Their bright school uniforms shone brightly in the mid day sun. The uniforms which come in different colours like green, blue, yellow, cream form a good blend as each of the student was bent one book or another. One could tell from the way they were engrossed in the literatures laid out before them that they were fascinated either by the images on the books’ cover or by the creativity of the written words on the pages.
This scenario opened this year’s edition of the famous Lagos Book and Art Festival (LABAF) 2014. Every year the event seeks for way to creatively engage, students, teachers, authors, publishers and lovers of book through different workshops, seminars, music, dance, drama amongst other activities.
This year’s edition was not different in terms of the scope and they way it creatively engaged the younger generation. This 16th edition was dedicated to Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka at 80. Themed ‘Freedom and The Word, the festival organisers said was inspired by the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, 20th Anniversary of the South African Democracy and 15th anniversary of Nigeria’s 4th Republic.
On the day the festival opened, there was an evening of poetry, music, book reading and more at the British Council, Ikoyi, Lagos. In attendance were young readers and book lovers who excerpts from different books and also discussed intensely what they think of the authors’ style and plot.
Jahman Anikulapo, programme chair, LABAF, said the Book Trek is a series of literary event put together to usher participants into the main activities of the yearly festival. He observed that it is common for Nigerians to read motivational books but not non-fictional books.
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Readers must learn to engage with the content of these books,” he observed. “Authors and writers are very important, but we insist that all these books are being published and are not even on our streets. We are not seeing them; not reading them, and we are not engaging them. So all of these lies will go on, and we will pass away and our children will read and believe these lies, and the lies will become part of our history because some of us who were alive when these books were published failed to engage them.”
At the reading, famous Nollywood actress, Joke Silver read from Wole Soyinka’s novel, ‘Ake’ while Aduke Gomez read from “Rise and Fall of Apartheid’ by David Welsh. Olu Okunkoye read from ‘Tour of Duty’. Some other guests also read from other festival books like ‘Methods of Social Investigation’ by Peter H. Mann, ‘Lagos: A Cultural History’ by Kaye Whiteman, and ‘Ake’ and ‘The Lion and the Jewel’ by Wole Soyinka.
In addition, one of session tagged ‘Key to the Knowledge Economy’ was sponsored by the Committee for Relevant Art, CORA in partnership with BusinessDay Newspapers. In doing justice to this conversation, two books were reviewed by a panel. The books were: ‘Capital in the Twenty-First century’ by Thomas Piketty and ‘Winner Takes All- China’s Race for Resources and What it Means to Us’, by Dambisa Moyo
Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Piketty arguably the world’s leading expert on income and wealth, does more than document the growing concentration of income in the hands of the small economical elite.
He also made a powerful case that we are on the way back to Patrimonial capitalism in which the commanding heights of economy are dominated not just by wealth, but also by inherited wealth, in which birth matters more than efforts and talents.
He detailed the names of wealth and income inequality throughout the last two centuries and offers a somewhat grim picture of the future of economic equality.
Along the way, he also offers his theory of the cause of exploding executive pay and how we can successfully combat this destructive trend.
The reviewer, Oris Aigbokhaevbolo said Piketty talks about inequality and how it has risen to the present level it is now, which is quite high and to do this, he gets data for about 20 countries, which he uses to interpret the situation of inequality over this period of time and he arrives at a curve, which is a U curve.
The reviewer noted that this means sometimes during the both world war, we saw a decline of inequality and afterwards, there was a stabilisation which was caused by politics that the west adopted.
He further explained that in the US, taxation of about 80percent was adopted, which caused the rich people to reduce adding that Piketty says just after the war, they are at a very high state of inequality and he proffered solutions of how this can be countered and the basic way is partition on income and capital.
“You cannot argue with data but in pessimism, you can argue with Piketty. The main theme is inequality. The book was initially written in French. The writer also discusses novels and films too in the book, which one may find interesting,” he disclosed.
On the other hand, in ‘Winner Takes All’ the author Dambisa Moyo tries to chronicle struggle for resources among countries. All the commodities are traded on global exchange around the world.
The book lays down all the data needed and how China scrambles for these resources, which is affecting everyone. The reviewer, Dipo Ogunbiyi said the author tries to paint a picture of a world where the resources are very limited and countries fight each other to get access to the resources such as water to crude oil.
Ogunbiyi noted that China is important here because of the population, adding that majority of China’s population are poor and trying to migrate them from being poor to middle class people is going to draw huge amount of resources and if this happens, the world will be affected and countries will be in conflict just over resources.
“The language was very soft and the book is easy to read. Someone who is new to commodities can pick up the book and understand it. He takes a number of chapters building up the background and explaining things,” he said.
He advised that the book is a must read for everyone, particularly people in business and people that are concerned about where the world is going, as the book makes one aware of the commodities to trade in certain countries.
IFEOMA OKEKE
