British aid to Nigerian libraries : an analytical study of the work of three major British organisations involved in the development of library services in the country

• Main Author: Ajia, Saliu A.
• Published: Loughborough University 1983
• Subjects: 020; Information science & librarianship
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.236729

This study arose from my first professional work in 1973 while engaged in the National Youth Service Corps programme. I was then attached to the Rivers State Ministry of Education, Inspectorate Division, as a school librarian. Many foreign organisations and individuals had generously donated large consignments of books and other reading materials to schools and libraries in the area to offset the losses incurred during the Civil War between 1967 and 1970. These consignments were kept unused in a warehouse in Port Harcourt pending the time when the officials from the Ministry of Education would decide on how to distribute them to schools and libraries in the area. In September 1973, a decision was taken to share the books among the various schools and colleges that could 'evacuate' them from the warehouses without further delay. Being the only school librarian in the Ministry, I was given the responsibility to carry out the distribution. The arbitrary and hurried manner in which the distribution was effected was not the way in which the overseas donors would have expected or desired. Consequently, there arose in me a desire to take stock of past foreign aid to libraries in the country at large with a view of determining how they had been utilized.