Trace the history of library in Nigeria?

Answer 1

By: Nongo Gwaza (B.sc, CCNA, M.sc; inview)

In 1939, the Carnegie Corporation sponsored a survey of library needs of British West Africa, undertaken by Margaret Wrong and Hans Vischer, two years after the return of Dr. Azikiwe to Nigeria. The survey report [3] indicated the British lack of interest in library matters in Nigeria, it noted that in 1939, of the 152 subscribers to the Lagos Library, only seven were Africans and 145 were Europeans. Azikiwe had been very critical of the Lagos library service as highly discriminatory — a reminder of the racist practices he had experienced in the United States. The few Africans who could use the library were “those with sufficient Western education, social standing, and connections not to feel out of place in such a milieu… it provided valued recreation for the British administrative and professional class and for their wives, and for an even tinier group of Nigerians of similar background and mind.” [4]

The Carnegie Corporation, nevertheless, in 1940, made financial grants to Nigeria for library development. Table 1 gives an overview of financial grants to Nigeria from 1932 to 1959—a year before Nigerian independence [5].

Table 1: Carnegie Grants to Nigeria, 1932 – 1959*

Purpose of Grant

Date

Grant
(in U.S.$)

1. Library Development

1932

$6,000.00

2. Books for Schools and Colleges

1940

$3,000.00

3. Purchase of Books for Lagos Public Libraries

1940

$27,323.00

4. Regional Libraries and Reading Rooms

1940

$1,412.00

5. Library of Congress Catalog and Supplement for University College, Ibadan

1951

$1,126.00

6. Purchase of Books for Library of Nigerian College of Arts, Science, and Technology

1954

$10,000

7. Library Training Course at the University College, Ibadan

1959

$88,000.00

Total:

$136,861.00

*

Florence Anderson, Carnegie Corporation Library Program, 1911–1961
(New York: Carnegie Corporation, 1963): 99.

Paradoxically, although the establishment in 1940 of the Standing Committee to Advise Government On Provision of Libraries by the Colonial Government could be regarded as a concession to local aspirations. Malcolm MacDonald, British Colonial Secretary, wrote on 8 November 1939 to Sir Bernard Bourdillon, Governor of Nigeria, that he would support anything that would promote literacy and intelligent reading among Nigerians, provided the necessary funds “could be made available from non–government sources — I do not wish to give the impression that I should desire colonial governments to incur themselves more than a small outlay upon the subject at the moment.”

The colonial administration was ready to spend on libraries whatever money was given by the Carnegie Corporation, but hardly any from its purse. But the special condition of the Carnegie grants was that their recipients would be prepared, after the grants were exhausted, to continue to finance the projects for which the grants were originally made. The reply of the colonial Governor in Lagos to the British Colonial Secretary inevitably brought Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe into an open confrontation.

On 12 April 1940, the colonial Governor, Sir Bourdillon, wrote to the British Colonial Secretary in London, informing him that “the Carnegie funds had little practical value. African reading interests were considered to be limited and to be too closely associated with personal advancement to justify expenses on reading materials of broader scope.” [6] Dr. Azikiwe, on learning about this correspondence, denounced it as “irresponsible” and “racist” in his highly influential newspaper, the

West African Pilot

. He questioned the basis of the colonial government’s assertion on African reading interests, and contended that the government had never provided Nigerians a free public library service, or even an opportunity of reading materials of narrow scope, not to mention providing them with library materials of broader scope.

It is surprising that the colonial government depended, at that time, upon the Carnegie Corporation for the provision of any sort of library service in Nigeria. In the 1940s, there were no regional libraries. Regions, as political divisions, were only created in 1952. The British Council had arrived in Nigeria in 1943 during World War II, establishing reading rooms across the country to promote the British culture and ideas. They were filled with British newspapers, political tracts, bulletins, and radio propaganda about the on–going World War.

Towards the end of the War, some perceptive British colonial officials who recognized the inevitable progression of political events towards Nigerian independence, had begun to question the British policy on libraries in Nigeria. Thus, in 1950, J.O. Field, a colonial civil servant, criticized the colonial government’s misuse of the financial grants from the Carnegie Corporation:

The whole trouble in the past and quite clearly a considerable part of the trouble now is the failure to realize that there have got to be libraries and that part of the available public revenue has to be appropriated to their establishment. [7]

The UNESCO Seminar on Public Library Development In Africa, held at Ibadan in 1953, was the first international conference or seminar on libraries ever held in Africa. It gave further stimulus to Dr. Azikiwe’s quest for library services in Nigeria. It was not only a catalyst — spurring on the champions of public or national libraries in African countries like Dr. Azikiwe, and Dr. Nkrumbah of the then–Gold Coast (Ghana) — it also helped to stimulate African governments to enact public library legislations and to set up public library boards. The Seminar emphasized that “only legislation can empower the appropriate authorities to provide the services and ensure adequate financial support and efficient administration according to a national standard. Only legislation can define the functions of the providing authority, create the conditions in which it may fulfill those functions, and ensure development.” [8]

