‘Children Should Be The Target In Reviving Reading Culture’

His exposition and passion is akin to that of missionary. The CEO of Garden City Library and founder of Project Read Advocacy, Comrade Austin Nwaeze is a man whose acquaintance with the world of letters dates back to his earliest school days when he developed an unbridled reading habit that later stock. Ironically, he said during his school days, his greatest challenge was the lack of text books, but he borrowed from his friends and also became a friend of the school library.
Today his interest in reading and knowledge development has developed into an ardent conviction that the panacea for the innumerable vices plaguing our society today lies in a social reform in which the younger generation, particularly children are fully indoctrinated into the culture of reading.
Speaking with Port Harcourt Metro in an interview in Port Harcourt, yesterday, Nwaeze, who has an enormous personal collection of books, said he started a book club in 2004, and devoted his meagre income from his job at Multimesh Communications, to the buying of books on variegated subject matters and compartments of knowledge.
” As a student in my primary and secondary schools, I didn’t have text books to read, but I loved reading so much so I always borrowed books from my friends and I was also a very good friend of the library. This challenge propelled me to develop the passion of acquiring books and the effort grew in leap and bound, my target is to ensure that the reading culture is fully imbibed especially among the children, the children are the only people that have not been contaminated, the absence of an effective reading culture has led to the breeding of half baked and unemployable graduates. ”
Driven by this social impact investment plans, Nwaeze, a Law student at tbe Rivers State University, canvassed for collaboration and partnerships from the government and the private sector.
I floated a mobile scheme in which library services were provided to residents of Port Harcourt and its environs, but there is always a limit to any singular effort and this stalled the project. There is need to revive the scheme through a robust partnership, corporate organisations should make library development integral in the social responsibility policies.”
Nwaeze, who was also a facilitator of the Port Harcourt World Book Capital Project, said the scheme which was prospective of library development and promotion of a virile reading culture in the state failed because of lack of sustainable development plans.

By: Taneh Beemene