Knowledge is power, Bamkole tells pupils
By Clifford Ndujihe
At a time most politicians are plotting moves and counter-moves to acquire power, House of Representatives Speaker, Dimeji Bankole, recently added more loads to his basket of tasks: getting Nigerian children to embrace the reading culture.
The speaker is undertaking the push as part of the national campaign for the revival of reading culture among the youths. President Goodluck Jonathan came to Lagos penultimate week for a similar campaign.
Bankole was a guest of honour at the children segment of the Lagos Book and Art Fair held at the National Theatre, Iganmu, Lagos. He cut short his visit to Ogun State to enable him join hundreds of school children in a reading class, to promote a book culture aimed at improving reading and writing habits in addition to developing the children’s skills.
Dimeji Bankole
To make a good impact, the speaker shunned the high table at the event and elected to sit with the kids, interacted freely with them and read excerpts of a book on the environment. He patiently took the children through the importance of environmental protection in national development.
One thing is to encourage children to read and another is to provide them with quality books.
To affirm his sincerity and commitment to the literary empowerment of the children, Bankole donated books to all the participants.
Interacting with the kids, Bankole said poor reading culture was becoming entrenched in the country. Going down memory lane, he recounted how in the first public secondary school he attended only two of them in the class could read.
Using that as a barometer for the standard of education in the school, he disclosed that his parents quickly withdrew him and transferred him to another school where most of his class mates could read, thus heralding a reading culture which developed him and made him achieve dreams beyond his imagination.
The speaker anchored the book reading campaign on t he fact that a good reading culture among citizens in any nation was vital to unlocking the key to economic prosperity for the country because “knowledge is power.”
“The declining interest in reading exhibited by Nigerian children today had become a cause for concern and a challenge to all serious stakeholders in the future of the country,” he argued.
According to the speaker, his dream is for Nigeria to produce a cadre of highly educated generation of children, who in future would be capable of critically analyzing and understanding critical issues of nation building.
He added that he was committed to the cause because a good reading culture among children was a recipe for social and economic transformation of a country and its citizens.
The poor reading culture prevalent in the country now, he stressed, needed to be reversed as it was inhibiting the country’s economic development.
“There is, therefore, an urgent need to arrest the ugly trend so we will not have a bunch of educated illiterates as children and future leaders. It is important to inculcate a good reading culture in children early in their lives so they grow up with the interest literary value.”
