Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Lantern Books Donates N3m Books to Community

Literamed Publications Nigeria Limited, publishers of Lantern Books, Cowrie Comics and Living scrolls, donated books worth N3million to Ansarudeen Schools in Sagamu

This is a follow up to the Reading is Fun campaign flagged off by the company last year. Having identified that most pupils in Nigeria Schools do not have the needed textbooks, Lantern Books resolved to extend this gesture to some selected schools and orphanages across the country.

It is considered that good books targeted at children give the right foundation for education at all level; Lantern Books, as part of its corporate social responsibility is providing books both for learning and leisure. The donated books would serve as library copies and pupil materials for both the schools and the students.

It is fast becoming a norm that Nigerians do not read and the most effective way of keeping something from a Nigerian is by hiding it in a book. Literamed is poised to address this deficiency in the hope that we all know that the cultivation of the reading culture is the only way we can liberate our people from ignorance.

The chairman of Literamed Publications, Otunba Yinka Lawal-Solarin said, the absence of a developed reading culture in Nigeria is one of the most visible obstacles to our national development. Although we can say that we have passed the stage of the oral traditional culture and have even gone beyond the culture of books to the information age of computers and internet, we must emphasize that the door to the IT age is not the Computer but the book, which leads to accessibility to the computer.

He also advised that it is not enough that books are donated; every school must encourage their pupils to spend at least one hour every week in the library.

Lantern book donation is an on-going exercise to assist schools that have been identified to be in urgent need of books.

Meanwhile, the reading campaign organized by Lantern books and Cowrie comics is still on to sensitize Nigerians on the need to create an effective reading culture in our society.