Nigeria’s Documents Under Threat – National Librarian

National Librarian and Chief Executive Officer of the National Library of Nigeria, Professor Veronica Chinwe Anunobi, has said the apex library and Nigeria’s documented heritage, preserved in the National Repository of Nigeria, are under threat.

Anunobi disclosed this during her administration’s third annual press conference.

Noting that the state of a national library speaks volumes about the place of education in any country, Anunobi declared the state of Nigeria’s national library ‘endangered’.

From the absence of a permanent headquarters to the dilapidated state of resources (newspapers, journals, and book publications) housed in the space-deficient National Repository of Nigeria, inadequate staff, and low budgetary allocation incapable of supporting its virtualisation, these challenges threaten the existence of the National Library and Nigeria’s heritage.

Emphasising the role of the national library in preserving a nation’s heritage and serving and engendering an informed public, Anunobi said the library not only lacks the space to store its legal deposits but also adequate staff to process them. Likewise, previous deposits housed in the national repository have either grown brittle with age or are worn and torn from constant use.

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“Newspapers in the national repository published post-independence are still tendered in the court of law today. Last month, the courts had 40,000 requests for certification, which drove Nigerians to the repository to dig through materials every day, which caused them to wear and tear, or due to age, are now brittle.”

According to the CEO, 20,000 legal deposits were collated from local publishers between January and September 2024. Work has stopped at the library’s permanent building in Central Area, Abuja. With little prospect of acquiring a new repository, the apex library has moved its legal deposits to state branches due to a lack of space.

“When you walk through the repository, you see books of Nigerian intellectuals lying in the corridors. We have to move them to the States to be stored.

“We also do not have enough hands to process the legal deposits submitted. Only twenty NLN staff members will process 20,000 legal deposits received between January and September across Nigeria. Where do we keep them?

“Today, well-researched books about the history of Nigeria, politics, democracy and colonisation are often cited as sourced from the British Library or the US Library of Congress. These are real challenges for the country,” she lamented.

Efforts to source funds from federal funding institutes to accelerate the National Virtual Library of Nigeria and better serve Nigerian users yielded few results.

“The budget of the national library cannot afford its full flip, that is, provide all the services it provides physically in electronic form, as needed by every researcher.”

Despite the challenges, the library, under the leadership of Anunobi, has established the National Virtual Library of Nigeria. This virtual version of the library offers users all the services provided at the physical sites of its federal office and state branches.

Users can acquire International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN) and International Standard Serial Numbers (ISSN) and browse through its Bibliography, Newly Acquired Publications, and free and open-to-public publications. Users can now pay to access restricted publications via its Pro-Quest page or access the full text of Nigerian publications without copyright issues. They can also find abstracts of newspaper publications on the Index to Nigeria Newspaper page.

The library absorbed 103 new staff members with competency in preserving, processing, and presenting information resources, ensuring that information processing can be done in state branches rather than solely in Abuja. The old staff’s capacities were built in line with the Head of Service directive and framework, which focuses on individual staff members’ performance.