UNIJOS’ classy library has snacks bar, easy chairs... VC plans another for N1.5bn

Students of the University of Jos (UNIJOS) will find reading a different experience when they visit the newly remodelled Bauchi Road campus library.

The new library, inaugurated on Tuesday by the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Hayward Mafuyai, looks more like a lounge than a reading place, definitely better than it looked before it was gutted by fire in 2013.

It has highly artistic easy chairs and will soon have an in-house snacks bar.

“We charged them not to limit themselves to what they can see, but also to be futuristic so that the library will stand the test of time,” Mafuyai said of the library.

But the institution has even bigger plans ahead.

Mafuyai spoke of the university's plans to build a N1.5 billion a modern library at its permanent site.

The Vice Chancellor said the proposed library was planned after assessing libraries in first generation universities outside Nigeria and said it would be one of the best in the world when completed.

It will have an e-library as well as printed books.

“What you are seeing today is just a little of what we are doing in the Naraguta campus which is the permanent site as we intend to give our students and staff the very best," he said.

“The new library concept is different from the old styled libraries where people reading are compelled to remain completely silent while they read."

Mafuyai added that the new library would have "an open space where students can discuss, have some liberty and enjoy some other interactions while they are reading."

UNIJOS only resumed for academic activities on Monday, the 20th of April after it went on break at the end of the last session.