Joop Berkhout, a naturalized Nigerian (initially Dutch), who handed away in Ibadan not too long ago at age 94, was clearly a doyen of publishing, having served because the founding Managing Director of Evans Brothers from 1967 and eleven years later based Spectrum Books the place he retired as Chairman in 2008. Even in retirement, Chief Berkhout continued what he knew the best way to do greatest by establishing Safari Books, the place he served as Chairman and CEO till he took his final breath.
Born in Holland, The Netherlands, on thirty first of March 1930, Berkhout’s surname, like some Nigerians’, particularly from the Northern area, is the title of a village in The Netherlands which got here into reckoning in 1312, however not like our Nigerian people, he was not from Berkhout. However, that’s an attention-grabbing coincidence.
Honoured at Ile-Ife with the chieftaincy title of Okun-Borode, Berkhout arrived in Nigeria within the Nineteen Sixties, having left his dwelling nation like many younger, enterprising individuals who wanted to outlive post-war Europe. A lot of them got here to Africa, and others went to Australia and a few to different international locations. His first port of name was Tanzania. From Tanzania, he went to Zambia, after which lastly, he settled in Nigeria, a rustic he would later undertake as his. He additionally labored in Malawi and Kenya. It’s a testomony to Africa’s distinctive receptiveness and love for humanity that the continent, lengthy earlier than it grew to become a political bloc and thereafter, stays a terrific abode to these fleeing crises, persecution and in quest of new lease. Even Jesus Christ needed to be in Africa momentarily to outlive Herod.
I didn’t have the chance to satisfy Chief Berkhout in particular person, however I do know and will relate together with his being and all he stood for as an outstanding persona who considerably enriched our civilisation.
As an alternative of following in his father’s sneakers to be a hotelier, he selected and targeted on ebook publishing, thereby elevating the banner of information manufacturing and merchandising of literature. Participating in ebook publishing wherever on the earth is a superb enterprise that contributes to financial development and in Nigeria specifically.
As Lai Oso (2000) perceptively reasoned, ebook publishing enhances literacy, bolsters financial development, and quickly advances our nation’s improvement by nudging the diffusion of cultural values. You solely must recall the feats of Herbert Macaulay, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Abubakar Imam, Amos Tutuola, Flora Nwapa, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Zainab Alkali (the primary feminine novelist from Northern Nigeria), and all their contemporaries and people who got here after them to know what publishing has performed to the diffusion of tradition and resistance to colonialism.
By my reckoning, ebook publishing opens a floodgate of actions and generates employment within the worth chain to accommodate designers, binders, proofreaders, editors, entrepreneurs, and sellers. All these worth adders have continued to flourish regardless of the risk posed by the emergent info and communication applied sciences, a two-edged sword that equally opens alternatives that improve smarter ebook publishing practices.
It’s a incontrovertible fact that about 180 years in the past, the Reverend Hope Waddell of the Presbyterian Church originating from Scotland, opened the primary publishing home in Calabar to supply useful tracts for Bible teachings and a few texts for didactics in arithmetic.
Eight years after Wadell’s pioneering work, the Reverend Henry Townsend of the Church Missionary Society opened a press at Abeokuta principally for a similar cause as Wadell however 5 years after in 1859, Townsend grew to become the torchbearer of a extra seminal uptake as his press birthed print journalism in Nigeria with the publication of ‘Iwe Irohin’. Herbert Macaulay adopted this development when he established the primary indigenous newspaper in Nigeria ninety-nine years in the past.
Certainly, we had the Oxford College Press, which began with a gross sales store in Nigeria in 1949 earlier than full-scale publishing in 1963. We equally have Macmillan, Longman, Bookcraft, Fourth Dimension, Delta Publications, and others. Nonetheless, Berkhout was a number one gentle of the group that opened up the democratization of information manufacturing through ebook publishing for academic, particular and normal functions starting together with his outing within the ebook publishing area in 1967 on the Evans Brothers. Those that studied in Nigeria would agree that from Evans Brothers to Spectrum to Safari, what Chief Berkhout did was reveal the upper utilitarian worth of Johann Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press 5 centuries earlier.
A Google Books research reported that between 1440, when Gutenberg invented the printing press, and 2023, 129,864,880 books have been printed. Berkhout coordinated a few of these from his small nook in Nigeria as he led three successive ebook publishing corporations. Evans Brothers Nigeria Publishers, as an illustration, by way of its chains – starting from nursery, main, junior secondary, senior secondary, fiction, normal publishing and different literatures – supplies alternatives for therefore many Nigerians to precise their intellection, creativity, aptitude and creativeness in books which were printed and marketed efficiently regardless of the complexities of latest publishing tradition.
Even in the course of the downturn in ebook publishing, which set in many years in the past, Berkhout remained in Nigeria. He didn’t abandon our beloved nation or his enterprise throughout our darkish moments of the devastating civil struggle, resistance to the annulment of June 12, 1993 election or in the course of the militarized years of weird cankerworms Chief Berkhout made Nigeria his dwelling in fact and certainly and expressed his ecumenical spirit throughout cultures. He didn’t simply take a customary title on the coronary heart of Yorubaland, he grew to become the pro-chancellor of Michael and Cecilia Ibru College within the coronary heart of Niger Delta and equally obtained a nationwide award as an Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON).
He believed in and invested within the sustenance of group areas by way of his affiliation and networking with individuals to advertise the worth of social electrical energy, cohesion, and unity of all people. I feel those that will respect Berkhout extra, particularly his love for humanity, might be those that are in a position to discern the implications of the lies being instructed by those that are bent on dividing us by way of exploitation of the voids in constitutionalism, democracy and continued to weaponize demagoguery and techno-industrial complicated. The Dutch-turned-Nigerian was an enormous tower of human energy, prospects, trade, and love. He might be missed by all those that respect inventive creations, data, and humanism.
Since Berkhout neither believed in heaven nor hell, we thank him for his humanity, for his inspiration, for religion in Nigeria, and for enriching our civilisation.
Dr. Ibietan, Secretary Normal, African Public Relations Affiliation, lives in Abuja.
