 Hello everybody, my name is Pola Woli Lucia, Pola Shady, a librarian at Le City University in Badon, Poyostate Nigeria, and my co-author is Mr Adek Bilero Iwari Ido, he is also a librarian at Afebaba Lola University, Adrekiti, in Nikiti State Nigeria. Two of my presentation is equity in inclusiveness and accessibility of open education in Nigeria. The outline of the presentation we have objectives, introduction, open education in Nigeria, equity of open education, inclusivity in open education, open education and the physical challenge, importance of open education accessibility in Nigeria, challenges of open education in Nigeria, conclusion and recommendation. What are the objectives of this presentation? One, further understanding of open education. Two, more knowledge on equity of open education, better understanding of inclusivity in open education in Nigeria. Awareness of difficulties encountered by the physically challenged in access to open education, understanding of some of the problems of open education in Nigeria. Introduction. What is open education? When we say something is open, it means it is free, not closed, not covered, and it is not restricted. Education is the act of teaching and learning to impact knowledge. Therefore, open education is the making of teaching and learning or educational opportunity available and accessible to all. In Nigeria, open education is available and accessible to the rich, poor, vulnerable, the physically challenged, male and female, single, married, young and old, irrespective of their geographical location. It means open education eradicates barriers to learning. It allows equal access to open educational resources in any format. E.g. husband, lesson or lecture notes. Open education also allows flexibility in learning and makes learning a learner centre. And when we say open education is a learner centre, it means learners have right to participate in the planning. Implementation and assessment. In Nigeria, however, learner centre is relative because learners are not involved in planning and implementation. Open education in Nigeria. Before we go on with the issue of open education in Nigeria, let me talk a little bit about the country called Nigeria. Nigeria is a country in West Africa with about 216.7 million people according to statistical 2022. Nigeria is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of the Gaelic. It is divided into six geopolitical zones for easy management and administration. And the six geopolitical zones are north-west, north-east, north-central, south-west, south-east and south-south. Nigeria is also a member of United Nations Educational Scientific Organization, UNESCO. Hence, education is jamming to power development. Open education in Nigeria. Generally, there is a shift in education in that it is moving from analogue to digital, both in content and practice. However, the digital world supports open education fully. The content of open education is known as open educational resources because they are openly available and can be modified. In Nigeria, open education and distance learning are combined for completeness and to accommodate working-class people and the married women. The adaptation of open education has way from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2004 came about in Nigeria as a result of the visit of some professors to the institution. Open education allows for free resource sharing. However, these materials, though free on the internet, but many Nigerians find it difficult to access because of some steering problems such as cost of internet and data. The diagram on the slide according to Ukibukola 2013. Open education has the elements that surrounds it. We have the most, that is, massive open online courses where learning contents are delivered online. We also have the e-learning that the formalized teaching and learning via internet learning. Distributed learning is a situation whereby a particular topic can be learned several little different learning sections. The learning center education at a distance, that is, it says learners the risk of traveling from a very long distance to another place. And these learners also, they have opportunity to customize the place, the mode of lecture and time of learning. Open educational resources are online digital materials, tools or techniques. Institutional repository, electronic books and other learning materials that are freely available for download. Remains adaptation to support access to knowledge. Though the Nigerian national policy on education go for open education is provision of access to quality education and equity in educational opportunities for those who would have been denied. The truth is not all these elements are practicable as a result of digital divide and cost implication. So equity of open education in Nigeria. One of the targets of sustainable development go for is equity. What is equity? Equity involves equal quality education. It is the provision of educational facilities to all students irrespective of gender, location or status. Profession of equitable access to information in whatever format is critical to individual and national development, especially Nigeria. Equity encourages creating an inclusive environment in the institution's lives. The goal of equity is ensuring equal access to all levels of education and vocational trainings for the vulnerable, the physically challenged by year 2030. In Nigeria, however, there is no equity of open education due to problems of ICT, internet, erratic power supply and terrorism, which is on the increase, inclusivity in open education. This section considers the inclusivity issues of open education in Nigeria. However, it is important that they should be situated within the proper context of inclusive education in the country on which past researchers have reflected or aside. According to ADITO 2014, ZAID and ZAID 2017 are joined to AIC12. What is inclusive education? Inclusive education is the capacity enhancement of the educational system that guarantees the opportunity of full school experience for diverse learners groups, which include special needs for puppies and their peers without disabilities. ILO 2019 defined inclusive education as a process of transforming schools and other centres of learning to accommodate all learners, including boys and girls. In Nigeria, however, we want to talk about challenges of inclusive open education in Nigeria. There is a fundamental misconception of inclusive education to the extent of cultural and policy biases, according to ILO 2019. Culturally, children with disabilities suffer one form of discrimination or the other from the larger society, based on perceived mystic circumstances, are used to their birth or condition, thus resulting in negative attitudes towards them. Nigeria though appears to embrace inclusive education through the universal basic education programme of 1999, the operation of a number of special education schools and programmes specifically for people with disabilities appears to negate the goals of inclusive education that strive to educate all children and youth under the same living or learning environment. Inasmuch as this set of people, I mean the physical challenge, are separated