Nyaknno Osso: A Colossal Bibliophilist Knocks 50 at 67

By femi Akintunde Johnson

A room without books is like a body without a soul – Cicero

The only thing you absolutely have to know is the location of the library – Albert Einstein

When we remember the torchbearers of the great Nigerian journalism of the 1980s, they don’t come bigger than the original promoters of Newswatch newsmagazine: the cerebral flourish of Dele Giwa, the literary eloquence of Ray Ekpu, the nous of the master prose stylist, Dan Agbese, and the scalding taciturnity of Yakubu Mohammed. Their individual influences began long before Newswatch, in the crevices of Daily Times, Sunday Times, Sunday Concord, Nigerian Chronicle of the 70’s and 80’s… seeping even into some part of the 90’s. Their positions in the pantheon of the Nigerian media and society are distinguished and highly regarded.

But to those who understand the business of the Media – great stories, magazine reports and features are particularly outstanding only because of the quality and breadth of their ‘backgrounding’. The painstaking research, efficient and robust archival and retrieval system and rich, easily accessible library management. The depth and power of your editorials, informed commentary and award winning stories are often a product of a profoundly comprehensive and robust library. Yet such an easy proposition is a formidably expensive and tortuous project, with capacity to consume any number of personnel without requisite passion, funding, tenacity and flair for the demands of the effective and constantly evolving library enterprise.

Now, there is hardly anyone better, more driven, intellectually astute and more punctilious than the man in charge of Newswatch research and library services from inception, Nyaknnoabasi Osso. The man noted as the driving force behind the path-finding and award-winning biographical encyclopedia, Newswatch Who’s Who in Nigeria (published in 1990) has carved a virtually unassailable niche for himself in octopal library services, a reputation that, I suspect, has scarcely been rivalled.

Osso began his journalism in 1975 with the Nigerian Chronicle, right after leaving the Library School of the University of Ibadan. He left Chronicle newspaper in 1984 to be a part of the pioneering management staff of the new newsmagazine, Newswatch. By the time he left arguably Nigeria’s most influential magazine in 1991, he was the Chief of Research. He resigned to act as Consultant Librarian to the same organisation.

Eight years later, he was appointed by then president of Nigeria, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo as the Special Assistant on Library, Research and Documentation – all through the Obasanjo years – between 1999 and 2007. The pride of Akwa-Ibom was the mainstay of the workforce feeding the Obasanjo rollercoaster the profundity and intellection to bestride Nigeria and the African continent with erudition in public speeches, and heartwarming spontaneity in continental and global interventions.

Little wonder then that even after his two-term tenure as president, Obasanjo would not let Osso be. Instigated by the brilliant presentation of a proposal that Osso had nursed for many years hitherto, Obasanjo immediately appointed him (in 2007) as the pioneer Executive Secretary/Project Coordinator of the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library Foundation – perhaps the first in Africa.

Mission accomplished, Osso withdrew from this position in March, 2013 to focus on his own business (after serving others meritoriously for almost 30 years – about half of that within pristine presidential ambience).

Now based in Abuja, the foremost bibliophilist sits as the chief executive officer of Biographical Legacy & Research Foundation, BLERF – ensconced in a 13-room research edifice in Gwarinpa area of the FCT, aside a container (twenty feet by eight feet) brimming with research materials gathered through the past five decades.

Few years ago, in 2018, the restless documentarian launched a legacy project (yet ongoing) dubbed BLERF’s Who’s Who in Nigeria – in a digital format (1861-2021 – www.blerf.org). And like the majestic being, he keeps giving. This year, we have been regaled with more offerings from Osso with the unveiling of BLERF’s Most Amazing 5,000 Women In Nigeria (1861-2021 – womennigeria.org). It essentially celebrates “determined, fearless, decisive, outstanding women of Nigeria”.

Contrary to general assumption, library administration is a pretty expensive vocation. In this decade, as a stand-alone project, Osso’s BLERF would have gulped more than ₦200m, with only N2.5m incoming as support from an organisation. He also had to sell his family house at Wuse 2, Abuja to raise badly needed funds to sustain these projects. Without viable support from organisations and wealthy individuals, the national legacy projects detailing 160 years of Nigerian remarkable humanity and accomplishments would stutter, and stagnate. The two projects have several thousands of names and records profiled online, and hosted independently on an open-source framework. The lifewire of such a massive biographical exploration is research, and more research involving long trips across thousands of lands, seas and cultures.

So, what is Osso’s back story? Almost every admirable successful story has some threadbare origin capable of deepening our admiration, and somehow justifying the inspirational toga we hold aloft. Young Nyaknnoabasi Osso joined the Library Service of the University of Ibadan in 1971 as a Library Assistant, under the guidance of Dr. Felicia Adetoun Ogunsheye. She has the distinguished honour of being the first female professor in Nigeria, by becoming a professor of Library and Information Science in 1973, and has remained Osso’s mentor all of these 50 years. He speaks fondly of her: “She has guided me like a godmother, adopted son, dedicated student and professional career adviser for 50 years.” A remarkably accomplished Nigerian, Prof. Ogunsheye was the first female student and graduate of Yaba College of Technology (1946), pioneer student of University of Ibadan (1948), the first woman dean of faculty in Nigeria in 1977, had been part of the UI’s Kenneth Dike Library from 1958, she would be 95 years old on December 5, 2021.

Osso recalled his encounter with ‘a forest of books in Ibadan’, 50 years ago, in a recent chat with the Independent newspapers: “In January 1971, I was staying with my uncle, Prof Eno Jumbo Udo, who was then a lecturer in soil science/agronomy at the University of Ibadan. It was my uncle’s wish that I should study medicine, because as he had noted, I was the most brilliant person in our family, having had one of the best results in then Eastern Nigeria.”

But fate would interject. While waiting for admission into the university, he showed interest in a vacancy advert on campus canvassing for library assistants. He was lucky. He recalled his first week in the Kenneth Dike Library: “That was my first time in a library as big as UI’s. When I got to the circulation department – it was the only place I could access then because I was not a student – what I saw was amazing…awesome. I saw more than one million books and magazines well laid out on shelves and the ambience was serene. The ground floor was filled with journals and magazines. I was enraptured. Within the first 24 hours of starting work, I had traversed from the circulation department on the ground floor to the seventh floor and the two levels underground. I was simply overwhelmed with the quantum of books, journals, periodicals…archival materials. That night, I could not sleep. I was just turning and twisting and seeing that library and books and journals.”

That was the beginning of a titanic battle to convince his uncle that Library Science was more important to him than Medical Science. He nonetheless got admitted to study his newly found love, in 1972. His story: “My uncle refused to have anything to do with that course of study. He said he would not spend one kobo on my pursuit of it, because I ‘misdirected’ myself. I paid my fees with the money I earned… So, I had to get financial help from different sources to struggle to pay my fees, at least in my first year…”.

This week, Osso marked 50 years of a relentless romance with the library of books, journals, periodicals, etc – even as he also clocked 67 years on the 27th day of August, 2021. His passion is encased in a simple ambition he shared with me: “I would like to be remembered as one of the MOST ORGANISED HUMAN BEINGS ON PLANET EARTH.” A different breed indeed.