A renowned poet, Mr Odia Ofeimun has said schools are at the receiving end of the distress in the book business.that the book world was in a bad stage in Nigeria.Ofeimun added that the distress in the book world was not as a result of the coronavirus pandemic which shut down global activities, but due to high cost of printing materials and unaffordability of books.
“The book world is in a bad stage in Nigeria. It is not only COVID-19 that is holding the book world down, the book world has been very much down before COVID-19. Schools are in trouble generally because this is where the business of bookselling starts. People do not buy books, when I was a student I could afford to buy books even as an indigent student, but these days, books are too expensive.
He added that book stores and especially universities bookshops which always had several books from writers around the world no longer had such again. “I will say one good way to know how book world is fairing is to go round all the book shops in Nigeria. The universities’ bookshops used to be buoyant places to be you can at least see the kind of books that are around in the world. These days, bookshops are no longer buoyant as they use to be. One of the most painful things is that you can no longer find the books of all the authors you hear about in Nigeria when you enter bookstores.