By Henry Akubuiro
Among others, the 20th edition of the Nigeria International Book Fair, which ended on Thursday, July 29 at the Harbour Point Event Centre, Victoria Island, Lagos, will be remembered for placing women on the front burner of discourse, a departure from previous book fairs held by NBFT.
Setting the tone for the book fair was the Chairman of Nigeria Book Fair Trust, Gbadega Adedapo, who, at the opening ceremony, on Tuesday, July 30, restated the theme of this year’s book fair “Awakening the Giant in Women for the Growth of the Book Ecosystem”.
He affirmed that Women “are builders, and any industry that fails to actualise the potentials of women would be far from swift advancement. Women involvement is very critical and germane to our mandate to promote and improve the reading culture among Nigerians and Africans in the book industry.
He declared, “This year, we are poised to celebrate women within the book ecosystem in Nigeria and drive their active participation for exponential growth of the book industry.”
In her goodwill message, the First Lady of Lagos State, Dr. Ibijoke Sanwo-Olu, represented by Mrs Edith Egube, the wife of the Commissioner for Economic Planning and Budget, remarked that the book fair initiative was “a worthy cause aimed at promoting and improving the reading culture among Nigerians and Africans as a whole.”
The wife of the state governor said it had been establish that reading “greatly helps to enhance mental health by imbuing readers with emotional intelligence to handle both difficult situations and issues generally with the needed calmness and wisdom, among other benefits including self-worth, self-consciousness, responsiveness, and fundamental skills to relate with people and situations.”
“It is in recognition of the immense advantages in reading that I would like to commend the brains behind this unique Book Fair which has continued to serve as a strong forum to improve our indices as far as reading culture is concerned through various activities, including workshops, seminars, stakeholders’ forum, trainings, children’s programme, book launch, reading, award and cultural activities.”
She called on women to intensify efforts to scale up reading culture among the younger generation in order to build an army of highly literate citizens. Besides,” the call became imperative, “because a society with a high number of literate citizens will experience development and exponential transformation.”
Her counterpart, the wife of Ekiti State Governor, Erelu Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi, recalled she was proud to be part of a generation that was raised to see books as an integral part of learning and character building, beyond whatever was required for study as classroom texts.”
She was delighted with the theme of this year’s book fair, considering the myriad of problems faced by the womenfolk.
To waken the giant in women in the book ecosystem, she suggested encouraging girls to read as much as they can, right from an early age, and not just self-empowerment books or romantic novels, as well as organising Book-Reading Competitions online or offline to encourage the culture of reading we are all keen to bring back.
She also recommended that books should be made as accessible as possible to young girls and women. She encouraged parents and guardians to offer their girls books as gifts instead of earrings.”
She would like to see more online book clubs for young women as a way of exploring issues of concern. What’s more, women and girls should be encouraged to write more.
She said among others, “The President of IPA (International Publishers Association), Sheikha Bodour Al-Qasimi, in her virtual address, said women leaders in the industry, similar to other minorities, were now the X- Factor of the publishing world and “bringing more women into decision-making, means that discourse at the highest level is going to change. It means that new perspectives will be heard, and it also means that a fresh new publishing world will see the light of day. That is what we call resilience.
“More than ever, the publishing industry is realising the pivotal role women play in ensuring its resilience and long-term sustainability. Despite monumental challenges due to the pandemic, women have been instrumental in supporting the homeschooling of millions of children, making sure engaging content reached global readers during lockdown and quarantine, and providing free access to research in order to fast-track the healthcare response to Covid. It is perhaps fitting that the International Publishers Association (IPA) welcomed its first all-female leadership team to guide its post-Covid resilience and sustainability efforts.”
To unleash the full potential of women in publishing or otherwise, she said we must address the root causes such as book accessibility and the broader issue of keeping girls in education, adding, “We must also support the upskilling of educational publishers so that they can digitally transform their businesses and adapt to remote learning. This is true to Africa, as it is true for many regions in the world.”
Affirming the support of IPA, she announced the body was currently working on forming the IPA Academy, the publishing industry’s first global online academy for workforce skills development.
“We also want to contribute to solving the challenges of diversity and inclusion at a global level through the International Sustainable Publishing and Industry Resilience (InSPIRe) Charter, which among many other subjects, addresses the empowerment of underrepresented voices in the publishing industry. So, there is movement. There is action, and mostly importantly, we can definitely say that a change in mindset is taking shape clearly.”
She commended Gbadega Adedapo and his team for choosing “Awakening the Giant in Women for the Growth of the Book Ecosystem” as a theme for this iteration of the Nigeria International Book Fair.
She added, “Supporting this shift towards more gender balance is not unusual in African culture. In fact, several African and South-East Asian cultures share some form of the proverb, ‘When sleeping women wake, mountains move’.” The book fair witnessed a good turnout from bibliophiles and participants from across the world, who were delighted to be physically present in Nigeria, unlike last year.