ibadan and Glendora of Lagos (and others very thinly spread throughout Nigeria whose existence is unknown to me), we would still be going through the book drought that prevailed through much of the late 80s and early to mid-90s.

Let me come to the heart of what I am trying to put across in this essay. The great decline in reading among our children and youths and the equally catastrophic fall in standards of writing in books and newspapers in our country have many causes. But the chief cause is the fact that instead of giving a big boost to reading and writing, our oil wealth bonanza has done the exact opposite: it has fostered a pervasive philistine indifference to the great role that writing – and writing well – plays in all modern societies. In this respect, the very poor state of bookshops all over the country and the mediocre levels of writing that pervade much of what is published in virtually all our newspapers, are both symptoms and causes of the poverty that reigns supreme in our country today.

I do not wish to be misunderstood. It is not writing and reading as such that produced the grim statistic of 7 out of every 10 Nigerians living below the poverty line; it is gargantuan corruption, mismanagement and squandermania on a colossal scale that bear the responsibility for such an abysmal level of widespread poverty in the midst of vast oil wealth. But a decline in the quality of writing such as we are seeing now carries with it a disastrous fall in the quality of the intellectual life of the nation and is thus epiphenomenal to corruption and squandermania as the primary causes of poverty on such a large scale. Moreover, let us keep this in mind: for good or ill, we live now in the highly competitive world of a fully globalized capitalism in which intellectual capital and property occupy a pivotal place in the distribution of wealth and poverty between and within the nations of the planet. If by a revolutionary stroke of good fortune looting, waste and squandermania were to be terminated in our country next month, next year or the year after that, we would still have the task of a complete reform of our educational system, our reading habits and the quality of writing in our country to meet the challenges of 21st century global capitalism. Let me put this in the form of a pointed question: how can we ever become big players in the continental and global economies if our educational systems and the intellectual level indicated in the general quality of writing in our country remain so abysmally low?

I testify that at one time in the not-too distant past in this country reading and writing among the literati, as cultural habits and intellectual attainments, were of world class standard. I testify also that as that national literati expanded in number and demographics, highbrow, mid-brow and lowbrow levels in reading and writing emerged as they have done in nearly all modern societies; but mediocrity did not swamp and overwhelm writing and reading in the country. But now, except in a few locations or oases where reading and writing are still encouraged and nourished, “lowbrow” has completely eaten up both “mid-brow” and “highbrow”.

But all is not lost. Apart from the Rainbow Book Club whose activities I highlighted in last week’s column, I know of several other groups around the country where reading of novels and poetry and lively discussions on the state of writing and reading in the country are held regularly. I know of bookshops that are now relatively well-stocked and publishers that are once again giving superb, professionally competent editing to the books they are now publishing. But these are little streams, they are rivulets where we should have mighty seas of renewal – as we once did in this country. Seshat revived: writing has a long and hallowed history on our continent. But that history amounts to nothing if our present and our posterity are completely under the shadow of the prevailing and dominant philistinism in the intellectual and cultural affairs of Nigeria, the like and the scale of which was once foreign to this country.

Erratum:

In last week’s column, where I should have described the dictionary entry on the Latin phrase in extremis as the epigraph to the essay, I mistakenly called it the epilogue. The error is due to insufficient self-correction after the completion of the essay. This is a risk, a specter that all columnists face: sometimes, you miss obvious errors in your own essay that others would easily spot.

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

April 27, 2014
Provost laments poor reading culture

Tertiary institutions in Nigeria have been urged to create proper library environment that will serve as pathway for e-learning for students to have access to high quality information in a variety of electronic media and information sources.

Delivering a lecture at the annual conference and general meeting of the Committee of College Librarians held at the Adeyemi College of Education in Ondo, Ondo State, Dr. Olarewaju Issa from the Department of Library and Information Science, University of Ilorin, Kwara State, said the change in information resources has also mandated libraries to redesign their information products and services rendered to their user community.

The lecture had the topic: “Nigerian society and academic libraries: Confluence of knowledge”.

April 24, 2014
Reading for stress relief

It is a proven fact that reading can help reduce stress. Many of us take this simple act for granted, because we have so much “required” reading in our daily lives-the newspaper, traffic signs, emails, and bills. But how often do we read for pleasure?

Reading can be a wonderful (and healthy) escape from the stress of everyday life. Simply by opening a book, you allow yourself to be invited into a literary world that distracts you from your daily stressors. Reading can even relax your body by lowering your heart rate and easing the tension in your muscles. A 2009 study at the University of Sussex found that reading can reduce stress by up to 68%. It works better and faster than other relaxation methods, such as listening to music or drinking a hot cup of tea. This is because your mind is invited into a literary world that is free from the stressors that plague your daily life.

Find a book or magazine that piques your interest – a romantic paperback, gardening magazine, or even a cookbook. Set aside 30 minutes to read every day in a quiet place where you won’t be interrupted. Here are some tips to help you get started:

* The book you choose doesn’t have to be on any “best-seller” list. The important thing is that the subject matter has captured your interest and will provide a space for your mind to relax in every day.

