In 2024, shortly after The Mind of a Hero came out, I was looking for ways to create some buzz and make some noise about my book, so my team and I went to the streets and made a short documentary-style video, where we go around asking strangers this same question: if Nigerians read or not. You can watch the video here. As you would already know, at the end of the day, there is no one straight forward answer to this question. Most people held the belief that Nigerians read, while others dismissed the question negatively maintaining that Nigerians barely read.
Double Edged Answers
Whether Nigerians read or not largely depends on your immediate environment. If you were born and raised by a farmer father who doesn’t read, where all you do is farm, you could easily say that Nigerians do not read, because nobody reads around you. However, it could also be an entire different answer if you were born and raised by a professor father, where you spend most of your time reading in the family library. However, it largely depends on your personal reality and up bring.
Not All Readings Make You a Reader
This is to say, not all readers are true readers. Now think about this, there are so many institutions and parastatals in Nigeria, including schools, and in each of these institutions, almost everyone somehow does the act of reading. There are businesses in Nigeria and they all operate because transactions were read, receipts were written, contracts were read and understood. There are religious houses in Nigeria, where the Holy Bible and Holy Quran were also read. Now majority of Nigerians make use of social media, they write posts and read posts every day. They send text messages, and every single conversation that happens online engages people to write and read.
With these realities explained above, it could be quite unfair and shallow to say that Nigerians do not read, judging literally. And you could easily agree with me that it looks like Nigerians truly read.
But let’s dig a little deeper on the other side. To truly understand whether Nigerians read or not, it could not be really determined by all of the peripherals mentioned above: reading social media posts and text messages, reading receipts and business contracts etc, it has to come from something way deeper than reading your chats. Those things don’t determine if someone is a reader or not.
Personally, reading social media posts don’t make you a reader. On a macro level, what shows that a country is a reading country could be determined by things like the number of functioning libraries they have (book accessibility) and high consistent book sales that occur in that region.
Individually, in Nigeria, not many people could afford to spend money on books, and the affordability here doesn’t imply having or not having money, but they simply just do not prioritize buying books. In Nigeria, a lady could effortlessly purchase a foreign wig of 500k, but would still find it extremely difficult to spend 2k on a book. Seven out of ten people in Nigeria have never spent their own money on books in the last one year. But Nigerians would prefer to stack books on the shelves rather than reading them, while most who might manage to buy the books may end up not reading them.
What it Actually Means to be a Reader
The act and art of being a reader
Since everyone reads something every day and yet, it’s never still enough to make them real readers, what then does it really mean to be truly a reader? And what can you do to become one? Reading is an art and also an act. Reading is an act, because it takes skills. It’s also an art because it requires discipline and active engagement.
Most Nigerians read only their academic books. They solely read because they are in school and therefore boxed themselves within the limited course of their studies, but immediately they leave school their reading life dies. Those people read only to pass exams and get ahead in their academic ladder, not to get ahead in life. That is why most people leave school five years ago or more and had never read a single book outside their discipline. Reading your academic books is great, at least, we all started from there, but it doesn’t necessarily make you a reader. However, cultivating the impeccable habit of reading, with or without exams and schools is truly what makes you a reader. Beyond being an art or act, reading is a lifestyle. Apart from expanding your horizons, it makes you versatile, and before you know it, you have become a voracious reader; and the result, that is vastly bountiful.
Do Nigerians read or not? What are your thoughts? Do you think that Nigerians truly read?
