In all, we cannot do without befitting public libraries in Nigeria, even in this age of a digital public communication culture, because even in the Western hemisphere where the Internet originates from, their public libraries are still up and running. Can we retrace our steps in a reverse to establish how we got here, so we can begin a new process of renaissance?
I am bothered, and thus I bemoan the fact that Abuja – Nigeria’s burgeoning Federal Capital Territory – is painfully bereft of a befitting PUBLIC LIBRARY. I got to this city in 1986, when I accompanied my mom to the new capital city, following the relocation of the then Federal Ministry of Trade – where she was an employee – from Lagos to Abuja.
In 1987, the National Library of Nigeria (NLN) rented an apartment near Area 2 Shopping Centre and commenced operations. I was then so happy and proud of Abuja and my country, considering the centrality of public libraries to the culture of reading and, generally, the people’s heritage. It was a pretty small facility for a public library but it sufficed because Abuja was at that time a small city. Agura Hotel was the only befitting hotel and the notable city centres were: Area 2 Shopping Centre and UTC at Area 10, both in Garki District. Wuse District 1 was not as lively, save for the Central Market, which it hosted and which had moved four times before returning to its present location in Wuse. Off course Wuse II District, which is today a cynosure of activities was bare at that time.
Anyone who wished to hang out would either go to the Area 2 Shopping Centre, UTC at Area 10, Eddie King Burger – also in Area 2 or the ‘Tiv Corner’, equally operating in Area 2 – just a stone throw from the first noticeable Cherubim and Seraphim Church in the FCT. Anyone who desired impeccable grilled peppered chicken would have to go to the Tiv Corner. Otherwise, people go to the hotels (Agura or Nicon Noga Hilton); Sheraton was in incubation and the present Nicon Luxury structure was designated as Hyatt Regency Hotel but it never took off. We also hung out somewhere behind the Area 2 Shopping Centre, where we gathered to play scrabble in turns. There were really no commercial sex workers on the road then, as you would find today – and certainly not an emboldened phenomenon as it is today but a circumstantial epiphenomenon. Those – particularly visitors – who needed to ‘crack’ had to go to Garki village, the only RED LIGHT zone in the city.
When Nicon Noga Hilton Hotel – NNHH – (now Transcorp Hilton) was commissioned in 1987, it became another huge point of activities patronised by many fun-seeking residents and visitors. My Mom used to have a triangular movement schedule: HOME-OFFICE-CHURCH-HOME. But I ‘forced’ her to adjust the schedule for my sake shortly after the Nicon Noga Hilton Hotel became operational, because for two years the hotel ran an hourly daily programme between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m., tagged the HAPPY HOUR, and during which all items are sold at half their prices. So, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays (the days Mom had no church programmes), we would go to NNHH for the HAPPY HOUR.
The hotel’s Swimming Pool area was the best place to get a great ice cream – possible the very best in town – presented with a touch of artistry in the crafted scoops of vanilla, strawberry and chocolate, and sold at the African hut nearby. The Pool – as well as its precincts – was usually 90 per cent populated by the Caucasian folks, especially Germans, most of them working for Julius Berger, the construction giant. I always looked forward very enthusiastically to savour the Nicon Noga Hilton Hotel ice cream. My Mom would sit in the precinct of the Pool as if she was permanently fastened to the chair – reading the Bible and sparingly staring at the crowd – while I enjoyed myself exploring the hotel and whatever I found captivating. Our attendance at HAPPY HOUR ran religiously for those years and whenever I wasn’t in school. It was indeed great fun to be at Nicon Noga Hilton Hotel, especially whenever my siblings came on holidays.
That was basically my personal ethnography prior to full blown scientific, social activism, and the mapping of the urban sociology of the city of Abuja until December 12, 1991, when the military president, Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB), finally relocated to Abuja – a city that experienced power outage for only 30 minutes in five years. The outage took place on September 30, 1991, and announcements were made repeatedly by the defunct National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) for 72 hours prior to the date. There were also apologies and explanations emphasising that the outage was planned to enable power sector workers to undertake maintenance of a section of the city’s electricity installations in preparation for the October 1 Independence anniversary celebration.
Importantly, as IBB moved in from Lagos with huge crowds of public servants – and other galaxies of persons relocated to Abuja with him – Abuja residents began to experience increases in the prices of commodities, especially food items and, of course, a rise in tempo, frequency and sophistication of criminal activities.
To return to the central narrative on public libraries, many of the people I met in Abuja who became my friends, got acquainted with me at the National Library or perhaps lived around Area 2. I remember at a particular time, my friend, Eze Nwachukwu and I would go to the library to read from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and we would only take an hour’s break to snack on something or chat up some girls. Or we would engage Razaq Oladosu Obasola – my brother and comrade who was a staff of the Library – in some discussions, usually on Marxism and Pan-Africanism. It was he (Rasaq) that introduced me to Pan African Youth Congress (PAYCO). Really, everyone who is used to the public library culture would attest to the fact that libraries are a melting pot of cultures and interaction, the same way they are repositories of literary cultures in print, audio and visual genres.
Regrettably, as I write, the library at Area 2 is still there but sadly in the same rented building it got 31 years ago. It is practically a pitiable sight, a substantial reversal of what it was in the 80s and early 90s, but which yet continues as the headquarters of the National Library of Nigeria. The new and befitting National Library of Nigeria head office project, which the Obasanjo Administration started in the year 2000, and located in the Central Business District, remains an uncompleted project. I recently drove by the project site and walked in to an angst. The angst explains precisely why I chose to undertake this narration. The story of the public library culture and particularly the management of National Library of Nigeria is such a shame. It speaks to neglect and the wrong prioritisation of national programmes. This is regrettable because any city or society without a consciously built and sustained public library culture is not only doomed, it deceives itself if it ever lays claim to engineering social development.
Sometimes, when we agonised about the challenge of development in Nigeria, the story of the public library culture reminds me of an anecdotal dictum among the Yorubas – the micro Nigerian culture where I derived my ancestry – with the anecdote stating that when a man with a challenged lower limb carries a load that’s crooked and you remind him of his situation, he would respond that if you had looked below you would have noticed that the crookedness emanated right from the limbs. So, if we reflect deeply at the devastation, reproach and contempt upon our country, we would see where the problems emanated from. There was never a time I visited the United Kingdom without going to a new public library.
Even in South Africa, where I am reasonably travelled, there’s hardly a city or a provincial capital without a befitting public library. I remember when I first visited Soweto in 2008, I found that Mandela’s old home had become a public library. It is so strategically located, very close to the Orlando High School, the academy that came onto the historical map on June 16, 1976 when Hector Pieterson, a schoolboy, was shot by the police during a student protest, sparking a major uprising at Soweto. So, that library serves both the school and the general Sowetan public. Importantly, for Nelson Mandela to convert his personal home to a public library speaks to the significance of public libraries as critical resource centres and underscores the strategic importance of public libraries to civic culture and social development. This is because, indeed, nothing liberates the mind as much as reading does and it has been stated that reading and knowledge have liberated more people in human history than guns.
In all, we cannot do without befitting public libraries in Nigeria, even in this age of a digital public communication culture, because even in the Western hemisphere where the Internet originates from, their public libraries are still up and running. Can we retrace our steps in a reverse to establish how we got here, so we can begin a new process of renaissance? We are too far behind the rest of humanity to treat this matter with levity. May the sleeping giant be awake and never goes into slumber again!
Omoniyi Ibietan is a student at North-West University in South Africa.
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