January 26, 2014
I relax by reading & watching movies ‘I’m also taking lessons in golf’ -Fashion icon Sighetu

Fashion Icon, Sighetu Edubane Edeku, knew what he wanted from life right from childhood. Though his father, a very successful book merchant, wanted his son to go the university and study medicine or law, the little boy had his eyes fixated on fashion.

To get his father off his back, he would later attend the University of Lagos where he studied Geography and Town Planning. Satisfied that he had done half his father’s wish, Sighetu threw himself into his childhood passion-Fashion.

“Fashion is a very big business all over the world. My mum and a few other members of my family were into it. And when I was in the university, I discovered that I was selling clothes to my colleagues on campus. I would go home to collect stuffs and sell to my colleagues in school. After I left school, it was only natural that I would go into fashion business.

“I almost dropped out of the university. But I knew it would to be unfair to my parents to do that. So I had to honour them and complete the course. After that, I went on to do what I had always wanted to do. But I first had to study at the Institute of Textiles.”

But the young blood in him would not allow him to finish the textile course before starting a fashion business. With the benefit of hindsight, Sighetu, in a deep throaty laughter, said he quit because he was too much in a hurry to make money.

Almost three decades on, Sighetu has, to a large extent, established himself as a name to be reckoned with in the burgeoning fashion business in the country. But he is not done just yet, his dream, he confessed to The Nation, in an exclusive interview, is to ensure that his brand is worn in every home in Nigeria.

“My dream is to have my brand in every home in Nigeria. I know it is possible, and I am working toward it.”

Fascinated by the Italian fashion market success story, Sighetu has vowed to maintain the Nigerian identity in his own brand. To start with, he has remained faithful to the meaning of his name, Sighetu, which, according to him, means ‘pathfinder’ in his native language.

As a pathfinder in the fashion business, Sighetu has ensured that, ‘by choice’, everything about him remains African.

He explains: “I am a Nigerian by deliberate choice. So whatever I do comes from the African perspective. The food I eat, the way I dress and the way I live are all from the African perspective.”

While many may look at fashion from the passion perspective, Sighetu confessed that he views it more from the business angle. And he is not surprised that men are gradually taking over a business that was previously dominated by the female folk.

“Men had always been dominant in whatever business. For instance, many people would believe that chefs are predominantly women. But most chefs in big hotels are men. It is the same in the fashion business. Fashion business is a serious one. And it is no surprise that most serious businesses are dominated by men.”

Sighetu is not unaware of the ‘danger’ of working with female models most times. And like a wise man, he said he has successfully drawn the line between pleasure and business. “It is like an entertainer, you need to draw the line. For me, I know the challenges of working with models, I mean female models. Therefore, I need to put my head down and know where to draw the line.”

Interestingly, the last four years have been particularly traumatic for Sighetu. He lost his wife and business partner two years ago. Prior to that, she was sick for about two years, necessitating that he took a break from fashion for about four years.

When his wife was alive, she formed the backbone of the business, especially those that had to do with the models.

“I worked with my partner, that is my wife. We were always together doing videos and photo shoot. In our kind of business, you must have somebody to help you keep your head. My wife did that for me.”

In a painful tone, Sighetu explained his experience of the past four years; “I lost my wife about two years ago. She was ill for about two years, and I had to leave the business because it was no easy to manage. And I had to take a leave to take care of her. But unfortunately, she passed on and I lost my drive.

“For me, it was a double loss. She was my wife and business partner. In the office, we were always brainstorming. And at home, I could wake her up and discuss any idea. When you lose such a person, it reduces your confidence. And more painful was that she the face of the business. After her death, I didn’t feel like going on with the business anymore.”

For him, making a comeback into a business that gave him fame was as difficult as making a primary school pupil write a university examination. But after several pieces of advice and therapy from family members, friends and experts, he is gradually beginning to find his rhythm once again.

While fashion is taking the front burner in his list of priorities once again, Sighetu has also found a new passion in golf. For him, relaxation has no other meaning than reading a book or watching a movie.

“These days, I relax by reading or watching movies. That is what I understand by relaxation. It is my own way of relaxing”, he said.

But he has also added a new passion to his ‘dictionary’ of relaxation. And today, whenever he is not behind his table, penning down a design, reading a book or watching a favourite movie, Sighetu would be at the prestigious Ikoyi Club, Lagos, where is presently taking vigorous lessons in the artful and elitist game of golf.

May 11, 2013
Reading, QPR relegated from EPL

Reading and Queens Park Rangers have been relegated from the English Premier League after they drew 0-0 on Sunday, Futaa.com reports.

Both teams needed three points from Sunday’s duel to have a realistic hope of overtaking Aston Villa ( 17th on the log), but neither side managed to create many clear-cut chances in a game that featured little creativity or entertainment value.

Reading is making an instant return to the second tier, while QPR is leaving the topflight after two seasons.

Reading’s Hope Akpan, who is eyeing a possible stint in the Green and White jersey of Nigeria, will now be ready for life in the Championships as the club attempts a quick return to the top flight.

April 28, 2013