“Even if you’re on the right track, if you are not moving fast enough… you get hit from behind.’’ -Rick Grandinetti
The relationship between Nigerians and reading culture is nothing to write home about. Nigerians read mostly for either exam or work purposes. Students read only the examinable materials with the intent of sailing through exam, while skilled workers read solely to pass promotional exam. You hardly find a person who reads not for one of the above purposes. If you do, then that must be a rarity!
Reading culture, as Prof. Abdallah Uba Adamu puts it, is “the desire to read any literature being motivated by yearning to learn. Reading because you have to pass examination cannot be properly ‘reading culture’, because often the reading stops after the examination has been completed. For proper reading culture, one needs to constantly engage in literary materials in any form, driving pleasure from such activity.”
Well, what one should read as regards reading culture, is actually limitless. Read the holy scriptures, text books, novels, plays, poetries, biographies, memoirs, newspapers, magazines, journals, dictionaries, sign boards, bill boards, inscriptions on cartons, packages, tins, bottles, tubes, sachets, walls or bridges. Read not only English and other foreign languages materials, but read also those in your native language! Read widely in both hard and soft copy materials. Read regardless of the subject matter. Read anything you can lay your hands on. “You can read not only in the library, but also in your room, in the toilet, or in the kitchen or wherever you happen to be” -Prof. Ibrahim Bello Kano (IBK).
Knowledge doubles from time to time depending on its kind. The implication is that, the facts known prior to the doubling will be invalid and replaced by new findings. Some universities in the US offer degrees of limited validity of say, five years, just like a driver’s license. You have to go back after the prescribed years to renew the degree. Until 1900, knowledge doubles approximately every century. By the end of World War II, it doubles every 25 years. Around 2001, knowledge doubles every 18 months. In 2007, knowledge doubles every 3-6 months. In the same year, it was predicted that in 2010, the doubling will be every 34 days. According to IBM, the build out of the “internet of things” will lead to the doubling of knowledge every 12 hours! This requires one to read every day to catch up with the explosion in the quantum of knowledge.
Like I said earlier, in most cases, only students facing exam at school or workers facing promotional exam read. “There is a very very serious problem. Ah! We don’t read, except for the purposes of work or examinations. And this goes even as high up as among the university lecturers. Once they have gotten their PhD and compiled their lecture notes, they don’t do anymore reading. They don’t buy new books. They don’t read any new article that appear. They are just satisfied with the state of knowledge as it was whenever it was that they qualified”- Prof. Munzali Jibril.
In 2012 after the release of Chinua Achebe’divisive memoir, “There Was A Country”, the Nigerian security banned its circulation upon sensing the evil message the book could send which is capable of triggering a fresh civil war in the peaceful country, as the book has every open tendency of provoking the most tolerable Muslim northerner and any non-Igbo Nigerian. But all of a sudden and to our dselight, the ban was lifted. The lift surely must be linked to the realisation by the security agencies that Nigerians, especially the targeted northerners, don’t read. So, the feared danger would not be inplace at all, and so it be!
Our deplorable reading culture is rooted in our cultural tradition, climate and time unconsciousness. In Nigeria or even in Africa as a whole, since time immemorial, we are traditionally inclined to anything oral at the detriment of the written ones. That’s why we are unfriendly to books and all other written materials which make them look bizarre to us. Unlike in Europe, in Nigeria, we have a kind weather that promotes our stay outdoors. In Europe, half of the year is spent in autumn and winter. In this period, a person there must keep himself busy struggling to survive the difficult cold weather, and therefore remains indoors. This encourages them to read religiously at home and even think for innovations and inventions. Little wonder they are where they are today, leaving us lagging behind! Moreover, while a person in Nigeria is reading, he is often interrupted by unscheduled visits by relatives and friends. To turn down such visits is a taboo, therefore for the fsssear of being called names, one succumbs at the expense of one’s reading.
To be broadminded, cosmopolitan, nice, pleasant and tolerant of other people, one needs to have a culture of reading. It enables one to know about oneself and about others. Reading enables one to know how to say “come” and answer the “come” of other human beings. Reading makes one to know what one can do for oneself and for other people. Reading is a desert guide. It is an oasis or voyage that takes one to a lifetime experience. Those who read widely never become the devil’s workshop resulting to drug addiction, kidnapping, armed robbery etc. Reading enlarges the mind. It is an eye opening for entrepreneurial opportunities where a reader learns how to turn his passion into money making venture. Those who read enrich their minds about their history and the history of others. Reading makes one to refine and build his spiritual self, because in Islam and in other Abrahamic religions, reading is what is first recommended for a believer before anything else, and reading/knowledge is encouraged in Islam to be pursued even if it will take one to faraway China.
In conclusion, the importance of reading culture cannot be overemphasized. Lack of reading culture breeds ignorance of oneself and one’s religion which leads to terrorism and all forms of crime.Those who lack reading culture are very likely to be easy prey for being divided on ethnic, sectional, political and religious lines. Hence, one of the solutions to Nigeria’s problems today is the adoption of reading culture among the citizens right at early age. This can be realized by making literature a compulsory subject in all primary and secondary schools. The subject must also be handled by competent teachers, because nothing easily entices one to reading culture like being groomed in literature. Equipping our libraries with more conventional and digital reading materials as well as building new ones will help a lot in solving the problem. There should be at least three or four well-functioning libraries in every local government in the country. Students’ associations like Gwagwarwa Students’ Association (GWASA), my host, in all our wards should consider it as a priority to establish mobile and stationary libraries each in their areas of jurisdiction. This will go a long way in exposing our societies to books, thereby ridding it of all forms of thuggery (dabanci), drug addiction (shaye-shaye) and all sort of crimes. It will make our societies civilized and egalitarian. Despite being far away from the centers of the production of knowledge i.e Europe and Asia, we are still lucky to be in a fortunate digital age. Aside chatting and downloading movies, we can use our smart phones for reading reliable newspapers, downloading e-books, PDFs and educative audios.
A paper presented at a reading campaign lecture organized by Gwagwarwa Students’Association (GWASA), on 22nd October, 2017 at Nassarawa Local Government Local Education Authority (L.E.A), Kano State.
Bello Sagir
Vice President, Northwest
National Association of Linguistics and Languages Students (NALLSnig.)
belsagim@gmail.com/www.bellosagir.blogspot.com/08132518714
REFERENCE
Jibril, M. (2007). Reading Culture in Our Society: It’s Impact on Educational Development. Unpublished Public Lecture Delivered at Aminu Kano College of Islamic and Legal Studies (AKCILS)
Kano, I. B. (2008). “Why We Should Read and Keep On Reading?”. Unpublished Public Lecture Presented At Gateway International School.
Adamu, A. U. (2017). “People Who Do Not Read Tend to be Ignorant of Everything.” Retrieved On 22nd October, 2017 from Learning Never Ends on www.bellosa gir.blogspot.com
