Africans love to talk. I have heard this sentence half of my educated lifetime. The second is like unto it: you want to hide anything from a black man; put it in a book. Initially these statements enraged me to the point of holy righteousness and i just want to have the head of anyone who said it near me. You know why? I loved to talk. Talking is a business i can do for two lifetimes. However, what made me real angry was i also loved to read. It was/is such a dilemma for me. We had/have a beautiful group of writers, who are not just good but world acclaimed; we also had some of these writers starting movements that helped shape the perception of the world on the people of colour.

Some have said the reading culture of an average Nigerian/African is very below average. So i wonder what we want to revive. Except we have our own j.k Rowling and have someone rewrite “ogboju ode ninu igbo irumole” to include all modern day visual and digital effects, then go on to make millions of naira etc, we might not just have the revival we need.

Hence, this  for you, who like me, love to read and talk, let’s have fun, lets reminiscence, let’s read books that made our childhood beautiful and fun. Remember “alawiye” could laugh all day just replaying the play of words in those powerful books, “obe baba bo, o ba obo oba, a o ba baba be oba, a o ba bee”. Monthly, weekly, we’d take the books that have attempted to give us history on paper, and re read them and we come back here and have fun finding our roots but building on it to the next level.

Two weeks ago, i was at Obafemi Awolowo University, and was having a chat with one of my lecturers, and he amazed me when he said to his students, if they have ever heard of mills and boons; James Hadley Chase; and they were looking at him so blankly, he was speechless for almost 5 mins!!!. Our discourses started because crazy me just bought ten African writers series, from Chinua Achebe to Elechi Amadi; Wole Soyinka to Buchi Emecheta, even got some Pacesetters!!! And was telling him that he was living in the wealth of books only for him to shock me with his announcement.

So i challenge you and even myself to pick up these books re-live old memories and maybe we can pass it on. However if you weren’t exposed to these books, you can buy them and read them.

I cannot round this off without mentioning the emergence of new writers in our writing polity. Probably the most known will be Chimamanda; we also have Peju Alatise, Helon Habila (and a host of others from the cassava republic family).

So do you love to talk, go ahead read a book and talk about it!!!!