Seye Joseph
According to 2015 report of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Institute for Statistics the global literacy rate for all between the age of 15 and above is 86.3% with males and female having 90.0% and 82.7% respectively.
Over the past decades, global literacy rates have significantly increased where countries like Andorra, Finland, Luxemburg, and Greenland continue to dominate the pace.
The main reasons for all these countries to dominate the pace can be deduced from the evolution of the educational system of many developing countries, and an increased acknowledgement of the importance of education to these societies in their respective stages.
With these countries scaling high in education, many countries in developing nations of the world are still rocking at the bottom of the table where illiteracy rate is still a major challenge to their education.
In another infographic released by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 52% of the 774 million illiterate people who are 15 years and older are based in West and South Asia. As of 2015, these regions have 70.2% literacy rates, while sub-Saharan Africa has 64%. South Sudan ranks lowest of them all, with a literacy rate of just 27%, followed by Afghanistan at 28.1%, Burkina Faso at 28.7%, Niger at 28.7%, Mali at 33.4%, Chad at 35.4%, Somalia at 37.8%, Ethiopia at 39%, Guinea at 41% and Benin at 42.4%.
Most of these nations are still struggling with the provision of educational resources to better their populaces, building the necessary infrastructure required and ensuring regular enrollment of students within their schools.
In Nigeria, in-spite of all the government interventions and expenditure in education to address rising illiteracy level and increase reading culture among young people, there has not been a progressive increase in the literary level, especially among the adults.
The National Bureau of Statistics recently said that adult illiteracy rate in Nigeria stands at 56.9% which means that about 70% of Nigerians are illiterates. Considering the fact that globally the illiteracy rate is approximately 20%, Nigeria situation continue to raise alarm for total overhaul in the educational sector.
At an occasion to sensitize Nigerians on the importance of reading in the society, Ignite Africa – an organisation that is committed to raise vanguard of visionary young leaders that will have deep hunger and thirst for knowledge; love for self, the continent, her people and the fear of God organised a walk that was tagged “2016 Ignite Africa Readers Leaders Destiny Walk.
The annual walk focuses on creating awareness about the importance and positive attributes of a healthy reading culture among youths in Nigeria.
Kolawole Oyeyemi, Founder, Ignite Africa Leadership Foundation and Convener of the Destiny Walk, said “We must all come together to create awareness for the Nigerian youths to cultivate the habit of reading.
According to Oyeyemi, “our graduates were being poached by the super powers because we had the knowledge, understanding and wisdom in our respective fields. Today, we are no longer good enough in our own country.”
He said that jobs which Nigerians should ordinarily undertake are now being given to expatriates and if we continue like this what kind of future is in store for our youth and our nation?
In a nostalgic feeling into the past said that a lot of us grew up reading to be successful; the bookstores were there, our school libraries were filled with relevant books, the publishing firms existed. The result was a crop of highly cerebral leaders in all fields. Today, these are fast becoming history; the reading culture is dead, and the end result is evident in the failure rate recorded in national examinations at over 80%.
To address these challenges, he said that Ignite Africa has developed the most aggressive and innovative reading intervention program which fosters a love of reading in young people, and effectively works to sharpen their comprehension ability.
With what he said, “We understand it is one thing to read, and it is a whole different ball game to comprehend what you read. We employ a research-based program model that gets results, as the ability to read and comprehend is core to student success beyond the classroom.”
organised by Ignite Africa Leadership Foundation
He also said that Ignite Africa has impacted hundreds of school children across the country, establishing over 50 book clubs and Book-To-Child connection groups across eight schools in Lagos State, and six schools located in four remote villages in the Onelga region of Rivers State.
Also giving support to what Ignite Africa is doing, the Chairman of Brilla Group commended the organizers for a doing great job and threw a challenge to parents to do more in deepening the reading culture among their children.
“This exercise by Ignite Africa is a noble one that should be appreciated by parents. Parents can start by reading to their children on a daily basis and as the children grow older, they also pick the habit of reading and even pass it on to the next generation and before we know it, it would become a national culture for Nigerians to read,” Izamoje urged.
Ignite Africa Leadership Foundation and its partners invest significant resources into reviving reading culture in Nigeria after witnessing the negative trend of the high failure rate recorded in senior secondary certificates examination in recent years.
At this year’s walk which was 6.4km had Nneka and Moses of Goge Africa, Seyi Law, actors, young leaders in different profession and many in attendance.
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