Founder's Message

I founded the Institute for Historical Studies, Biographical Research, Documentation, and Legacy (IHS-BiRD & L) to address the systemic digital exclusion of Nigerian history. Over the course of approximately fifteen years of active contributions to digital knowledge platforms, I have witnessed a persistent underrepresentation of African narratives, leaving our stories at risk of erasure in the global knowledge space.

Since 2009, I have been an active contributor to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, as well as other wiki platforms, writing and editing numerous entries with a passion for preserving facts, correcting inaccuracies, and amplifying lesser-known stories.

However, over the years, I came face-to-face with a deep systemic issue whereby voices and narratives from Africa (particularly those from my Nigerian area of interest) were being excluded, not because they lacked merit, but because they lacked the type of documentation required to be deemed “notable,” especially by Wikipedia standards.

Far too often, “notable” individuals, organisations, and events from our part of the world are passed over or rejected on Wikipedia because there are no published books, scholarly references, digitised records, or publicly available and accessible records to support their existence or impact.

Wikipedia’s notability guidelines are meant to maintain editorial standards. As such, they depend a lot on what Wikipedia calls the availability of “significant, independent, and reliable sources.” Significant means the coverage of the topic must be in-depth; independent means it must not be affiliated with the subject; and reliable means it must be fact-checked and trustworthy. On the surface, this looks perfect. However, in many African contexts, those kinds of sources aren’t often available – not because people haven’t achieved “significant” things in the literal sense of the word, but because their stories haven’t been documented, or adequately documented according to Wikipedia standards.

While these African sources may, in a few cases, be truly biased, in most instances, Wikipedia’s standards are culturally biased – often tilted against African sources. When viewed through the African cultural behavioural lens of gratitude, reverence, praise, and respect, even significant documented writings are sometimes dismissed by Wikipedia as promotional.

The result is a skewed representation of Africa, where negativity is more welcome than nuance. It is often easier for African content about ignoble events to pass the review process than to approve entries that highlight noble achievements or positive contributions.

Even when a source is accepted without dispute and meets notability criteria, the subject may still fail Wikipedia’s review if it is not sufficiently covered in multiple independent sources. Often a subject needs to be discussed in depth in many independent publications to be deemed notable.

January 2024 marked a turning point for me. I had documented the biographies of two of Nigeria’s longest-serving school principals, Reverend Father Jeremiah Dermot O’Connell and Reverend Father Angus Fraser. Despite their national honours and long service, their notability was contested on Wikipedia — a symptom of the larger problem we face.

Out of the more than two million biographies on English Wikipedia, only a small fraction are about people of African origin. This underrepresentation reflects a deeper structural skew in how global knowledge is recorded online and has real consequences for how our histories are seen, preserved, and taught.

I hope it is clear why I have dwelt so extensively on Wikipedia. It is the most consulted reference source on the internet and a primary feeding ground for AI systems and search engines. Because its content is widely reused, the absence of African content there amplifies digital erasure and shapes future knowledge systems.

These digital erasures forced me to look beyond platforms like Wikipedia and confront a more uncomfortable truth: much of the silence about our stories begins at home—in our own forgotten archives and neglected scholarship. Undergraduate and postgraduate works often languish unpublished and unread, while valuable local sources remain uncatalogued and inaccessible.

The crisis facing African archives is no longer theoretical; it is existential. Irreplaceable historical documents are decaying in private homes, fragile local repositories, and abandoned institutions. Digitising uncollected African historical sources is not merely a matter of convenience — it is an urgent rescue effort to preserve voices and affirm memory.

The “great digital divide” is now also a divide of representation: between those whose stories shape global knowledge through broad digital exposure and those whose histories remain undocumented and vulnerable to distortion or erasure. Confronting this erasure became a personal calling and the impetus for founding IHS-BiRD & L.

Our Institute draws on the tradition of pioneering African historians and aims to document Nigeria’s histories digitally and make them accessible for future generations. We encourage and facilitate the research, documentation, and publication of histories, biographies, and legacies that matter — ensuring that no story worth telling is lost to silence.

IHS-BiRD & L is where history meets activism; where documentation becomes resistance, and preservation becomes power. I invite all who recognise that today’s archives will shape tomorrow’s algorithms and textbooks to join us.

Join us to document the truths of our past, shape the knowledge of tomorrow, and make sure that silence never writes our story.

Thank you.
Bem Max Nomor, FIMC, CMC, MHSN, DFIHS
Founder, IHS-BiRD & L — Updated 01 August 2025