You notice him not because he is new to the park, even though he is. You don’t notice him because he looks too young to be wearing that wedding band on his left hand. In fact if you really look at the whole image that his person portrays, you would also assume him too young to actually own the Volkswagen car, his bunch of keys says he owns. All you would notice is the book he is holding and your brain would scream unnatural.

As a brain belonging to a Nigerian, it would be natural for your brain to see a male reading a book casually relaxed in a park as not okay. A warm-blooded young Nigerian male, sitting in a park reading. I am sure your brain is already telling you why such an atrocity is being committed; he isn’t employed, or maybe he is a student who is on holiday and his friends aren’t in town for him to visit, or maybe NEPA took the light and he just wants to chill in the park pending when they restore electricity.

You never consider the possibility that he enjoys reading and this is a form of relaxation for him; the same way that you would chill with a bottle of origin round a table with friends. But really why should you consider it when from my research, eight out of ten Nigerian males don’t read leisurely. The only time men read is when they have an academic deadline to meet or when they feel that their attempts at getting rich are misplaced. You might say that you don’t have the time at all to read with work and family and society all wanting your attention, your wallet and most of all your time. But I have a question, will a page a day kill you?

This our reading-fast, is now affecting females and the social media boom is worsening things. We are having more and more ladies with no interest in reading as they don’t have male counterparts to discuss the world they see in their books. It isn’t even attractive to us Nigerian men, to see a reading lady; we consider it not a good selling point. So we are having ladies with ‘pinging’ as hobbies and men who don’t know how to spell the word ‘hobby’ in the first place.

I can list a hundred reasons why you should read but I won’t. I want you to convict yourself. But I will tell you this, reading is a core way to wisdom and no person was worth anything in history without wisdom.

Mind you, I am not exempting ladies from the crime of an unemployed retina, but I feel that if Nigerian men read more, our ladies wouldn’t have a choice than to read themselves. Secondly, to be frank, our ladies read more than we do and that has led to a silent sub-culture of Nigerian men feeling that a good reading habit is feminine. It is not!

You may have seen reasons why you should read, like the way your boss is able to read your next move even before you consider it (it isn’t witchcraft. The guy is smart and has an understanding of human psychology). Even though you want to read, forming a habit in teenage years is difficult, let alone in adulthood. No need to fear. No one said you should start off by reading a book a day but you should start reading no matter how small and then continue. Start with a page a day and read on. Start with a topic or a category that you like. Start with a short article, much like this one and then you can taper upwards. But if you sit there and say that you don’t have the gift of reading then you would be making a mistake. Reading isn’t a spiritual gift from God. It is a mental step stemming from man’s zeal for wisdom. It is a deliberate act and not something spurred on from feeling. No one was born reading, but in the course of their lives, they saw the need to glue their eyes to pages in search of wisdom and entertainment.

So wake up and bring an end to the unemployment status of your retina. Start with a paragraph today and find a person to share the knowledge you have obtained, with. You will be shocked, how much improvement you will bring to your life.

Pick a book and don’t just use it to decorate your shelf.