As the premier of Eastern Nigeria, Dr. Azikiwe ensured the enactment of the Eastern Nigeria Public Library Ordinance and the Eastern Nigeria Publications Law in 1955. Both legislations were the first of their kind in Nigeria. They helped to speed up library services in the Eastern part of the country. Before the Nigerian Civil War in 1967, public library services in the Eastern Region, based upon a clear authority of the law and controlled by a public library board, were far superior to those of all other parts of the country, where public libraries were left directly under the political umbrella of the Ministry of Education or Information.

The value of public library legislation and a publication law was so obvious that immediately after the civil war in 1970, other state governments in the country enacted public library legislations, set up library boards, and provided for legal deposit in respect of publications issued within their states. Although, the Western and Northern Regional Governments of Nigeria had passed publication laws in 1957 and 1964 respectively, they did not pass the public library board law. Today, most states in the Federation have passed public library laws and have created public library boards of varying degrees of effectiveness. Commenting on Azikiwe’s contributions to library development in Nigeria, John Harris, regarded as the “Father of Nigerian Libraries,” remarked:

As to what happened in Eastern Nigeria, that of course was of utmost significance. It is probably the most significant thing that has happened in Nigerian library development… what happened was that Dr. Azikiwe, when he did begin to come on some real power in the country, did not forget libraries; and in the Eastern Region, he very soon after coming into power there did set about establishing a regional library service ... He did consult with librarians and it developed from there. The whole library law of Eastern Nigeria was quite certainly worked out and we all know how successful its development was that it was well–based. [10]

No state government in Nigeria today would pass any public library board law without a provision for legal deposit requirements. Besides, in the Nigerian library profession, the success of the public library services in Eastern Nigeria in the 1950s, from the early promulgation of public library law under the premiership of Dr. Azikiwe right up to the outbreak of the Nigerian Civil War in 1967, has become a historic reference point for the librarians, justifying their pressure upon their state governments to enact public library legislation, which would provide for a library board and legal deposit.

University Libraraies

Before the establishment of the University of Nigeria at Nsukka in 1960, based upon his educational philosophy, and drawing inspirations from the American land–grant colleges, Dr. Azikiwe had called for a democratic, functional, and broad–based university education, in contradiction to the prevailing rigid British educational pattern. He contended that Africa needed political emancipation no more than intellectual emancipation, which could only come if Africa had its own universities, rooted in the African ideology, closely reflecting Africa’s needs. Thus, in his classical work entitled,

Renascent Africa

, Azikiwe remarked:

Universities have been responsible for shaping the destinies of races and nations and individuals. They are centres where things material are made subservient to things intellectual in all shapes and forms. No matter in which field of learning at any university, there is an aristocracy of mind over matter — Black Africa has no intellectual centre where the raw materials of Africa humanity may be re–shaped into leaders in all the fields of human endeavor — with 12 million pounds there is no reason why the libraries, laboratories, professors cannot be produced right here, and continent (Africa) can become overnight “A Continent of Light.” [11]

It is significant that in 1937, when Azikiwe made the above statement — the year he returned to Nigeria from his study in the United States after spending some three years in Ghana (then the Gold Coast), he had realized from his experienced in the use of American university libraries that the proper equipment of any university library was the basis of quality university education.

Azikiwe’s perception of the role of libraries in African universities clearly anticipated and antedated the comments of the two British 1945 Commissions On Higher Education in the Colonies, namely, the Elliot Commission On Higher Education In West Africa and the Asquith Commission On Higher Education In the Colonies. Both commissions were set up by the British Parliament in 1943, as a decolonizing device, to establish university colleges for the preparation of high–level personnel to man the colonies when they achieved their political independence. Both commissions, which reported to Parliament in 1945, emphasized the organic role of the library in any university college to be established. The Asquith Commission specifically remarked that:

The development of the universities will depend to a large extent upon the provision of fully–equipped libraries and laboratories… we cannot emphasize too strongly the paramount importance …of the building up of a university library. [12]

Thus, when the University College, Ibadan, affiliated to the University of London, was set up in 1943, there was a strong emphasis on the maintenance of a good university library.

The University of Nigeria, founded by Dr. Azikiwe with the objective of restoring the dignity of the “black man,” was Nigeria’s first full–fledged indigenous university, modelled upon the American educational system. At its establishment, Ibadan University College had inherited the small library of the Yaba Higher College in 1948, in addition to the 18,000 volumes of the Henry Carr Library, which the Nigerian colonial government had purchased in 1946.

