In search of libraries

The library is the temple of learning, and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history – Carl T. Rowan

Africa is in a bind. It is a self-inflicted condition. Its leaders do not realise this precarious situation and so do not know how to extricate and save it from an impending perdition. The greatest affliction is not to know you’re afflicted because in such a situation you won’t seek for a cure thus making your situation more complex.

That’s exactly the situation our continent has found itself. Unfortunately, its leaders do not know or are not interested in finding a way out of the bind. Since my piece on reparations was published two weeks ago, I’ve received mails, text messages and calls from some faithful readers. Some agreed with my views while a few naturally disagreed.

A few asked me how we can come out of this terrible bind in which we have found ourselves. A situation, in which many of our compatriots willingly travel abroad and prefer to start life afresh in a strange environment rather than slug it out at home, I know a sizeable number of people who have left our shores in search of better life abroad despite the precarious nature of such an ambiguous adventure. Why won’t people bail out when the country is like a leaking ship that no matter how you scoop out the water, the ship continues to take in more?

Last week, a newspaper report detailed how poor and malnourished our university libraries have become. I really don’t perhaps need a newspaper report to tell me this! I am a frequent visitor to some of these libraries and I feel sorry for what I usually confront on their bookshelves. Let me tell you about what I am familiar with. A visit to any of our universities’ libraries in search of ordinary recent novel by any of our leading new authors would shock you. For instance, a university library that does not have the works of Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, Sefi Atta, EC Osondu, and a host of other new writers cannot be said to be serious. This is why many of the new graduates today still continue to write their thesis on Achebe, Soyinka, Clark and writers of that generation.

Now, if a university does not stock ‘ordinary’ novels by new writers how do you expect such a university to stock critical works that students of Literature need to understand and situate these novels? Our students of literature and communication, two areas I am very familiar with, are not better supplied with materials to make their studies easier and profound. Books are very essential to liberate the minds of our people but our leaders seem not to understand this. Thus their decision to lead us into perdition and ignorance; our youths are the worst hit.

Our university libraries are just the microcosm of the whole of our society. What has happened to all the community libraries that dotted the street corners when we were growing up? What fate befell all of local government run libraries of those days? Haven’t they become abandoned or turned to make-shift drink joints or bars? I was in a part of Lagos the other day and I saw a defaced signboard of a local library. Out of curiosity I decided to go inside and see what was going on there. What I saw made my heart sank. What used to be a well-stocked library has become an eye sore. The reading tables have gradually been turned to things to use to stoke fire by the neighbourhood iya alakara. Pages of torn old books were scattered across the floor some of them used to wrap akara for customers. How do you educate a people with outdated books and in some cases no books at all?

Those who should be using library spaces to read are glued to their smart phones or invading betting centres or watching European leagues and other football matches that would not advance their future.

We are in serious bind and the way out must be worked out if we are not to continue to be backward. I’ve only written about what I am familiar with, I however heard that the case is worse in the sciences where little or no money is voted for buying chemicals with which to perform experiments. I heard that sometimes students have to contribute money to buy these to carry out pseudo experiments. The secondary schools are worst hit as practical sessions are seldom held in laboratories, where they are even available! Now students offer what is cynically labelled ‘alternative to practical’?

Is this how we want to rule the world? I doubt it.