Babangida Presidential Library (II)

Now that President Ibrahim Babangida has made his firm resolve known to establish a presidential library, we will likely hear of more such ventures coming up. After all, many former presidents were at the launching ceremony and must have noted the welcome the idea of building a presidential library elicited and the ready support from deep pockets for such an undertaking. I presume that it would become a tradition that no subsequent president would like to miss out on. We may expect to see a kaleidoscopic spread of these libraries across the nation as presidents would normally locate their libraries within their localities.

President Olusegun Obasanjo has already opened the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL) in Abeokuta, Ogun State and President Babangida envisions his own to feature in Minna, Niger State. President Jonathan would likely build his library in Otuoke, Bayelsa State, and I bet President Muhammadu Buhari’s own would be in his beloved Daura in Katsina State. I suppose that General Yakubu Gowon’s papers are secured in the Yakubu Gowon Centre in Abuja, which has been active since the 1990s.

One may look back to see that in the USA, ever since President Fredrick D Roosevelt began the tradition in 1939, every subsequent president has built a presidential library – some while they were in office and others while they were out. The USA presidential libraries are said to accommodate hundreds of thousands of textual materials, including reels and reels of papers, letters, photographs, pictures, films, videotape recordings, family heirlooms, campaign memorabilia, awards, and gifts from all sources, etc. These libraries are a good source of material for scholars, researchers, tourists and students. They are visited year in and year out.

For the sitting presidents, the diaries and papers of their predecessors, tucked in neatly in a secure environment, are a good source material for how things were handled before, and their staff can always fall back on them to illuminate what they are doing.  Most of these items could be accessed and viewed as they were, and with the technological advances now available, a lot of the material has now been digitised. I understand that, as from President Obama’s times, the presidential libraries have gone a notch up and are becoming digitised.

In the USA, all the presidential libraries are strictly regulated. The regulation has been in place since 1955 when the Presidential Library Act was first enacted into law. The running of the presidential libraries was also made the responsibility of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) – an independent agency within the executive branch that has been given the overall charge of the preservation and documentation of all the historical records of the US government.

Here, I am intrigued that since OOPL came on the scene, a shade under 20 years ago, we are yet to organise how to run the presidential libraries. I suppose this could be the absence of an enabling law. In this regard, the first step would be for the executive to prepare and send a bill to the National Assembly to that effect. While that is in the works, the government must give thought to where responsibility for the presidential libraries would lie. The bill could be made to address that as well. We must not be in a hurry to create a fresh agency for this purpose as there are options within the system.

The office of the former presidents in the SGF could be assigned. However, we must be aware that the office has no experience in dealing with libraries and archival material. The office was created to deal with the more mundane matters affecting former heads of state, such as their maintenance, travels, health matters and the like.

One other option is the National Archives of Nigeria, which would be the equivalent of NARA in the USA. By an Act enacted in 1992, the National Archives is ‘primarily entrusted with the responsibility of permanent custody, care, acquisition and control of all archives of the federal government and such other archives or historical records as may be required from time to time’.

The presidential libraries would conveniently fall under this omnibus act. In addition, from my interactions with them over the years, I can attest that the National Archives have the requisite manpower and the national spread for the assignment.

However, unless their funding structure is addressed, they would be hamstrung in the handling of such a gigantic assignment. They have been severely underfunded for many years. I happened to visit their Kaduna office recently and was shocked at the level of dilapidation I saw.

Another option could be the directorate that handles the library and archives in the Presidential Villa. That office handled the small archives that the colonial regime left in the State House, Marina, Lagos, which has since been transported to the Banquet Hall in the Presidential Villa, Abuja. The advantage of this directorate is in its placement where funding might not be a problem, and it would have the aura to supervise the presidential libraries more effectively.