Seeing that the University of Nigeria had no such collection with which to take off, Azikiwe, who became the University’s first Chancellor, donated some 12,000 volumes of his books and 1,000 journal issues in different subject fields to the university to serve as its initial library nucleus. He also made financial donations. In addition, he secured for the university the technical assistance of the Michigan State University, which lasted from 1960 to 1969. This involved both human and material resources. The library was the first one in Nigeria to adopt the use of the U.S. Library of Congress Classification Scheme and the List of Subject Headings, thus setting the stage for Americanization of Nigerian library practices and professional ideals.

A book collector, Azikiwe was reported to have assembled over 40,000 volumes in his private library, not to mention thousands of pamphlets, journals, memorabilia, and government documents, before their destruction in the Nigerian Civil War, 1967–1970. After the war, he started to rebuild the library, which had served as an important research centre to scholars in diverse fields, especially historians, political scientists, biographers, and constitutional lawyers.

The National Library

Although the quest for a national library in Nigeria dates back to the 1940s, it was not until 1964 that one was legally established in Lagos. Dr. Azikiwe’s perception of a national library in the 1950s and 1960s chimed in with that of his contemporary pan–Africanist, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, who in 1961, on the opening of the George Padmore Research Library, declared:

A good national library is at once the repository of a nation’s culture and wisdom and an intellectual stimulant. In this library there shall be no national frontiers, for here shall be stored the cumulative experience, the collective wisdom and knowledge about the entire continent of Africa, and the assessment, revaluations and studies of observers from all over the world. [13]

Azikiwe understood the value of such a library as a depository of cultural heritage and as a research centre where authentic studies on Africa could be conducted.

Unfortunately, some Nigerian nationalists, like the colonial administrators, thought of a national library largely as a magnificent, monumental edifice, with the best architectural design, involving an enormous financial outlay. Azikiwe also perceived the national library as a living agency of progress, intellectual enrichment, and public enlightenment, not as a repository of artifacts or archival documents of the past.

The 1953 UNESCO Seminar on the Development of the Public Libraries In Africa, held at Ibadan, not only encouraged Azikiwe to press for a national library for Nigeria, but also helped to crystallize the national library concept on Africa. Before the seminar was held in Nigeria, the Nigerian Council of Ministers — Nigeria’s first representative government — had rejected the national library concept, contending that all library matters should be relegated to the regional governments, and to local and private organisations. The council was unable to see that while the regional governments would cater for the public libraries, it was the responsibility of the central government to establish a national library for the country [14].

To be fair to the colonial government, it had purchased the Henry Carr Library in 1946, probably to serve as the nucleus for the national library. Dr. Can, a renowned educationist and the earliest and best–known Nigerian book collector, was the first African Commissioner for the Lagos Colony, and Chief Inspector of Schools in the Southern Provinces of Nigeria. His collection, numbering over 18,000 volumes, covering the humanities and Social Sciences, was the largest private library ever assembled by any West African. When Ibadan University College opened in 1948, is Principal, Kenneth Mellanby, persuaded the colonial government to deposit the collection, unused for two years and faced the grim physical deterioration, with the University College Library on loan [15]. It has remained there ever since. An opportunity of establishing a national library appeared then to have been lost.

The national library concept originated in the early 1960s, when Dr. Azikiwe was the first indigenous Governor–General in 1960 and later the first President of Nigeria when it achieved republican status in 1963. He helped to ensure that a feasibility study was conducted on the national library by Dr. Frank Rogers, Director of the U.S. National Library of Medicine, sponsored by the Ford Foundation of America in 1961.

On the attainment on Nigerian independence in 1960, the perception of the national library by the Council of Ministers, which had rejected in 1952 the participation of the central government in any library matter, had taken a nationalist turn. The Council, along with the Nigeria Branch of the West African Library Association, established in 1954, quickly accepted the Rogers Report, recommending the establishment of a national library.

At the request of the Nigerian government, the Ford Foundation sent Professor Carl White, former Dean of the School of Library Science, Columbia University, to serve as Library Advisor to the Nigerian government on setting up the National Library of Nigeria. On his arrival in Nigeria in March 1962, Dr. White was shocked to learn that there was no budgetary provision for the newly proposed library in the first post–independence National Development Plan, 1962–1968.

The immediate personal intervention of the Governor–General, Dr. Azikiwe, and the Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar, saved the day. They asked Professor White to prepare a special report on his financial needs and on the objectives, scope, and structure of the library. His report, known as the “May 1962 Report,” was accepted by the government without delay. By the end of 1962, work on the National Library had begun in Lagos, with three American librarians and Professor White as the Federal Government’s Library Adviser. The National Library Act, drafted by the Adviser, was enacted in 1964, which set the library on a legal footing, and on 6 November 1964 the National Library was opened to the public.

Answer 2

The historical development of libraries in Northern Nigeria can be traced back to the 1930s.

Answer 3

I want know the history background of public library in nigeria