Nigeria’s abandoned multi-billion Naira National Library project in Abuja, the nation’s capital.
By Ejiroghene Barrett
The Nigerian government’s recent pledge to complete Abuja’s long-abandoned National Library Headquarters has reignited debates about the country’s troubling pattern of neglecting critical intellectual infrastructure.
This project’s tortured history, conceived in 1981, started in 2006 and stalled since 2012, serves as a powerful metaphor for the nation’s chronic inability to prioritise long-term educational development over short-term political gains. The library’s story reveals fundamental flaws in Nigeria’s approach to nation-building, where physical infrastructure consistently trumps intellectual infrastructure in the competition for scarce resources.
The National Library’s saga exposes Nigeria’s systemic dysfunction in stark relief. The Abuja headquarters project, designed during Nigeria’s oil boom years, became a casualty of shifting priorities and misplaced values. While the National Ecumenical Centre and National Mosque were completed with relative efficiency, the library, equally symbolic but less politically expedient, was left to languish.
The failed 2018 attempt by Tinubu’s predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari’s government, to involve the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) in the project underscores this pattern of neglect. Multiple sources confirm that the initiative collapsed due to “scant interest in library development” among key decision-makers.
This admission reveals a painful truth. In Nigeria’s political calculus, library development simply doesn’t generate the immediate political capital of roads or bridges. Meanwhile, the library’s continued operation from rented facilities since 1995 represents a textbook case of false economy, with billions wasted on leases that could have funded the permanent structure.
President Tinubu’s current approach, tasking TETFund with the project’s completion, creates as many problems as it solves. While providing much-needed funding, this strategy raises serious concerns. For a start, TETFund’s 700 billion Naira 2024 budget is already stretched thin addressing critical needs in tertiary institutions across Nigeria.
Diverting resources to the library project risks neglecting its core mandate. Secondly, as some commentators have said, the fund lacks experience managing complex, billion-naira construction projects of this scale and nature. A third point is that the government’s failure to disclose specific budget allocations fuels suspicions about another potential funding black hole.
The government’s phased approach, which will include completing the library’s basement levels, the ground floor, the second floor, and external works, might be a strategy to manage costs, but it also indicates that the full completion of the project will require additional funding beyond what TETFund can immediately provide.
This stopgap measure highlights the absence of coherent, long-term planning for the library. Even if completed, serious questions remain about operational funding. The current annual budget for the entire National Library system – a total of 2.7 billion Naira (around $1.69 million) – is a modest sum for a national library system tasked with preserving Nigeria’s intellectual heritage and serving a population of over 200 million. This is woefully inadequate to maintain existing branches, let alone a massive new headquarters in Abuja.
The library’s struggles are not an isolated crisis but rather a symptom of deeper, systemic failures plaguing Nigeria’s education sector. At the heart of this decay lies chronic underfunding. Since 2015, education’s share of federal spending has remained stubbornly below 10%, a far cry from UNESCO’s recommended 15-20% benchmark for developing nations. Nigeria’s 2025 education budget of 3.52 trillion Naira represents a worrying 7.3 percent of the total budget. This financial starvation has left institutions crumbling and opportunities withering.
Compounding the problem is a troubling cultural disconnect. With an adult literacy rate of just 38%, according to World Bank’s 2022 report, Nigeria faces a vicious cycle where poor education leads to dwindling demand for library services, which then becomes a twisted justification for further neglect. The very institutions that could help break this cycle – libraries, schools, and scholarship programs – are left to decay, leaving generations trapped in a system that fails them at every turn.
This situation creates a dangerous feedback loop. Poor education produces citizens who do not value libraries, leading to political disinterest in library development, which perpetuates educational underachievement.
To break this cycle of neglect, simply completing a building will surely not be enough. The solution requires systemic change, addressing the root causes that have allowed Nigeria’s libraries, and by extension its education system, to deteriorate for so long.
First, as many experts have suggested, legislative safeguards must be put in place to ensure consistent funding. It has been suggested that a National Library Act, mandating that at least 1% of the education budget be allocated to libraries, could prevent the kind of abandonment seen in the National Library’s decades-long construction saga. Without such legal protections, funding will remain at the mercy of shifting political priorities.
It has also been suggested that sustainable financing must be secured through innovative means. Given Nigeria’s vast natural resource wealth, corporate partners, particularly the country’s leading oil corporation, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPC Ltd), and other extraction companies, should contribute to endowment funds dedicated to libraries and education. These funds could provide long-term stability, insulating libraries from the volatility of annual budgets.
Finally, the very function of libraries must evolve. As has been suggested by education experts, they can no longer be mere repositories of books. They must transform into dynamic hubs for digital learning, start-up incubation, and literacy programs that meet 21st-century demands. A modernised National Library could become a beacon of knowledge, innovation, and opportunity – but only if Nigeria commits to reimagining its purpose and investing in its future.
Rebuilding public confidence in Nigeria’s education system will require transparency, accountability, and decisive action. Progress cannot remain hidden behind bureaucratic silence. To ensure credibility, many have called for quarterly public reports on construction milestones, complete with photographs, expenditure records, and challenges encountered, which would demonstrate a genuine commitment to completing projects.
There have also been calls for the establishment of independent oversight mechanisms, perhaps involving civil society groups and professional bodies, to verify that work is being executed properly and funds are not being misdirected.
The National Library’s 44-year odyssey holds up a mirror to Nigeria’s distorted priorities. Successive governments built magnificent mosques and churches in years as they allowed “intellectual memory” to rot in rented offices. Tinubu’s government now faces a defining choice. Will this project join Nigeria’s long list of abandoned dreams, or become a turning point in our educational renaissance?
The answer will reveal whether Nigeria truly values knowledge as the foundation of development, or merely pays lip service to education while chasing easier, more visible political victories.
Until the National Library stands completed, functional, and properly funded, claims of prioritising human capital development will remain hollow. This project’s fate will tell us more about Nigeria’s future than any political speech or policy document ever could.
