Reading Culture Concerns

CONCERNS about the waning interests of Nigerians in reading are not new. They have only increased as more people realise we are breeding an illiterate society where people parade certificates that they cannot read.

People are turning their back on reading globally. The influence of television and the internet is making reading a poor option in most cultures. The situation could get worse.


Nigeria’s case is peculiar. The reading culture disappeared a long while ago. Poor funding of schools and educational facilities created a society without libraries.


In Lagos, for instance, the Central Library, on Broad Street, once a centre for up coming intellectuals, a place for thriving book lending system, and where workers prepared for professional examinations, is dead.


The library only exists in name. About a decade ago, the Lagos Island Local Government Council, as its major contribution to literacy, converted the premises of the library to a car park, and its once serene surroundings to one of the most rambunctious motor parks in Lagos.


Last year ago, the collapsing roof of the headquarters of the National Library in Abuja was shown on national television, a testimonial to the importance of libraries. Other States have not fared better.

The determined neglect of the education system heralded this development. Governments threw education out of their priorities by various measures like paying no attention to the rising costs of books, and the quality of teachers.

As the neglect of education spread, teachers sought prosperity elsewhere. Teaching had never been a profession that made its practitioners rich, but it paid their bills and won them the respect of the larger society that knew teachers were important to all spheres of national life.

Society has shifted attention on education from building the complete individual, who was literate, aspired to write, read, taught others to read and contributed to enterprises that promoted literacy, to education solely for purposes of meeting the demands of the labour market. Education has failed even in this narrow purpose.

Certificates that are meant to confirm the moulding of individuals fit to make society better are ordinary papers with their values compromised by all manners of people who have made academic institutions illiterate.

Years of promoting this system, the consistent flaunting of the unimportance of education and a massively abused system that confers privileges on the unschooled and deny the educated basic rights, have damaged education of which the reading culture is a part. The damage to education is overwhelming. The authorities understate the shame they have visited on a vital sector of national life.


What culture has not died? Which culture has thrived in the past years of unconscionable governments? What books would people read when they are not printed here and imported at great costs? Authors cannot get publishers.

The fading reading culture is a judgement of our claims to value education. There cannot be a reading culture where illiteracy thrives.