Dwindling reading culture and the missing collective outrage
The World Culture Score Index has 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), Mahmud Jega, the inimitable Daily Trust columnist, has done an interesting piece about a young boy who opted to hanging himself than reading 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 ignoramuses will rather watch football; movies and chase ladies 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 BelloKano told us in the privacy of his office that he had so far read more than six thousand books and was aiming for ten thousand before he dies, we were astounded. But I was completely shattered when I latter discovered that Muhammad Bello had read more than twenty thousand 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 fervor. They want to be seen as prime movers of change without, ironically, minding what it takes. How can one 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 Honorable 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 disinformed 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 rotelearning, according to the Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, can only oppress rather than liberate the mind. The mind thus cannot be creative, nor critically reason. In a word, our educational system does not help matter 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 5 cent 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 this piece from Gashua, Yobe State