-By Abdul Mahmud
Nineteen years ago, our country set out to build Africa’s largest library. The site was perfect. A cultural landmark between the National Mosque and the Ecumenical Centre in Abuja. The vision was bold. A national monument to scholarship, research, and civic learning. The contract was awarded in 2006 to Reynolds Construction Company. Cost: N8.59 billion. The project was to be finished in record time. Some of our country’s finest architects, engineers, and surveyors were on board. Abuja would boast a library complex that matched the grandeur of its religious monuments.
It never happened.
Costs ballooned. First to N17 billion. Then N38 billion. Now almost N100 billion. Work stalled. The site is abandoned. When you visit today, weeds cover the grounds. Cranes rust. Steel rots. Rain eats away at the concrete. A national dream has become a national embarrassment. Why? Funding problems. Exchange rate fluctuations. Ministerial inertia. Bureaucratic apathy. The project was eventually abandoned twelve years ago. Every government since then has promised revival. Every promise wasn’t unfulfilled. In 2019, the then Education Minister, Adamu Adamu, said “alternative funding” was being pursued. He told whoever cared to listen that Buhari has directed TETFUND to look at the possibility to resuscitate the project. Typically, that entered into the voice mail. In 2025, President Tinubu reportedly directed TETFUND to complete the library. Still, nothing moved. Now, the President’s wife is soliciting public donations for her 65th birthday. Donations to complete the national library. A project meant to stand as a public monument. Government business reduced to crowd-funding. It is madness.
Our country spends billions on frivolities. Billions vanish daily in corruption. Yet, it cannot build a library. It cannot finish a building that should symbolise knowledge, culture, and civic pride. Look at Egypt. In 2019, terrorists attacked Dar El Kotob, the national library. Within record time, the government restored it. In Alexandria, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina was rebuilt in seven years. Reopened in 2002, it stands today as a global hub of culture and tourism. Both libraries are monuments of pride. Both generate revenue. Both embody the Egyptian spirit of cultural reimagination and renewal. In our country, the rulers abandon legacies in pursuit of the mundane.
A national library is not just a building. It is a statement. It is the mind of a people made concrete. It is where young people learn, researchers explore, and the public gathers to exchange ideas. It is a place of memory and imagination. A pillar of lifelong learning. Libraries also have practical value. They support literacy. They provide access to ICT. They train citizens in digital skills. They serve as delivery points for government services. They build social inclusion. They foster community. To abandon a national library is to abandon national imagination. It is to say that books, knowledge, and culture do not matter. It is to treat learning as a luxury, not a necessity.
Our country has built monuments to faith. The mosque. The church. Both completed. Both maintained. But our monument to knowledge stands derelict. What does that say about our priorities?
The Abuja National Library should have been a symbol of our country’s future. Rather, it is an eyesore. A ruin in the making. A silent reminder of wasted ambition. If Egypt could rebuild its libraries after terrorist attacks, why can’t our country finish one after 17 years? This is not about money. It is about will. It is about what we value as a people. Do we value prestige projects that do not produce knowledge? Or do we invest in monuments that shape minds and societies? Consider France. The Bibliotheque nationale de France was modernised in the 1990s as part of a presidential legacy project. Today it anchors Paris as a city of letters. Consider Qatar. In 2018, it opened its national library with a vision of linking the Gulf to the world of ideas. These are not just buildings. They are declarations of ambition. They are signals to citizens and the world that knowledge matters.
Our country and its rulers have chosen the opposite path. They have chosen decay. They have chosen the weeds and the rusting cranes. They have chosen to treat learning as optional. They have chosen to turn a public obligation into a private fundraiser.
A library is the most democratic of spaces. Anyone can walk in. Anyone can read. Anyone can learn. It is the one place where class dissolves. It is the one place where the son of a poor can sit beside the child of the Rich, the wealthy and the nouveau riche. Both bent over books. Both reaching for the same light. That is what our country has denied itself. A library is also a place of memory. It holds the records of a people. It preserves history against forgetfulness. It safeguards the written word against decay. It ensures that future generations know where they come from. Without libraries, nations drift. Without libraries, memory is lost. Without libraries, culture dies.
The shame is profound. Abuja is a capital built on symbols. Monuments dot the skyline. The National Assembly dome. The Aso Rock Villa. The Supreme Court. The Central Mosque. The National Christian Centre. But the one symbol that should embody knowledge, enlightenment, and civic imagination stands unfinished. What legacy does this leave? What story does it tell to the young? That worship matters more than knowledge? That politics matters more than culture? That corruption matters more than memory? It is a cultural disgrace. A nation that cannot build a library cannot build a legacy. A nation that abandons its books abandons its future.
The government must act. Now. TETFUND has the mandate. The presidency has the authority. The Education Ministry has no excuse. The National Library should be completed before it collapses. Delay is dishonour. Here, the more poignant point which underlines this piece sticks out as a crest: if a country cannot build a library, it cannot build a nation. For a library is more than bricks and mortar; it is the vault of a people’s memory. If a country cannot preserve knowledge, it cannot preserve culture, for culture is nothing without the written and remembered word. If it cannot value reading, it cannot value progress, because progress is born from ideas, and ideas are born from books. A nation without libraries is a nation without imagination.
It is a house without windows. It is people wandering without maps. It is a state condemned to repeat mistakes because it refuses to keep records. A country that leaves its national library in ruins leaves its future in ruins.
The National Library must not become another ruin. It must not be allowed to sink into history as a failed monument. It must be completed and opened. Not in another seventeen years. Not as a birthday fundraiser. Not as a political token. But as a statement of national renewal. Other nations build legacies through culture. Our country must do the same. This is the test of leadership. This is the call to government. In the end, the question is simple: what kind of a country do we want to be remembered as? One that built churches and mosques but abandoned its library? Or one that built a future on books, knowledge, and learning? The answer lies in the weeds of Abuja. The shame lies in the unfinished walls. And the responsibility lies with those in power today.
History is watching.
And history will not forgive our rulers, past and present.