Will NPA’s 60th anniversary lend the body a moment of introspection, so they reflect on the harm their business model has wreaked on the Nigerian society with a view to retracing their steps and redressing it? It’s only by retracing their missteps can they hope to regain the moral ground they long lost in pursuit of a profit-only business model that left generations of young Nigerians in a quandary…
By Anote Ajeluorou
WOULD Nigeria produce the likes of Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, JP Clark, Christopher Okigbo, Amos Tutuola, Cyprian Ekwensi, DO Fagunwa, Mabel Segun, and Chimamanda Adichie today if legacy publishers of their era undertook only textbook publishing? This is a million naira poser Nigerian Publishers Association (NPA) would do well to address as the body marks 60 years in what the theme for the celebration touts as ‘Publishing in Nigeria: 60 Years of Impact, Innovation and Inclusion’. Impact, yes, perhaps because they print books for the school system and so continue to impact the educational sector. Innovation, yes, perhaps also because they somehow make good bank balances in spite of the country’s crunchy economic situation, with the devaluation of the naira.
However, NPA’s claim in offering an ‘inclusive’ publishing would seem like a mockery of what publishing should be. This is perhaps where the poser strongly indicts what NPA claims to be doing in its celebratory theme. A publishing model that excludes literary publishing cannot be said to have any ‘inclusive’ element in it. Which throws up the question at the beginning: Would Nigeria produce the likes of Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, JP Clark, Christopher Okigbo, Cyprian Ekwensi, Amos Tutuola, DO Fagunwa, Mabel Segun, Chimamanda Adichie if legacy publishers of that era indulged only in textbook publishing as is the case today?
Who are the new literary stars these legacy publishers have throw up in the last 20 years? Who are the novelists, playwrights, poets and children’s writers these legacy publishers deployed their platforms to publish and promote in recent years? Who is that Nigerian author who has benefited from their big financial base in 20 years that textbook publishing has consistently swelled their bank balances? University Press Plc, for instance, is a publicly quoted company. Which writer of note has UPP thrown up lately? Even the textbooks they now specialise in, how well have their authors fared amidst the boom these legacy publishing houses enjoy with government’s massive patronage?
From Macmillan Publishers Nigeria Ltd, University Press Plc, Nelson Books Ltd, Spectrum Books Ltd, CSS Bookshop Plc, Heinemann Educational Books Nigeria Ltd, Learn Africa Plc to Cambridge Nigeria Publishers Ltd, the story is the same. Zero literary or trade publishing. Where it exists at all, it’s so marginal, so insignificant to the point of being negligible or as tokenism. A test of the absence can be found in how no writer published by these legacy publishers, which some cynics prefer to call ‘printers’, has been longlisted in the premier literary prize in the country, The Nigeria Prize for Literature since inception in 2004. Rather, it’s the small, independent firms and self-published writers that offer books every year to be adjudicated in the prestigious prize worth USD$100,000.
Local writers in their numbers have won the prize, including those of Association of Nigerian Authors and Pan-African Writers Prize in different categories without the input of legacy publishers. The duo of Gabriel Okara and Ezenwa Ohaeto won the prize for poetry in 2005 (with The Dreamer, His Vision and Chants of a Minstrel respectively), Ahmed Yerima won in 2006 with Hard Ground (drama); the duo of Mabel Segun and Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo won for children’s literature in 2007 with The Readers’ Theatre and My Cousin Sammy respectively, while Kaine Agary won in 2008 with Yellow Yellow (prose). In 2011, Adeleke Adeyemi won with The Missing Clock (children’s), Tade Ipadeola with The Sahara Testament (poetry) in 2013 and in 2014 Sam Ukala won with Iredi War (drama). Abubakar Adam Ibrahim won in 2016 with Season of Crimson Blossoms (prose), Oke Ikeogu in 2016 with The Heresaid (poetry), Soji Cole in 2018 with Embers (drama) and Jude Idada in 2019 with Boom Boom (children’s). For prose in 2021, Cheluchi Onyemukwe-Onuobia won with The Son of the House, in 2023, Obari Gomba won with Grit and in 2024 it was Olubunmi Familoni with The Road Does not End. Those are writers based in Nigeria at the time of publishing their winning works. Yet the legacy publishers listed above are either not aware such a prize exists or do not care what these writers are doing.
