The story of Joop Berkhout, the Dutchman who lived in Nigeria for 60 years
When Joop Berkhout arrived in Nigeria in 1966, he never anticipated his stay would be for the long haul.
What was intended to be a two-year work agreement between Berkhout and the United Kingdom-based Evans Brothers Publishers to establish an arm of the publishing giant in Africa’s most populous country turned into a lifetime contract with Nigeria. Berkhout not only settled in the country permanently, living in Ibadan with his wife and children; the Dutchman went on to acquire Nigerian citizenship, bagged a chieftaincy title in Ile-Ife, Osun State, and earned the national honour of the Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON) due to his outstanding contributions to knowledge and intellectual development.
Born in Amsterdam on March 31, 1930, Berkhout was initially a bookseller in Tanzania, from where Oxford University Press invited him to go to Zambia, where he worked for two years. Thereafter, he was to be transferred to Europe. But according to him, he didn’t ‘fancy the idea’ as he found Africa ‘very exciting with more opportunities than anywhere else in the world.’
Thus, when Evans Brothers approached him with a job offer to go to Nigeria for two years, he latched onto it, arriving in 1966, and becoming the founding Managing Director of the company in 1967. But after spending 10 years with Evans Brothers, Berkhout was transferred to the United Kingdom. He didn’t like that. So, after three months, he left the UK and returned to Nigeria to establish his own company, Spectrum Books Ltd., in 1978 and retired as Chairman in September 2008 after selling off the company. He later started Safari Books Limited in 1991.
Dubbed the doyen of book publishing in Nigeria, Berkhout, along with others pioneered and shaped Nigeria’s book industry, operating from the then capital of the Western Region, Ibadan City.
Speaking on the choice of Ibadan as his base, he noted that in the 60s, Ibadan was the centre of publishing. “The first university in Nigeria is the University of Ibadan. All the British publishers originally settled in Ibadan. There was a centre of publishing: Oxford University, Longman, Heineman, and Macmillan; they were all based in Ibadan,” he said during an interview.
However, Chief Joop Berkhout, as he’s fondly called, not only impacted the Southwest book trade; his influence also extended to the North and Southeast Nigeria. It was during one of his trips to the Southeast that he met ex-Biafran warlord, Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, through renowned novelist and short story writer Cyprian Ekwensi, who introduced the Dutchman to Ojukwu. Both men would later become best friends.
Berkhout also met Ojukwu’s friend, the writer Fredrick Forsyth, who handed Berkhout the manuscript of Ojukwu’s biography, titled ‘Emeka,’ written by Forsyth and later published by Spectrum Books after an advance royalty payment of 24,000 pounds to Forsyth, who wanted to present the cheque to Ojukwu as a gift upon his return from exile in Ivory Coast, where he had fled, following the defeat of Biafra in the civil war. Late first Nigerian President Nnamdi Azikiwe, who was mentioned in the book, later sued Spectrum Books for a whopping N2 million at the time over a certain claim made in the book, a claim whose proof had been lost by Ojukwu. The company was forced to destroy nearly 200,000 copies of the book and republish another 250,000 copies after the initial claims were removed.
Chief Berkhout contributed immensely to Nigeria’s golden era of literature from the 60s onwards, creating jobs and livelihoods for many of the notable Nigerian literary greats, including Cyprian Ekwensi, Chinua Achebe, and many others.
But sadly, nearly 60 years after setting foot on Nigerian soil, news broke on Monday, 10 February, 2025, that Chief Joop Berkhout’s sojourn in Nigeria ended. He didn’t return to Amsterdam. The Dutchman-turned-Nigerian passed away in his adopted city of Ibadan in Oyo State at age 94.
