Research in Ruins: Nigeria’s Archival and Fieldwork Crisis – Part 1
By Ameh Abraham
In 1954, when pioneering historian Kenneth Onwuka Dike established the Nigerian Records Office, which would become the National Archives of Nigeria, he envisioned an institution that would decolonize history and empower a new generation of African scholars. Dike understood something profound: that quality research requires quality infrastructure. Seventy years later, that vision remains tragically unfulfilled.
For many independent researchers and PhD scholars, especially those working within Nigeria’s borders, the pursuit of knowledge has become an exercise in endurance rather than discovery. The challenges are not merely inconveniences; they are systemic barriers that systematically deplete research quality, delay completions, and drive intellectual capital abroad.
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This piece examines the practical, lived experiences of Nigerian researchers navigating three critical domains: physical archives and libraries that are literally crumbling; institutional frameworks that obstruct rather than enable; and fieldwork environments where distrust and logistical chaos are the norm. Drawing from peer-reviewed literature, professional testimonies, and documented case studies, this piece constructs a verifiable picture of research in Nigeria today and asks what it will take to build the enabling environment that scholars like Dike once fought for.
The State of the National Archives
The National Archives of Nigeria, with its three major branches in Ibadan, Kaduna, and Enugu, holds centuries of documentation crucial for historical, legal, and policy research. Yet a 2021 qualitative study of the Ibadan archive revealed that the institution “still operates in traditional mode yet to embark on complete digitisation due to epileptic funding and power supply, low awareness about digitisation, inadequate resources for digitisation, and untrained manpower”.
Consider what this means for a PhD student traveling from Maiduguri to Ibadan, a journey that can take two days and cost several weeks’ stipend. Upon arrival, they face:
Physical deterioration of documents: Many colonial-era records are brittle, insect-damaged, or water-stained. Archivists report that some materials are simply too fragile to handle, yet no preservation digitization exists.
Manual systems: Card catalogues that have not been updated since the 1980s, requiring researchers to guess at filing anomalies.
Restricted access: Some collections remain “unprocessed” for decades, inaccessible to researchers despite being catalogued as available.
No remote access: Every document requires physical presence, meaning multiple expensive trips for longitudinal research.
A study examining digitization challenges at the National Archives noted that “since the establishment of the national archives at the eve and after the independence, the sector has experienced minimal improvements that can give room for global relevance and competition”. The gap between Nigerian archives and their counterparts in Ghana, South Africa, or Kenya is not incremental it is generational.
The National Library’s Crisis of Relevance
The National Library of Nigeria tells a similar story. A 2025 study published in NigerBiblios assessed patron satisfaction with reference resources across four branches (Abuja, Kaduna, Bauchi, and Niger). The findings were stark: patrons’ level of satisfaction with reference resources was low, with identified challenges including “obsoleteness of the resources, inadequacy of the resources, mutilated contents of the resources, and poor state of ICT”.
Another appraisal of the National Library’s reference and users’ services confirmed that “the challenges facing the department are highlighted” as systemic, with service delivery compromised by chronic underfunding.
For the independent researcher without university library access, the National Library represents a last resort. That last resort is failing. One cannot conduct a systematic literature review when journals are a decade out of date, when mutilated pages render sources unusable, and when the “ICT facilities” promised on the website are either non-existent or non-functional.
The Digitization Dilemma
Several studies have examined the digitization imperative. A 2018 ResearchGate publication on the “Challenges of digitization of the National Archives of Nigeria” identified a cruel paradox: digitization is widely recognized as the solution to preservation and access problems, but digitization itself requires exactly the resources (funding, electricity, technical expertise, reliable internet) that are most scarce.
The consequences ripple outward. Nigerian researchers spend months manually transcribing documents that their counterparts elsewhere would access as searchable PDFs within minutes. The time cost is immense. The opportunity cost of research not conducted, of comparative studies not attempted, of international collaborations abandoned, is incalculable.
Institutional Barriers and Bureaucratic Fatigue
If physical infrastructure is one problem, institutional culture is another. Researchers consistently report that gaining access to data from government agencies, parastatals, and even some universities require navigating a labyrinth of clearance processes.
One PhD scholar quoted in a 2024 study described being denied access to educational records because the relevant ministry “did not see the benefit” of the research, despite the research being explicitly designed to inform ministry policy.
Bureaucratic Navigations
Beyond formal processes, researchers describe an informal economy of access. One LinkedIn commentator noted that in some institutions, “the frustration felt by the field officers was palpable” when attempting to collect data, with respondents requiring persuasion, repeated follow-ups, and sometimes informal payments to participate.
For the independent researcher without institutional backing, this is particularly punishing. University-affiliated scholars can invoke their institutions’ names and memoranda of understanding. The independent researcher has no such leverage. They are at the mercy of gatekeepers who may demand “settlement” (bribes) before releasing forms, granting interviews, or providing signatures.
But what happens when these researchers finally overcome the archives, the libraries, the digitization nightmares, and the bureaucratic gatekeeping? What awaits them when they step into the field into Nigeria’s communities, homes, and streets to collect primary data? That is where the real test begins. And as we will see in Part 2, the fieldwork itself presents a different order of crisis entirely.
In Part 2, coming soon: We step into the field where trust deficits, security risks, and language barriers await. We also examine the human cost: extended PhD timelines, financial precarity, and the isolation of independent research. Finally, we ask what it would take to build a research ecosystem worthy of Nigeria’s brightest minds.