Yusufu Bala Usman Institute

Yusufu Bala Usman Institute

The Yusufu Bala Usman Institute was established to preserve, enhance and build upon the legacy of late Dr. Yusufu Bala Usman (1945-2005) whose committed scholarship and politically engaged activities were aimed at moving Nigeria and the whole of Africa towards the vision of an equitable society, free from exploitation and oppression, where all citizens have the right to participate freely in a truly democratic society; where Nigeria and all of Africa can be liberated from the bonds of neocolonial and imperialist oppression and take their rightful place in the comity of nations as genuinely free and independent states.

The archive files were the personal collection of the late Dr. Yusufu Bala Usman. Most of them originated from the time he began working at Ahmadu Bello University in the History Department in 1972. However, many of them also were his personal correspondence from years before then, and he even saved some of his primary school records and other memorabilia from his early years. He had a very wide network of individuals from all over the world with whom he corresponded, and he would always ask them to send him information about international events. So he collected magazines, newspapers and other information from many places and on many subjects. He himself classified the archives and kept them in an organised way until his death in 2005. After he died, the archive collection was in the hands of the research institute that he founded, the Centre for Democratic Development, Research and Training, located in Zango, Zaria. Those administering the Institute after Bala's death had some books published drawing on his numerous papers on a variety of topics, some political, economic or purely historical. However they did not keep the documents in the best shape for their preservation. When the Yusufu Bala Usman Institute was established in October 2019, it tried to recover Dr. Usman's library and archive collection, as the new Institute was founded by some of Dr. Usman's legal heirs. After a rather acrimonious back and forth, the archives were brought to the YBUI Institute for proper preservation and digitisation of the ones with most general relevance.

• West Africa (Geographic subregion)
• Nigeria (Geographic subregion)
• Africa (Geographic subregion)