READING CULTURE

By; AJAGBE Blessing Oyinkansola



Reading and Nigerian youths find it difficult to coexist. They are opposites and they don’t attract. Reading and Nigerian youths are unusual collocates. The population of Nigerian youths that read to the population that don’t is like trying to measure the height of Kevin heart and Dwayne Johnson, Kevin heart being the population that reads and Dwayne Johnson representing the population that don’t read. Yes, there is that much difference. It’s that bad because my mum thinks I’m still the only Nigerian youth that loves reading. The question is; what happened to our reading culture? Where did it run off too? Or rather, why are youths running away from it? The only answer that I’m able to come up with right now is the almighty SOCIAL MEDIA.

This almighty SOCIAL MEDIA has snatched reading from our youths. Youths now prefer spending hours on their phones probably doing nothing in particular than taking a book and reading. The thing is, technology has made things easy for us. We don’t even have to go to physical bookstores to get books anymore. We now have online bookstores like the famous Okadabooks or even Rovingheights, still Nigerian youths are lazy in when it comes to reading. (Thatlagosgirl) on her Insta story, post, Nigerian youths are even lazy to read captions, captions that won’t take up to five minutes of our time. No wonder there is a popular saying, 'if you want to hide something from an African, put it in a book'.

I’m always so happy and ecstatic when I see people who are so passionate about books and reading. You would see the reward in the way they talk and interact with people. Majority of  Nigerian youths can’t even construct one good sentence and you wonder why they find it difficult to do that. The answer is simple, they don’t read. Nigerian Youths don’t like to involve themselves in public speaking. Why? It’s because they don’t read.  Alot of youths say how many books did Dangote read yet he is successful. Or, how many books did Wizkid read yet he is a success. People who say this say so out of ignorance because that is the best explanation I can give. When you read, you do it for the betterment of yourself. When I say read, I’m not talking about school books. Reading is far more than school books. The interesting thing is that, there are books on different topics all you have to do is find your area of interest and read.

I feel pain when people say reading is boring. Reading shouldn’t be boring. Start with reading the kind of books which will interest you. Like I said, there are books on various topic find the ones which interest you and at least start from there. If you don’t want to end up wasting money on a particular book, read reviews about such book before you purchase it. Trust me, reading is a beautiful thing. It expands your horizon. You become a better person when you read, that’s how powerful reading is.  Some people say they don’t have time to read but they can spend an hour plus on their phones. All you need to do is adjust your focus. Start by reading for thirty minutes every day and see how it goes.

Dear Nigerian youths please let us revive back our reading culture. If indeed we want to be the leaders tomorrow, we have to bring back our reading culture, as medicine heals the body, reading heals the mind.