Ibraheem Musa & Aliyu Yusuf
5 November 2008
Zaria — Routine maintenance and general repair work on the roof of the President J.F Kennedy Library in the Kongo Campus of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Zaria resulted into an inferno that gutted priceless books, computers and archival materials worth millions of naira on Monday afternoon.
The library was established in 1964 and it was named after former US President Kennedy. It was the oldest library in ABU, which served as reference centre to all administrative courses.
According to a source at the institution's Law Library which is close to the burnt one, the roof of the Kennedy Library had been leaking, especially during the rainy season and now that the rains have ceased, the university authorities decided to mend it. As a result, the job was contracted out to a firm, he added. As one of the workers was mending the roof with asphalt, the source also said, a small fire started at the eastern wing of the library's roof and instead of yelling for help, "the man simply went down to get water to put out the fire". Before he returned, the fire had built up into a big inferno and before "we knew it, it had engulfed the entire library complex", he said.
Fifteen minutes after the fire started, ABU's fire service personnel rushed to the scene, and the state fire brigade later joined to put out the fire, the source also said. It took about three hours, with the combined efforts of fire fighters, students and sundry volunteers to contain the inferno, the source said. No life was lost, but the entire top floor of the library was destroyed.
When contacted, the institution's Vice Chancellor, Professor Shehu Usman Abdullahi, told Daily Trust that he could not ascertain what caused the fire because he was just arriving at the scene. He lamented the loss of very valuable books which were of immense benefit to students and researchers both within and outside the university.
Professor Abdullahi described the incident as an act of God, and that it was the first time that such an incident would occur since the library was established in 1964.
According to him, the library was one of the assets of ABU which the university was proud of because of its stock of priceless books.
The Vice Chancellor said the university would explore the possibility of using its alumni association in order to regain some of the lost books which were not currently in the market.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 Daily Trust. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
