The Issue

Over the years, interest in books and literary endeavours have been on a steady decline among Nigerian youth. If our current reading culture index is benchmarked against the age-old sayings on the importance of reading and acquisition of knowledge such as “knowledge is power”, “readers are leaders” and “reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body”, it appears we are on a free fall to the eventual collapse of everything we hold dear as a nation.

This free fall is beyond a mere fear of the future; worse than that, it is the death of a nation and we need to salvage ours NOW! Judging by the quality of our university graduates, high school certificate holders and even children in our elementary schools, we see that in the not too distant future, books will be an anathema to our people and reading a burdening indulgence to even our educated class. In other words, as a nation, we will look at mediocrity and call it excellence.

This is the exact problem that the Literary Renaissance Foundation seeks to remedy.