June 17, 2016
The Secondary Education Management
Board, (SEMB) Aba, has said that the board would give over 400 books to
students who participated in the Enyimba Reading Festival to encourage reading.
Dr Eugene Nwoha, the Director of
Schools, SEMB, disclosed this in Aba on Friday at the Enyimba Reading Festival
during an interview with the newsmen in Aba.
“We are thinking of establishing
both the conventional and the mobile library in Aba so that the students will
have access to a library. I have written a proposal to the government on this
and they are considering it.
“Right now, we are donating books to
all the students who came to this reading festival to show that we mean
business. We are doing this so that when they go home and show their parents,
their parents will encourage them the more to read.
“The Education board is doing that.
The students here are about 400. And we have enough books to go round.
“I have asked them to submit the
names of the schools that are here so that if they have a school library, then
we will give more books to the library”, he said.
Nwoha said called on the government
to help encourage reading habits in people through the mounting of literacy
campaigns and enlightenment programmes in the state.
He said that reading was important
to the mental development of human beings and fundamental to a better society
hence the need to encourage youths to cultivate the habit of reading.
Mr Odinaka Ohaekwusi, the National
Vice-President, Booksellers Association of Nigeria (BAN) blamed parents for the
carelessness of their children and wards towards reading.
“As we are going to schools to
promote reading, I discovered that reading among students is something that is
on the decline.
“So there is the need for
government, parents and heads of professional bodies and organizations to
ensure that reading is promoted among Nigerians especially youths”, he said.
Ohaekwusi therefore urged parents to
buy books for their children and wards and to programme them to read adding
that the reward of reading will make them and their children glad at last.
Mr Obioma Okezie, Director, Rural
Readers Club, organizers of the festival, said that they organized the
programme to revive reading culture in Aba and to improve the city’s status in
people’s eyes.
He said that the club targets young
people to encourage them to read because what someone learnt at a tender age
will be hard to forget in adulthood.
Okezie said that the club hoped to
improve the festival and its reading project until Aba is placed on the world’s
map of readers like Port Harcourt.
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