I am sure you've heard the saying of a particular ‘wise man’ who said, “If you want to hide anything from a black man, put it inside a book”. Well, I can tell you right now that it wasn't a wise man that said it, but a white a man.
I think it's a grave misconception to say that we Africans don't read. If that was the case, why do we keep graduating with first-class each time we go abroad for study? Why is that the best graduating students in most of their top colleges are Africans?
Personally, I have read 14 books already this year! And I've consistently read more than 50 books each year for the past six years. Some of you have met me in person — I'm as black as they come.
However, we seem to have one literary deficiency, and that is we don't write enough or we don't write as much as we read. And this is not a matter of finance, because we have had billionaires in this country who died without writing one book! Besides, publishing a book today isn't really that expensive at all. One can easily get published on Amazon Kindle at almost no cost.
As a result of our failure to write, the white man have continued to document our history, and when you leave someone else to tell your own story, there's bound to be prejudice and falsehood. But our failure to write is not due to a lack of ability or interest, but rather due to lack of discipline. It takes a lot of self-discipline to complete a mammoth task as writing a book.
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