Dominic Omokaro is the president and chairman of Council, Nigerian Library Association (NLA). In this interview, he expresses concern that students have abandoned school libraries and links the increase in the number of half-baked graduates to lack of interest in reading. Excerpt:
What has been your concern?
Recently, we noticed a dearth, particularly in the area of school library system. The school library system in Nigeria, over time, has become a challenge for us as a profession, particularly with the lacklustre interest of governments in promoting that area of librarianship.
Of course, you all know that we have a National Library that is supposed to be a repository of the knowledge of Nigerians. And the National Library building has been a monumental abandoned project in the last couple of years. But through the efforts of the association, we have got government to get interested in the continuation of that building construction. And as I speak to you, for those of us who are conversant with the news reports, we got the federal government under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari to transfer the funding of that project to TETFund and to the glory of God, we are proud to announce that TETFund released 15 per cent of that contract sum to start back that construction. We are hoping that we will continue it.
How do you think this concern can be addressed?
This year, for us as a profession, we decided that we needed to bring to the fore this particular area of neglect of the school library system.
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And that is why the theme for our library week that was just celebrated was ‘Revitalizing the School Library System: The Way Forward.’ How do we get back the libraries?
Luckily, I met the representative of the permanent secretary, Ministry of Education to inform them, because we have come to realise that in the last 20 or 30 years, the federal government has not employed librarians to run their school libraries.
And you know that education is on the concurrent list in the Constitution. Federal government has Federal Unity schools, and these Unity schools have libraries. The federal government has a policy to spend money on an annual basis, and this activity is carried out by the National Library. It is called the Readership Campaign.
Every year, we spend money to do Readership Campaign. If the school library system is not effective or functional, how do we catch old men and women to start reading?
So, for us as a profession, we need to draw national attention to the school library system. If we can promote it again, it will also help in catching these young children and taking them out of vices.
When I was speaking to the Permanent Secretary in his office, I said one of the reasons why we took this as an area of interest this year, is to draw attention of governments to this particular area of need. As a profession, we cannot keep telling people what to read but we are not catching them at that young age to be able to read.
We think this year will be a good year to drive that home and get government attention to achieving this purpose.
What we intend to do and to achieve with this is to see if government can now begin to revitalize the school library system by employing librarians.
Are there other things that can be done to address the situation?
We have a lot of librarians (graduates) who do not have jobs; some of them are still not adequately employed because they are underemployed, and this sector is dying.
I come from that background. I told the Permanent Secretary that story. I grew up in the old midwestern region as a child under the administration of General Samuel Ogbemudia. One of the things that endeared us to education was access to library.
We had a mobile library system then in Benin that drove around from street to street, we borrowed books, and every Saturday, we go to Mission House where you have the popular Mission Road in Benin. There’s a library. That was where I first read stories of people like Mahatma Gandhi and other great leaders. So, I feel if we can continue to catch the attention of children at any stage of literacy, it will greatly help our nation.
We believe in the maxim that leaders are readers and readers are leaders.
You said over the last 20, 30 years, the federal government has not employed librarians. What has been the implication of that?
The implication is that the school system dies because those who were employed 20, 25, 30 years ago, have all been promoted. And they have grown past the level of just being in the school library.
Some of them have moved to the headquarters, some of them have moved to other ministries. So, right now, if you go to Unity Schools, you will be amazed to see that the libraries have become old, abandoned rooms. People do not even patronise them anymore; the children do not go there to read anymore.
What some schools have done in recent times is that they try to create that ambience that there is a library, but in actual fact, there is no library and they put non professionals to oversee the libraries.
But we need professionals, who can also help inculcate readership education on the students, to help man these libraries.
One of the beauties of the library is that it is a place where you go and study. For us in the profession, we see a library as a living organism. There is the need to go there to read, and when you are there, there is a different feeling you have. That is why we crave the indulgence of owners of libraries to create an ambience of study.
When you get there, there is this quietness, peace and tranquillity around you. So, all these things are missing.
The danger for us as a nation is that we are producing people that are half-baked. People are not reading anymore. They just go to the internet, get information, put it together and submit. There’s a lot of plagiarism out there because people do not go to the library to do research anymore.
Have you adopted any practical way to draw the attention of government to the state of libraries in schools and explored ways to correct the malaise?
That is the reason we took that topic during our Library Week celebration. And I also mentioned here that I just met the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education, to drive home this issue, and he has given us his word that they are going to look into it. They have also asked us about certain things they also need to do. We still believe that if we catch these young ones and channel their minds into reading, it will reduce crime. It will reduce this craze for wealth. Every young man you see in Nigeria today talks about nothing but wealth.
I made a reference to the story on the social media about a young boy of 17 who went to a native doctor to use his friend for money rituals. If that child’s mind is engaged to study, he will not think like that. Those of us that are where we are today came from a background that believes ‘if you don’t read, you will not be a big man, you’ll be a truck pusher’. So, it propeled us to read. That’s the culture and mindset we want to bring back. We want to bring back reading, we want to bring back children to the library, we want to see how Nigerians can pull back to that culture of reading.
Have you carried out any campaign to sensitise the young ones on the importance of reading?
During our Library Week all over the Federation, all our state chapters went to primary schools, secondary schools, even in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) here. Our chairman in the FCT was even on Trust TV recently to talk about our Library Week. We are trying as much as possible to create this awareness to Nigerians, government and all stakeholders. If we do not create that awareness, that sector will suffer because we are all stakeholders in this project anyway.
With the internet, most people gravitate away from hard copies of books. What do you think is the future of book libraries in a country like Nigeria?
It is erroneous to assume that the library as it is today can just go virtual. For those of us who are conversant with the developments in Dubai, the king of Dubai has built a physical library. And that library contains the highest number of books all over the world. Why do you think he did that? Because he knows that knowledge is power. And the only way you can have this knowledge is to have it there. With electronic reading, you will easily get tired, and if care is not taken, overtime your eyes will start going dim. People will start using glasses because they will not be able to see clearly again. But you see with hard copy, it never changes. I also want to tell us one of the beauties of the library and books: whatever is written is secured but whatever is online can be manipulated.
Today, most of the things you see people writing on Wikipedia, without librarians giving the actual facts, are just stories as it comes to their mind. We are also working with Wikipedia so that librarians can be part of this information being generated. So, I see the library remaining.
As president of the Nigeria Library Association, and up to 2025, my focus is to see how we can bring the library back. Let’s not deceive ourselves, the library is not Google and Google is not the library.
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