The Nigerian Publishers Association has urged the Federal Government to intervene and stop the imposition of exorbitant fees on its members by states’ ministry of education for book reviews.

The NPA President and Chairman in Council, Dr Uchenna Anioke, in a statement on Monday in Ibadan said the exorbitant fees required to be paid was regrettable.

“The association frowns at the exorbitant rates book publishers have to pay before their books can be reviewed for use in schools by all states’ ministry of education,’’ he said.

The association’s president said that some federal government agencies in charge of educational curricula were also complicit in imposing the exorbitant fees.

Anioke, however, appealed to the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu to kindly intervene in the matter and curb the excesses of states’ ministry of education and other federal government education agencies.

“This, undoubtedly, would assist greatly in the provision of good quality and affordable books to the teeming Nigerian students.

“Book review exercise is a means of evaluating and assessing the quality and standard of educational materials to be used by pupils and students of any state devoid of revenue generation.

“It is also aimed at providing our teeming students with up-to-date books.

“However, members of our association had been paying hugely for this exercise in recent years.

“In fact, it is on record that some states’ ministry of education had come out boldly to say that the exercise was one of the ways by which they generated revenue.

“This is sad, considering the huge taxes publishers pay to the government and levies paid in the course of getting books to the end-users,” he said.

Anioke further stated that in the past, publishers paid a lump sum for the exercise which had now graduated to charges per title running to millions of naira per exercise per company in each state of the federation.

He said that in addition to this the publishers donate a large number of books to the education ministries

“Sadly, adding huge review fees to the already precarious publishing business would compound publishers’ problems and affect the prices charged on books.

“This would also affect pupils and students’ accessibility to books and inhibit governments’ educational goals,’’ the NPA president said. (NAN)