The library without readers

Monday, a normal, humdrum, working day and I was driving from my home in Wuse 2, Abuja, to Gudu District to deliver my car to a mechanic who usually handles its agerelated ailments. Traffic was heavy that Monday afternoon on Ahmadu Bello Way, but it moved and I covered the whole stretch shortly till I reached the Gudu T junction. I swung left into the dense, short, traffic snarl on the double carriageway leading to Gudu spare parts shopping area, and was fortunately out quickly.

After a short run on the road, I turned right into an alleyway with a peculiar vehicle height restriction barrier, which led to the open area that is dotted with clusters of mechanics. It was then I noticed the resplendent, well-fenced building with the loud inscription: Gudu District Library. It was a pleasant surprise seeing such a glamorous building housing a library in these surroundings and I stopped to look it up. The degree of my surprise sharply heightened when I got through the gate to find that even the grounds surrounding the library have been beautifully landscaped with the current rave of interlocking bricks.

The first sign of disappointment I got, however, was when I entered the foyer of the main library. I found a few workers milling around aimlessly. When I approached the reception desk the person I found there was blissfully having a nap on the couch. I guessed, probably, the Ramadan fast was taking its toll, even though it was still early noon. I turned to someone to ask where to locate the books and newspapers. The person pointed up and I hopped to the first floor. Up the stairs I found the library hall stacked with rows of books. There were also tables and chairs, well interspaced for the convenience of readers. The place was quiet, absolutely still because there was nobody there.

I stood there transfixed wondering why there were no readers. There were books and magazines on the shelves, tables and chairs in place and the room was wellventilated, yet there were no readers. Even the die-hard readers one usually found in libraries, who always had one examination or the other to read for, were absent. I was perplexed. It was surreal, Kafkaesque – for those that had the benefit of acquaintance with that gloomy German novelist, Franz Kafka (1883-1924) who could easily have conjured up this kind of bizarre situation of a library without readers.

I went downstairs, wanting to find answers to some of these nagging queries. There were a few people out in the grounds of the library and one was eager to help answer my questions. He told me a pathetic story of unbelievable wastage of public funds. The two buildings were put up and furnished about seven years ago. The FCT Minister at the time, Adamu Aliero, was fond of the project and was always dropping in to see the progress of work. The building was completed and commissioned. However getting electricity connected to the building became a major challenge and has remained so till today. There is no doubt that lack of electricity was the primary reason why readers abandoned the library.

The fellow took me round the buildings to see for myself other facilities that are just wasting away. He took me to the computer room where over ten computers complete with their factory made desks were idling. Apparently due to lack of electricity they have never been utilised since they were installed years ago and now must be grossly outdated. He took me out to the adjacent building that is even posher than the one that housed the library. The building is still looking new after all these years, the afternoon sun streaming in and making reflections on the gleaming floor tiles. This posh building has now been handed over to a caterer to be used temporarily as a restaurant since it cannot be utilized as part of the library.

I left the place with a tormented mind. I kept on muttering to myself: it is incredible, it is incredible. I hope there must be some answers somewhere for setting up a wellfurnished building with public funds and allowing it to lay fallow for all these years due to the fact that someone forgot to connect electricity to it. It is a stupendous waste.

Most people look at a library as only a part of the assemblage that made up the school system. It is more than that. It is a community centre that could be made to serve multiple purposes to the community. I witnessed this when I was a kid growing up in Maiduguri in the 1960s. The Maiduguri Library and Reading Room, then run by the Borno Native Authority, was one of the premier buildings in the community. I got acquainted with it in 1964 when I was in Primary 5 and made constant good use of it till I left for secondary school. The library’s importance was underscored by its closeness to the Shehu’s palace. It was immediately adjacent to the Shehu’s palace and faced the central mosque directly.

It was built and adorned with burnt red bricks that were the height of fashion in Maiduguri in the first half of the last century. Only the Shehu’s palace, important government buildings and a few very rich individual‘s residences were exclusively built with red bricks. The library was well-stocked with the latest books and magazines universally available. The library building complex itself, besides the business of housing books for reading and lending also served as a veritable hub for the community to use as meetings centre and other varied uses.

Much more recently I lived on and off in Coventry, a city in the West Midlands of the United Kingdom where I really appreciated the full use of a library as a community centre. I lived in the city centre, a walking distance from the library which was built prominently within the shopping arcades and was opened 7 days a week. The library had all the normal facilities and was used by all members of the communities free of any charge, with the exception of the use of internet which one paid for.

I walked into the library daily, at least, to read newspapers and magazines which would have costed me a fortune if I were to buy them off the rack. The library was a beehive of activities at all times of the day and night. Besides readers like me, and those who came there to use the internet services, there were also perennial visits by mobs of school children coming to appreciate the goodness of library services. You would also find meetings of book readers associations and other related events holding all the time.

I long for the day when our cities and villages will have functional libraries like the ones my generation used to know when we were kids in schools and universities. The libraries we see today when we travel abroad to other places are just an upgrade of what we had here in the past. By the look of our own libraries now it is obvious that we have the resources and the expertise to build and stock a good library that can function as a viable community centre. Probably a change in the way we manage what we now have will bring the desired result. I raised this matter with many who are interested and there is unanimity of opinion to allow private managers to be allowed to run our libraries so that they provide full services to the community. After all, as some pointed out, one of the best functional library open to the public in the FCT, the Olusegun Obasanjo Library in the Yar’Adua Centre, is run by Trustees.