Reading is said to be important because it develops the mind and serves as a means of language acquisition, communication, and of sharing information and ideas.
Thus, teaching young children to read helps them develop their language skills. It also helps them learn to listen, while reading to the unborn child provides auditory stimulation for baby’s growing brain and increases babies’ intelligence.
A study conducted by Kingston University in London, also found that generally, readers are more likely to act in a socially acceptable manner compared to those who prefer watching television.
However, many people, including students, either dislike reading or don’t enjoy reading books. It is against this background that the National Library of Nigeria organizes an annual readership promotion campaign across the country. This year’s event was flagged off by the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, in Abuja.
He said sustainable, life-long reading habit should be developed in children by parents and schools from early child care as well as education of the child through basic and secondary school.
He said: “One of the easy ways to bring up educated children is to teach them to read and to make them understand that reading is very interesting and pleasurable.”
Adamu also said school libraries should be filled with books that are relevant to the socio-economic and political development of the country and that pupils in basic and secondary schools should be made to read “from cover to cover, a good number of such books before graduating from school.”
The minister said this year’s theme, ‘Sustaining Lifelong Reading for Positive Change’ seeks to find ways of sustaining an established reading culture that brings about positive change in Nigeria.
He however said that the advent of the internet has affected the behavior of individuals to reading negatively.
National Librarian, Professor Lenrie Aina, said the campaign was meant to promote reading beyond sheer utilization and examination purposes, to encouraging lifelong reading from the womb to grave as well as encourage parents, especially mothers, to read to their babies in the womb among others.
While noting that Nigerians read below the global average, he said the National Library would encourage children to develop good reading habit and establish reading clubs across the country adding that book gifts would be given to second and third placed schools as well as to expectant mothers to read to their unborn.
Aina said: “Reading to the unborn child provides auditory stimulation for baby’s growing brain and can acclimate children to the sound of their parent’s voice, increase babies’ intelligence and enable the baby to respond positively to the people to whom it listened during development.”
