By Harriet Chioma Ogbonna
I grew up with stories. Listening. Reading. Telling them.
My literature teacher had given me a book in secondary school: Sembène Ousmane’s God’s Bits of Wood, as a parting gift. Inside the front page, in blue ink and curvy script, she wrote: “Be a Master of Literature.”
It felt sacred. A canon event.
I went on to do just that. I spent my days reading and trying to revive the love of books in every space I found myself. Our school library was a husk of what it should have been: dusty shelves, outdated textbooks, worn-out encyclopedias. No Toni Morrison. No Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. No Achebe beyond Things Fall Apart. If you wanted to read, you had to make do with what was there or search beyond.
And so, I did what many of us do. I went digital. I hunted down obscure e-books. I read Chimamanda Adichie. Akwaeke Emezi. Elnathan John. Teju Cole. I found them all online, but never in a bookshop. Never in a library.
The question arose: Why was it so difficult to purchase hard copies of my favourite books?
There is a literacy crisis in the Southeast. A quiet one. A dangerous one. One that rarely makes the news but is eroding our cultural foundation.
A painful anecdote about the Igbo man goes thus: “If you want to hide something from an Igbo man, hide it between the pages of a book.”
Where are the Books?
With all the focus on economic development, the education sector is left overlooked.
I once found a battered copy of Ben Okri’s The Famished Road at Kenneth Dike Library, Awka. I was genuinely surprised to have found a copy.
This public library is meant to serve as the head of the Anambra State Library Board. And yet, like many others in the region, it’s underfunded, outdated, and barely operational.
Literary events rarely occur in these spaces. Students use them more for naps or exam-time cramming than for research or inspiration. There are no updated archives. No modern cataloguing systems. No atmosphere of literary discovery.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s recent book Dream Count toured through several international cities. She even attended a book signing at Roving Heights in Lagos, where readers met her in person. It was a lovely event. But as someone from the Southeast, I couldn’t help but ask: What are the chances of Adichie signing her book in any of our cities?
To be clear, it is no fault of hers. It would be difficult for any writer to host an event where there are no decent bookstores. Try asking around for a recent novel by a Nigerian author—Tomi Adeyemi, Pemi Aguda, Wole Talabi—or even Akwaeke Emezi’s recent books. Your best chances are online purchases or pirated PDFs.
Compare this with cities like Lagos or Abuja, where you have Roving Heights, Ouida, Terra Kulture, Glendora, and a whole network of book clubs, festivals, publishers, and platforms. The disparity is painful.
The issue runs deeper. One could argue that book prices are steep because authors prefer to publish in Lagos or Abuja. But that doesn’t mean the Southeast lacks publishing houses. Companies like the Alpha Books situated in Onitsha or the Justice Press are functional and thriving. However, the problem remains that of infrastructure, funding, a patronizing audience, and sustainability.
Writers go where they are read and appreciated. In the Southeast, they are often neither.
While Lagos enjoys a thriving literary ecosystem, the Southeast is becoming a cultural desert. No major publishers. No literary residencies. No indie presses. Writers with Southeastern roots usually publish elsewhere.
And the economic reality is stark. Writers will find it difficult to survive on their work here. Book sales are low. Public events are rare. Literary infrastructure–book fairs, workshops, grants–is practically nonexistent.
An analogy of this is Okada Books. This self-publishing and digital bookstore platform, shut down in 2023 after almost a decade of championing Nigerian writers. Its founder, Okechukwu Ofili, made it possible for writers to distribute their work easily and reach a digital audience. But it has shut down. Since then, a company or platform is yet to take their place.
Piracy also rears its ugly head. Many popular Nigerian books are available in pirated formats such as poorly scanned e-books, photocopied hard copies, and pirated e-copies. This discourages investment in publishing and demoralises authors.
These are the issues.
What becomes of a people when their stories disappear?
When a community loses access to literature, it does not just lose its stories. They start to lose their identity. Their memory, the ability to imagine, to challenge and become so much more.
The death of literacy in the Southeast is not just about books; it is about the erasure of cultural intelligence. The disconnection from the written word. It makes us forget. And forgetting is the beginning of cultural death.
Chinua Achebe captured the truth so beautifully–about the power of stories and our dependence on them to survive:
Only the story…can continue beyond the war and the warrior.
It is the story that outlives the sound of war-drums and the exploits of brave fighters.
It is the story…that saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars
into the spikes of the cactus fence.
The story is our escort; without it, we are blind.
Does the blind man own his escort? No, neither do we the story;
rather it is the story that owns us and directs us.
_Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah (1987)
We risk losing that escort. So, where do we begin?
Yes, there are reading communities. Book clubs—both online and in-person—doing their best to bridge the gap. But are they enough to transform an entire region’s literary destiny?
This is the reality I know. The reality of a literary enthusiast in the Southeast.
We start with infrastructure. Revamp our libraries. Stock them with relevant, contemporary books. Build systems for online borrowing. Turn these spaces into places that invite curiosity, that feel safe, that feel alive.
We advocate. For intellectual property rights. For access. For awareness. We reach back into schools, into communities, into our roots. Our history must be taught. Our minds must be stretched. Otherwise, we risk losing our future entirely.
There is more to be gained from a thriving literary culture than just books. A strong literary ecosystem generates revenue, jobs, and visibility. And yet, so much of that potential remains untapped.
But above all, we must fight for our stories. For our right to read. To learn. To be educated. The Southeast must no longer be a place where literature goes to die.
No more.
I grew up with stories. I refuse to live in a place where we bury them.