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From Ogbonnaya Ndukwe, Aba
An American adage says that to know the civilization level of a city, one needs to visit its library. Library is a centre where the story of the city, its history, people and developmental resources are stored for posterity.
It also provides a base for study, research, reference as well as creative discoveries to students in various spheres of life and helps in fulfilling their desire to learn and acquire knowledge that will assist them contribute to societal growth and development.
However, the forgoing means nothing in Aba, the commercial city of Abia State, at least for now, as recent events have shown. The city has no public library. The one being managed by the government is not funded. Its permanent site under construction has been converted into a motor park for impounded vehicles by the Aba South Local Government.
Daily Sun investigation showed that plans to provide Aba with a library started in the 1950s with the defunct Eastern Regional Government approving a site at Constitution Crescent, GRA. With the end of the civil war and creation of new states in 1976 by the Murtala Muhammed regime, Aba fell into old Imo State.
The then administration set up a fund raising committee, to seek donations from well-meaning individuals and corporate organisations to build a 10-storey library complex at the permanent site. The committee, with Chiefs Macaulay Nwankwo, Bob Ogbuagu, Nnanna Kalu, Ugorji Eke, John Anyaehie and Onyenso Nwachukwu, raised N15 million for the project.
With the creation of Abia State in 1991, the administration of Ogbonnaya Onu laid the foundation stone of Aba Divisional Library. Work began in earnest but got stalled when the General Sani Abacha military junta came on board in November 1993.
Since then, it has been one story or the other, with those in government at the state and LG levels playing politics with the project and its location. The library began operating in mobile vehicles stationed in privately owned buildings in Asa Road (NIDB Building) and later 96 Port Harcourt Road, before its present abode at 234, Market Road/East Street, within the premises of the School for the Mentally Impaired.
As to its permanent site, part of it was carved out to build the permanent offices of Aba South Town Planning Authority. The remaining land was given to the Association of Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON), in February to erect a primary healthcare centre, despite the fact that the Aba South Primary health Centre is just metres away in the council premises.
The sign post mounted by ALGON, announcing its proposed project was however, removed in March to pave way for the building of warehouses and parking lot for defaulting vehicles impounded by revenue agents or taskforce engaged by the government.
The situation has continued to generate public outcry in the commercial city. Many condemn the non-availability of a befitting library for reading, recreational and literary arts centre in the cosmopolitan city that produced internationally recognised writers, playwright authors, artists and other professionals.
Founding president of Aba Book Club, Osondu Mbonu, said the mentality of believing that Aba was only a buying and selling town and the lack of having leaders with educated mind were major problems in societal growth and development:
“Libraries help students who have poor funding while pursuing their education, to use books, research, reference and resource materials already discovered by others, for study. From there, they contribute to the growth of the environment.
“The importance of libraries is not in doubt. They provide avenues where youths of like minds meet to discuss issues of academic and intellectual development. Painfully, Aba is bereft of such opportunity. So, the youths resort to using drinking joints for interaction with one another, a situation that imbues rascality in them instead of academic empowerment.
“Our club has alerted government about this ugly development of converting the library site along Constitution Crescent into a motor park and den of touts.” He recalled their meeting with a former Commissioner for Education, Dr Ikechi Mgboji, in 2019: “Government was aloof to the plight of the State Library Board. It has not received any fund from the authorities in the last 20 years.”
A senior lawyer and lecturer in one of the tertiary institutions in Aba, who did not want to be named, said: “It is pathetic that a cosmopolitan town like ‘Enyimba’ does not have a public library where students and literary-minded individuals can go to read and acquire knowledge.
“Lawyers in the town patronise the libraries of the National Institute for Nigerian Languages (NINLAN), the Centre for Management Development (CMD) office at NIDB Building and others. The conversion of a library site into a motor park where touts reign is a misplacement of people’s priority needs.”