Apart from these writers, many Nigerian writers have won both the Caine and Commonwealth prizes, exciting writers who have gone on to be famous globally for their literary craft, yet Nigeria’s legacy publishers have merely snored on, indifferent to such literary exceptionality by Nigerians. None has ever been excited enough to take on such writers under their wings and publish them, just as these writers get snatched up by western publishers.
Since the focus of legacy publishers is solely on textbook publishing, this is hardly a surprising outcome. Of course, their complaint has always been that there are no readers for fiction, so publishing fiction is a waste of resources and that do not bring returns. They argue that textbooks go straight to the classrooms in their millions across the country every year and guarantees them instant sales unlike literary publishing. Both Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) and its counterparts in the states also publish textbooks with the legacy publishers for a ready market in the school system. Where then is the touted ‘inclusiveness’, as the theme for the association’s 60th anniversary celebration suggests?
Again, the questions remains: Would Nigeria have produced the likes of Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, JP Clark, Christopher Okigbo, Cyprian Ekwensi, Amos Tutuola, DO Fagunwa, Mabel Segun, Chimamanda Adichie if legacy publishers of that era had stuck to publishing only textbooks? Indeed, legacy publishers have consistently shunned trade publishing and therefore wounded the educational system with this singular decision more than what the economy did to most Nigerians. Their recourse to be profit-minded only has come at great cost to Nigeria’s reading culture habit. Their action has hindered rather than enhance it. This is where credit must be given to small, independent publishers who are the true believers and heroes of Nigeria’s fiction with their trade publishing option. The pioneers in this effort of keeping Nigeria fiction alive and ensuring Nigerians read beyond textbooks include Cassava Republic Press, Farafina Books, BookCraft Africa, Malthouse Press and Craft Books Ltd. Although the latter serves more as a ‘paid printer’ than a publisher, it has served and sustained the self-publishing market for fiction from the 1990s and beyond. Noirledge Publishing also toes this line of publishing, but has done well as two of its books – Boom Boom and The Road Does not End – have won The Nigeria Prize for Literature in about six years.
However, in recent years KraftBooks’ influence has since waned with more adventurous independent publishers like Quramo Publishers, Parresia Publishers, Narrative Landscape Press, Masobe Books, Paperworth Books, Purple Shelves Publishers coming to town. These small presses have now taken up the roles of proper publishing that legacy publishers performed in their early years (1940s – 1980s) before their Nigerian managers came in to destroy their ‘legacy’ status for textbooks publishing. However, these small presses do not give advance payment to writers. These new entrants accept manuscripts, edit, design, print and market them without the authors putting in a dime except their job of submitting manuscripts. Some indies like Narrative Landscape Press and Masobe Books have submission windows when authors can submit their works to be reviewed for possible publication. Quramo Publishers has a prize model where raw manuscripts are sent in by young writers for adjudicated and the winning manuscript is awarded N1,000,000 and a publishing contract.
Incidentally, a medical doctor, writer and literature administrator, Dr. Wale Okediran, will deliver the keynote address on Thursday, December 4, 2025 at Kakanfo Inn, Ibadan when members of NPA gather to celebrate 60 years of publishing in Nigeria. Already, writers have sent him a memo: he must not fail to remind the legacy publishers that they have hurt the Nigerian society more by shirking their social responsibility of publishing to equip and enrich the minds of Nigeria’s young ones. Trade publishing was the soul of legacy publishers when they arrived as expatriate firms in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, and by the 1970s and 1980s when indigenous managers and publishers began to replace expatriate publishers. In those days, trade publishing was very much a part and parcel of the publishing ecosystem. For these inheritors of wholeome publishing to now abandon what they met is a disservice to the Nigerian society they pretend to be serving.
As Secretary General of Pan-African Writers Association (PAWA), Dr. Okediran must remind these legacy publishers that reading only textbooks DOES NOT A GOOD STUDENT MAKE! Indeed, the mass failures that examinations bodies like WAEC, NECO and JAMB record each year is a direct result of legacy publishers’ fault, as they focus only on textbook publishing and starve students of other reading materials. Nobody begrudges them of making the most of their business, but when business lacks ethics, as legacy publishers have done in the last 40 years or more, something is bound to give. And if they cannot connect the link between their textbook printing business and the mass failures Nigerian children record every year, then there’s a big problem.
