“If the eyes want to go blind, they had better do so than scare children with reddish sores” (Tiv proverb)

For those of you who have been to the last room of the three storey building at Faculty of Arts, behind the SUB Tennis Bleachers, next to Classics Departmental library, you may have noticed an inscription above the door post that reads “English Library”. In the room are Literature books and English books, stocked in many shelves. This in deep befits the description of a traditional library.

However, NASELSites can relate with what I am about to share. For almost two sessions now, books in that library have been under lock and key: inaccessible for use by students. I am sure an inquisitive reader would be quick to shout, What do you mean? How dare you make such a daring claim given the fact that students have actually been being allowed access to the room? They hold meetings, and even conduct elections in the well-furnished world class state of the art facility. Some even use the place as a gist and gossip centre during free lecture hours. So, how could you make such an audacious allegation against the department? Don’t you fear SDC?

Well, we all know that in UI, the fear of SDC panel or their letters is the beginning of wisdom. Nevertheless, I think my pen is not that too daft to have ignored minding those life-sustaining questions. The black point is that a library is meant to serve as a knowledge bank for both students and lecturers. It is usually a knowledge fountain for thirsty minds. It is in the light of this that Kenneth Dike Library still stares the sky in the face in UI today. It is also on the same footing that the various faculties and department in UI have set up libraries.
Do I say fortunately or unfortunately”?

Well, the point is, NASELSites have been having hard times in attempts to access the books in the library. Although there used to be a student-librarian who was usually appointed by NASELS executive to oversee the affairs of the library but since then, things have changed.

Last session in the first semester, Mr Justin Ehiogu was appointed by the Oluwatoni-led past administration to serve in that capacity. But barely after a week in office had a strange lady-corps member showed up in the library, claiming that she was appointed so as to take over from him, to his bamboozlement and NASELSites as a whole.

After inquiries by the executive and the press, we were told that the English Departmental library is actually more or less an annex of the Kenneth Dike Library. This revelation shook everyone deep to the bones and marrow. Many NASELSites began to ask whether or not the Department of English, despite being a premier department in UI has a library of its own or not.

To thicken the air of confusion which beclouded our minds, the library was locked for almost two weeks after the lady-corps member took over. No students could access it until one day; she reappeared like a ghost and disappeared again. It took the efforts of the then executives who inquired from the General Office and later the HOD, who told them that the library was locked because it was undergoing some rehabilitation. That it would soon be opened to students for use after the complication of the refurbishments by the carpenter.

But since after the rehabilitation work had been completed, the books in the shelves are still firmly locked. When contacted by the press last week as why the shelves were still locked, the President, Mr Awoyemi Michael said that the HOD has not yet granted students permission to use the library. He then promised to contact him to get the official permission to allow NASELSites to begin to use the library. But after two days of his promise, the same president came back requesting the key of the library while the press was having a prepublication meeting. After inquiries, he told the press that the department has ordered that he should hand over back the key to the Departmental General Office for reasons he failed to elucidate. He only said that the order from above was that henceforth, students were barred from keeping the key to the library.

Although the logic behind this suddenly decision by the department is yet to be communicated to NASELSites, but the question begging to be answered are why bar students from accessing the library? Are they saying that students have been misusing the facilities in the library? If that is the reason, then it contradicts the reality on ground because aside using the library as a rest room or place for meeting, none of the facilities therein are accessible to students, except the dust clad copies of some project works in the shelf by the right at entrance. Every other shelf is firmly locked. So there is nothing to be taken away by any student.

Again, could it be that the order is from the mother library since we were told that the library is jointly owned by the department and KDL? If the answer to this question is a “YES”, it won’t be out of place for one to conclude that English Department does not have a library of its own. But if the answer is on the contrary, then why keep the facilities out of the reach of students? Anybody who goes to the library can attest to the fact that the library is as rich like a virgin’s womb in terms of relevant literary materials. Yet they are being left to be read by perhaps, cockroaches and spiders whose webs are beautifully ornamented in the ceiling and shelves.

Aside that the good facilities in the library are being left to the mercy of dust which clads its white blanket all over the cover pages of the books in the shelves. A building is not considered a library if the facilities are not used by anyone. And a library ceased to be called such if it is not accessible to people who are thirsty for knowledge but cannot run to it in order to drink from its fountain whenever their intellectual throats are dried up like the Sahara Desert.

By and large, we call on the department to look into the issues raised above. If at all the library belongs to the department, then its facilities should be made accessible to students so as to enable them to study and do other academic activities like researches, assignments etc. But if it belongs to the mother library as it is been preached, then it should be made a public knowledge so that NASELSites would establish it in their minds that English Department does not have a library of its own. And whenever they want to study, they can go elsewhere. For as the opening proverb has foregrounded, “If the eyes want to go blind, they had better do so than scare children with reddish sores”.

Pensmith