Are Readers No Longer Leaders?

Why have Nigerians become lazy or reluctant to read these days? Are books no longer good sources of information? Does it take much effort to read, especially in a language that one understands?  Why Are Our People Too Reading-Rusty?

Do you know why I am asking all these questions? I’ll tell you!

While I was introducing Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad to a friend of mine, a few weeks ago, I told him the story of the book; from A to Z, in about ten minutes.

After listening to my brief story of the book, he became interested in it and pleaded with me to allow him go home with my copy of the book, so that he could read it for himself, which I obliged him.

He called me two days later and said he wanted to discuss something about the book with me.

“What is it about the book that you would like to discuss with me?” I asked.

As I was waiting for his response, he asked: “Mr. Victor, I’m yet to see those interesting stories you told me about the book. Was it not in this book that you saw all those sweet stories you told me a few days ago?”

My answer to his questions was: “All the things I told you about the book were a distillation of all that I read from the book. Put in another way, what I shared with you that day was a summary of the entire book. You can’t find all of them just on one page.”

At the end of that discussion, I began to wonder and to ask myself certain questions, including, “Were we not taught ‘Summary’ as a subject in English language at school?”

How on earth did the guy expect to find the summary of a book on one page of the book?

What really went wrong? Where did we get it wrong? How did laziness to read start in Nigeria? Why are our people too reading-rusty nowadays?

Was this why somebody said: “The best way to hide an information from a Nigerian is to write it in a book?  Too bad!

Please, let us form or bring back our good habit of reading. Let us not limit reading to only for examination purposes.
Let us make reading a habit, whether we have examinations or not. Reading, generally, is good for both our health and for all-round development.

Above all, READERS ARE LEADERS.