The super spook’s books

The building that houses the Gusau Institute at Dendo Road, Kaduna once produced the city’s tastiest bread and confectionery, the Idris Morrow bread and cakes. The old bakery closed shop more than two decades ago and the building fell into disuse. Now it has revived, rebuilt, remodelled and fabulously furnished and equipped to become an ultra-modern research and infotech training facility.
Last week, the shadowy General Aliyu Gusau personally led a small team of guests to see the new facility, which he described as his modest contribution to education and research in Nigeria. The old Morrow building has been remodelled and expanded; it now has several small and medium sized lecture and conference halls, each one of them bristling with desktop computers. At one of the small conference rooms an IT lecture was in progress with about 20 young students.
The center of the facility however is the Aliyu Mohamed Research Library located on the second floor. It was a shock to see so many, extremely valuable books of history, science, social science and many other disciplines neatly lined up on bookshelves. In another section of the library there were thick bound copies of Nigerian newspapers and magazines dating back 25 years; General Gusau personally compiled them during his years of marathon military and security service. There were also many valuable documents and papers and not a few atlases, including one ancient atlas of pre-colonial Africa that is carefully displayed on a shelf.
There was also a small room adjoining the research library which houses a small server. It contains in it 5 million books that could be accessed from a laptop computer from anywhere in the institute. There were in addition three desktop computers beside it that a researcher could use to access the server. Also incorporated into the Institute are living rooms, several offices, a large conference hall, a rich cafeteria and two well appointed guest chalets for visiting researchers. All over the walls were also engravings and plaques of wise sayings by great men and women.
Painstaking work on this institute has been going on quietly since its incorporation in 2012, and the perfectionist hands of the centre’s South African coordinator Mrs Marlene Maritz are there to be seen. General Gusau said Africa needs a world-class centre of philosophy and learning. He set out its vision as being to contribute qualitative inputs to security management and good governance in Nigeria and Africa while its mission is to be a leading provider of research, training and discussion of initiatives, policies and programs for the enhancement of peace and security.
Who can access these books? While the books cannot be borrowed as one would in a public library, everyone who registers with the centre is invited to take a look and to utilise them for research and education. Lt General Aliyu Gusau has contributed to Nigeria in many ways as a career soldier, Director of Military Intelligence, Chief of Defence Intelligence, Coordinator of National Security, Commandant of Nigeria Defence Academy, General Officer Commanding 2 Division, National Security Adviser under three presidents, Chief of Army Staff and Defence Minister. His latest contribution, the Gusau Institute, might turn out to be his most lasting legacy yet.