{"id":39135,"date":"2025-08-01T10:30:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T10:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/39135\/"},"modified":"2025-08-01T10:30:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T10:30:12","slug":"a-university-bookshop-in-ibadan-tells-the-story-of-nigerias-rich-publishing-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/39135\/","title":{"rendered":"A university bookshop in Ibadan tells the story of Nigeria\u2019s rich publishing culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Driven by a desire to explore Nigeria\u2019s literary and cultural history beyond the metropolis of Lagos, I took a road trip to Ibadan, once the most important university town in the country. Ibadan, in Oyo State, was the first city<\/a> in Nigeria to have a university set up in 1948.<\/p>\n

Ibadan is where the Mbari Club<\/a> once gathered, an experimental space where Nigerian writers, artists and thinkers \u2013 among them Chinua Achebe<\/a>, Wole Soyinka<\/a>, JP Clark<\/a>, Christopher Okigbo<\/a>, Uche Okeke<\/a>, Bruce Onobrakpeya<\/a>, Mabel Segun<\/a> and South Africa\u2019s Es’kia Mphahlele<\/a> \u2013 met, debated and dreamed in the 1960s and 70s.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the city where celebrated Nigerian artist and architect Demas Nwoko<\/a> imagined and built his utopias<\/a>. Where the Oxford University Press and Heinemann Educational Books established their west African headquarters.<\/p>\n

Read more:
\n Chimamanda’s Lagos homecoming wasn’t just a book launch, it was a cultural moment<\/a><\/p>\n

Books have always been a form of cultural currency in Ibadan. The presence of major publishers meant that bookshops were not just retail outlets, but intellectual salons, sites of encounter and exchange.<\/p>\n

So while in Ibadan I visited cultural spaces and independent bookshops but it was the charms of the University campus that mostly captured my imagination. And my favourite place was the University of Ibadan Bookshop<\/a>. At this campus bookshop I lingered the most, in awe and wonder. Its eclectic range of books, journals, public lecture pamphlets, novels, poetry collections and monographs excited me. <\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Books are cultural currency in Ibadan.
\n Tinashe Mushakavanhu<\/p>\n

Today, when the global publishing economy has increasingly digitised and centralised, the bookshop feels almost radical just by existing. It\u2019s a reminder that intellectual life in Africa is not peripheral or derived from the west. It is present, prolific and profoundly local. To walk through the shelves of this bookshop was to encounter a history of African thought written and produced on its own terms.<\/p>\n

As a scholar<\/a> of African literature and archives, my research traces<\/a> the hidden lives of spaces that have shaped publishing and archives. University bookshops have been overlooked but are essential nodes in the continent\u2019s intellectual history.<\/p>\n

A snapshot of Nigeria<\/p>\n

This campus bookshop gives a snapshot of Nigeria as a print country. Here we witness the nation through its printed matter. A nation of prolific publishing. I found the literary output in the Ibadan campus bookshop not only vast but exuberant and unrelenting. It reflects the texture of the Nigerian personality: loud, boisterous, layered and insistent. Stacks upon stacks of books. <\/p>\n

In these stacks, it dawned on me that beneath the surface lies a vibrant, ongoing literary discourse that is unmistakably Nigerian, and sadly not resonant far beyond its borders. These are books you don\u2019t see on reference lists of \u201cpopular\u201d and \u201cinfluential\u201d scholarship that privileges work produced and imported to Africa from the Euro-American academy.<\/p>\n

\"Piles<\/a><\/p>\n

Stacks upon stacks of books greet one.
\n Tinashe Mushakavanhu<\/p>\n

I was especially intrigued with how the Nigerian academic and writer does not tire in producing academic and cultural journals. There are journals for every subject under the sun. <\/p>\n

While the critical framework of African literature is too often shaped by the global north (see critiques by Ato Quayson<\/a>, Biodun Jeyifo<\/a>, Simon Gikandi<\/a> and Grace Musila<\/a>) in Ibadan, I saw a distinctly local and deeply African critical discourse rooted in place, language and lived experience. To walk into the University of Ibadan Bookshop is to step into legacy. Its shelves bear the weight of decades of African thought, theory and storytelling.<\/p>\n

Despite being housed in an ageing building, it has stayed defiant. Even though floods<\/a> destroyed books and computers worth a small fortune in 2019, the bookshop is still standing proudly. And there was pride too among the staff who were eager to help or answer any questions about the books.<\/p>\n

More than bookshops<\/p>\n

The University of Ibadan bookshop reminded me of the bookshop from my undergraduate days in Zimbabwe. Even though our campus bookshop was much smaller, I used to find pleasure going there in between lectures. It often felt like walking into a vault of African knowledge and memory. <\/p>\n

Our bookshop at Midlands State University<\/a> stocked old, canonical books alongside current literature. On occasion, rare, out-of-print secondhand books would appear on the shelves. The bargain sales also meant I spent most of my money there.<\/p>\n

\"Many<\/a><\/p>\n

A distinctly Nigerian book conversation.
\n Tinashe Mushakavanhu<\/p>\n

But to call these spaces on African university campuses \u201cbookshops\u201d hardly does them justice. They are hybrid cultural ecosystems that function as part bookshop, part print shop, stationer, library and sometimes even archive. They have long served as vital nodes in the circulation of African knowledge and thought. <\/p>\n

Yet this ecosystem is rapidly eroding, undermined by the rise of internet culture, artificial intelligence, piracy and harsh economic conditions. The result is a slow but devastating disappearance of African intellectual memory. As scholars remind<\/a> us, digital platforms are not neutral. They are structured by algorithms that often marginalise black and African knowledge. So, the loss of these analogue spaces is more than nostalgic, it is epistemic erasure.<\/p>\n

In this digital age, there is something vital about the physical presence of bookshops on African campuses. Thanks to them, as a student, for me literature was the serendipity of discovery, the tactile feel of books, the beautiful persistence of a local knowledge system that was relatable and produced by people like me.<\/p>\n

Read more:
\n Nigerian architect Demas Nwoko on his award-winning work: ‘Whatever you build, it should suit your culture’<\/a><\/p>\n

On the way out of the city, we stopped at Bower\u2019s Tower<\/a>. From there you can see Ibadan\u2019s sprawling layout, the ancient hills from which the settlement was built, and its red roofs. <\/p>\n

The view reflected the complexity and density of ideas the city has nurtured. And despite shifts<\/a> in Nigeria\u2019s publishing geography from here to Lagos and Abuja, Ibadan still matters. It\u2019s a city that remembers, that archives, that holds on to knowledge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Driven by a desire to explore Nigeria\u2019s literary and cultural history beyond the metropolis of Lagos, I took…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39136,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[353,49,48,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-39135","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}