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Written by Azeez Elijah and Luwa Suwaiba
Picture a fire in your mind, not a real one, though real ones have happened. Picture the kind of fire that swallows a small print shop overnight. The only copies of a poet's first collection, the printer's proofs, the author's own stash all gone by morning. No trace that the book ever existed. No name in any record. Nothing to show a young writer once had something to say and said it well.
This has happened before, in cities that thought their books were safe. It is the exact reason legal deposit exists.
What Legal Deposit Actually Asks For
Nigerian law asks something simple of every publisher: when you publish a book, send a copy to the National Library of Nigeria within one month. That's it. Not the rights to the book. Not a share of the profits. Not permission to reprint it. Just a copy, kept safe, forever, in the nation's care.
Somewhere along the way, this simple request picked up a bad reputation. Some authors hear "deposit your book with the government" and think of a hand reaching into their pocket. They picture officials seizing their work, controlling it, deciding who gets to read it.
None of that is true. And it's worth saying plainly: nobody is taking your book from you.
Confiscation Takes. Preservation Keeps.
Confiscation happens when someone takes what's yours and you lose it. Your rights disappear. Your control disappears. Someone else now decides what happens to your work.
Preservation happens when a library keeps a copy safe so the world doesn't lose it. You still own your book. You still hold every right the Copyright Act gives you. You can still sell it, adapt it, translate it, or turn it into a film. The library simply makes sure that even if your own copies vanish — through fire, flood, a house move gone wrong, or the slow decay of time — one copy still exists somewhere it cannot be lost.
Think of it less like a tax collector and more like a family member who keeps a spare key to your house. They're not moving in. They're just making sure that if you ever lose yours, you're not locked out forever.
Why This Matters More Than It Sounds
Nigeria has lost work before. Manuscripts have rotted in damp storerooms. Self-published titles printed in small runs have simply run out and disappeared, with no second edition and no digital backup. A writer's entire output can vanish within a generation if nobody keeps a record.
The National Library exists to make sure that doesn't happen anymore. When your book sits in its collection, it becomes part of something larger than your personal shelf: a written record of what Nigerians thought, dreamed, argued about, and imagined at this exact point in the nation's story. A hundred years from now, a student researching Nigerian literature in the 2020s should be able to find your book. That's only possible if a copy survives somewhere outside your own hands.
Your grandchildren, or someone else's grandchildren, might one day walk into the National Library looking for proof that a story like yours was ever told. Legal deposit is what makes sure that proof is still there.
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A Small Ask, A Long Memory
One copy. One month. No fees, no forms longer than they need to be, no loss of ownership. In exchange, your work joins the permanent memory of the country protected from fire, flood, forgetfulness, and time.
That's not confiscation. That's a promise: whatever else happens to your book out in the world, one copy will always be safe, always be found, and always be remembered.
So the next time you publish, don't think of the National Library as a hand taking something from you. Think of it as a vault holding a copy of your work long after everything else might be gone — waiting for the reader who hasn't been born yet.
Have you deposited your published work with the National Library of Nigeria? Reach out to your nearest branch or the Legal Deposit Department to find out how simple the process really is.