Nobody needs to tell these legacy publishers that Nigerian students do not have access to quality literary or fiction books that stimulate their minds to explore the world within and without. The original legacy publishers they succeeded devoted part of their profits to publishing literary texts. All the top level managers and owners of legacy publishers today benefited immensely from access to cheap literary fiction in their days as students. They read novels in the African Writers Series by Heinemann, Drumbeat Series by Longman, Pacesetters Series by Macmillan Publishers and novels by defunct publishers like Fontana, Delta Books Ltd, Ethiop Publishing, etc. They read James Hardly Chase, Ladybird Series and many more. How these same managers of legacy publishers starving today’s students they feed with only textbooks without the complimentary benefits of fiction now expect these students to pass exams in flying colours is a wonder. If they have not done so, they need to commission a body of experts to explore the nexus between a broad-based reading habit beyond textbooks and performing well in examinations.
As a widely travelled literary administrator who has seen how things work elsewhere, Dr. Okediran must take the message of neglect and harm legacy publishers have continued to wreak in the same students that enrich their businesses with governments’ generous patronage. Curiously, at NPA’s celebration gathering, not a single independent publisher will attend. Where then is ‘inclusiveness’ in publishing? Why? Because NPA has become an exclusive club that no outsider can access, especially in their dealings with governments’ agencies that award them publishing contracts. Most independent publishers spoken to express frustration at the manner NPA is being run as an ‘exclusive’ club for the big boys. They pay dues but to what purpose? Building ultra modern secretariat seems more important than fashioning out a proper distribution channel that takes books round the country effortlessly and cheaply or pressuring government to revive the abandoned paper mills to reduce the cost of books and make them affordable or fight the scourge of piracy in the book ecosystem. These do not interest legacy publishers; they do not want to rock the boat they’re sailing on – government’s patronage of the textbooks they print!
As for UBEC and the federal ministry of education, there’s need to re-evaluate the book policy. UBEC needs to stop aiding legacy publishers in marginalising Nigerian writers and destroying students’ ability to access quality literary texts to read and broaden their horizon. As one critic said, on the surface UBEC’s gift of books to students seems a benevolent thing, deep down it’s a big disservice to Nigeria’s education and the students more than can be quantified. Who are the actual authors that write these books UBEC pays for? Or are they fictitious writers conjured from thin air just to give a semblance of local author patronage? Books UBEC contracts legacy publishers to print in billions of naira enter the school system but Nigerian writers do not feel this yearly windfall except legacy publishers and their UBEC patrons and contractors, a system Mr. Wike Nyesom allegedly put in place as a former junior minister of education.
Again, would Nigeria have produced the likes of Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, JP Clark, Christopher Okigbo, Amos Tutuola, Cyprian Ekwensi, DO Fagunwa, Mabel Segun, Chimamanda Adichie if legacy publishers of that era had stuck to publishing only ttextbooksnew l iterary stars such as Adichie, Obari Gomba, Chika Unigwe, Chigozie Obioma, Tade Ipadeola, Helon Habila, Toni Kan, Molara Wood, Ndidi Chiazor-Enenmor, Jumoke Verissimo, Abubakar Sidi, Richard Ali, Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, and many more would have languished in relative obscurity if only legacy publishers were in operation. In fact, Nigeria’s publishing scene would have been poorer for it had indie presses not sprung up to stand in the yawning gap legacy publishers abandoned for profits in textbooks printing. Clearly, their model has failed the Nigerian society in its crucial moment of a magnitude book famine that they helped exacerbate with their sole focus on textbook publishing.
Will NPA’s 60th anniversary lend the body a moment of introspection, so they reflect on the harm their business model has wreaked on the Nigerian society with a view to retracing their steps and redressing it? It’s only by retracing their missteps can they hope to regain the moral ground they long lost in pursuit of a profit-only business model that left generations of young Nigerians in a quandary. And it needs reiterating that the book famine plaguing Nigeria that has stunted extensive reading and access to fiction books is a direct result of the ill-advised textbooks publishing model legacy publishers adopted.