BRING BACK THE GLORY OF ZARIA PUBLIC LIBRARY
Constructed in 1981, the Zaria Public Library is a strategic structure that is built along a major road called “Kofar Doka”. This is one of the major entrances to Zaria city and where the Emir of Zazzau and his entourage follow into the city. The Library has three sections; the children’s section with age appropriate books, the reference section for research and information gathering, and the adult section which is subdivided into sciences and social sciences.
It is no surprise that such a library exists in Kaduna state because it is often considered the citadel of Learning due to the number of learning institutions it holds. Zaria houses thirteen institutions including the prestigious Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, the National Institute of Transport Technology, the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology among others.
Visiting the library, we spoke to Mr. Aliyu Jibril, the Assistant Librarian, who gave us a verbal picture of what the library used to be “the library structure used to be colorful and neat. However today, the entrance is covered with weed and very unkempt. Books were new and always updated, children visited every day to read from the earlier collections which ranged from sciences to arts, with stories and artworks that could attract and prick the wildest imaginations of children, all the while teaching them basic vocabulary, grammars, and fundamental mathematics”.
Mr. Aliyu also pointed out how stockpiled the adult sections and reference sections were in the glory days of the library. While reminiscing on the caliber of books that he himself had read there, he still can’t believe that the library is now a structure that is barely standing and depreciating in the manner it has over the years. “This place used to be a safe haven for people who liked to read”. We had a lot of books before now and people trooped in and out to just get lost in the pages of some books, but now the place has dead. No light, no water, we don’t even have a functioning toilet.
According to the Chief Librarian Ms. Sadiya Ahmed, “there was an earlier renovation that was conducted in 2007, however, the building has been in need of renovation since 2010”. She went further to say there was no electricity, no running water, the toilets had collapsed, the roof leaks when it rains and most of the chairs were broken and unusable, never enough to take the number of readers in the building. “Oftentimes, some readers come with their own mats that they lay on the ground for their own convenience”. This used to be a library that was once hundreds of thousand books.
After our first visit the team decided to do further investigation, this was easy because we had access to procurement information due to state commitment to foster transparency through open contracting. We found out that the Kaduna state government in 2017 budgeted N25,000,000 towards the rehabilitation of the Zaria public library based on data derived from the state’s procurement website.
The contract was awarded to Universal Engineering Pillars Ltd at a contract amount of N90,190,088.25 under the Kaduna state Library Board. But since the award of the project in 2017 till today, there has been no sign of contraction witnessed in the Zaria public library. The contractor was said to have never reported to the site and nothing was done to ensure that the contract was revoked and awarded for proper implementation. The library project was supposed to be renovated in six months and nothing was done since 2017.
The monitoring team paid an advocacy visit to the implementation agency, which is the Kaduna State Library Board. We found out that the project was indeed awarded since 2017 but it took the implementation agency and the contractor a lot of time to finalize the negotiation on the percentage of mobilization funds. The contractor insisted on fifty percent of the contract fee while the government insisted on only thirty percent. But then, one wonders what kept the implementation agency from verifying the project status and what stops the agency from awarding the contract to another contractor who will be capable of implementing the contract.
To further our investigation, we called the contractor who verified the information we got from the implementation agency. Interestingly, Kaduna state procurement law clearly states that contracts are awarded based on the capacity of contractors to mobilize the sites to work while the funds are released at a certain stage. Again, one is quick to ask the same question, why was this project not revoked even though the contractor refused to start construction at the project location after several years?
Following up with the implementation agency, we recommended the contract be revoked and a request with respect to that be forwarded to the Ministry of Finance which handles such protocols. There is also a plan to put measures for the project to be awarded to another contractor as it is still being reflected on the state’s implementation budget.
The attention of the Kaduna State Public Procurement Agency was also drawn to change the status of the project on the portal from ‘completed’ to ‘not started’. The State government and the State Library Board’s were also notified to ensure that this project is awarded and duly followed for implementation.
Open contracting made it easy to track this project with the data derived from the website, though there was false information showing the completed status of the project, citizens like us were able to question, investigate, recommend and put pressure on the implementing agency to change the status of the project.
Open Contracting would also help fight corruption and looting of public funds by public officials as there is access to information. If Kaduna state government still holds its commitment to raise the standard of education and maintain the status quo as a citadel of learning, rehabilitation of reading areas such as the public libraries should be one of its utmost priorities.
Written by Zazzau Monitors a group of young people with the mission to improve service delivery in kaduna state. (This Blog was made possible by a grant from the Open Society Foundation)