under special educational programmes, it is not an inclusive education. In the same way, inclusive open educational resources is brought with the challenges of infrastructure, infrastructure is not readily available. Although freely available of open educational resources presentation to the Nigeria COVID in the educational institutions has not been adequately done. Academic Liberals who should be the prime promoters of these resources seem to lag in the uptake of open educational resources. They have also found to face daunting challenges in leveraging digital platforms to provide digital information resources such as the open educational resources to the team in consumers of information. In this respect, it built in 2022 finds that lack of formal policies to support the establishment of digital information services, lack of platform for online reference services, was cast keys in the application of digital resources and services for funding of university libraries and users, users lack of skills in the use of online resources, from difficulties for librarians in providing digital information. In fact, our interaction via interview of librarians of higher institutions in southwest Nigeria found that majority of the libraries have no special service for people with special needs, especially those with sight impairment, the visually impaired. Only two universities, the University of Ibadan and the University of Lagos Lightness have services for the visually impaired. The libraries have software readers and laboratory for the visually impaired. In another interview, we found that the Federal College of Education special for you in Ibadan. For your state, perhaps being a specialized institution for the training for special educators or for the training of the physical challenge has similar services like those two libraries. Each library has translators software. Upon request, librarians who create online resources are combating to braille for the visually impaired. Open education and physical challenge. Who are the physical challenge? This refers to any individual with a physical disability. Like from the picture, we can see some sitting on the wheelchair, some are working with sticks. This set of people are referred to as the physically challenged. And because of the physical condition of these people, they are faced with some challenges as regards open education in Nigeria. Some of these challenges are fundamental misconception of inclusive education. What is this misconception? It is that creating of special centers or special schools for this set of people, thereby they are being segregated from the normal people. And this has negates the objective of inclusive open education. We also have the challenge of discrimination, marginalization, because of their condition. Importance of open education accessibility in Nigeria. When we say open education is accessible, it means everybody can afford it. It means the resources are efficient, they are effective and they are satisfied by many people, even with different abilities. However, some of the advantages are open education has a wider coverage of learners in Nigeria. The married, the old, those that live in the remote areas can have access to this education through the use of open education distance learning. Open education has removed a lot of barriers in Nigeria. And open education as well aids development of skills that reduce poverty in Nigeria. It has exposed so many people to the world of entrepreneurship because open education in its curriculum has entrepreneurship for the learners. The open education has helped in developing skills that promote creativity and innovation, which also brings employment in Nigeria. Challenges of open education in Nigeria. There is the issue of marginalization of the physically challenged, that is the people that are not able body. What is this marginalization all about as it is a series of the misconception that this set of people probably they have connection with the evil world. Hence people are not really ready to associate with them. There is the problem of non availability of adaptive technology and specialized softwares even for this set of people. There is the problem of limited access to high speed internet. The problem there is however the problem of cost of data and erratic power supply in Nigeria. Hence it is not totally that means that is open education is not totally free for all. Since not everybody have access to electricity in Nigeria. Even some cannot afford the cost of data. According to Ajaybe Open Sacking and Shoeberson 2015, ICT integration of ICT is a problem in Nigeria. Because we have so many teachers and students who have a less ICT skin and then in accessibility to ICT infrastructure is another issue in Nigeria. There is the problem of infrastructure. The effective power supply in Nigeria does not provide an enabling environment for the use of ICT application. This has led to the damage of electronic equipment such as video recorder and even ICT equipment such as computers. When electric supply is not constant, it becomes difficult to keep high technology equipment such as computers functioning. The greatest educational problems are mostly in the remote areas where electricity supplies may be irregular or non-existent. In the rural areas most schools and homes do not have access to electricity thereby depriving them and causing a great problem in trying to utilize ICT in such locality. We have talked about the issue of lack of relevant software. Probably for the disabled people. Other problems are insecurity. If security is one of the major programs facing Nigeria presently, the issue of terrorism is on the increase. Virtually every day people are being kidnapped either for rituals or for ransom. As a result of this, many Nigerians are leaving their locality to safe in areas. Some Nigerians are presently in the camp of the terrorists. This set of people do not have anything to do with open education. The primary thing in their heart is how to be free from the camp of the terrorists. And because of the insecurity or terrorism in Nigeria, poverty is rampaging the whole nation. And if there is poverty in the country having access to open education, it is not an issue. We also have the issue of race, religion, geographical location of the educational institutions according to Benson et al., 2021. In conclusion, there is clearly a need to evolve a true open and distant education that could cater for all categories of people at all times in Nigeria. And for open education to be accessible and inclusive, we recommend therefore that the cost of resources must be affordable for students. Reduce delays in providing accessible formats. If restructure for the physical challenge be made available. That is, there should be inclusive infrastructure for open education in Nigeria. We also recommend regular special training and retraining for teachers, lecturers and librarians on capacity building so that this set of people can meet up with other teachers and librarians in the world. The national education policy in Nigeria should be reviewed to include inclusive and equitable access to open education. Thank you for listening. Thank you for listening to this presentation. Bye.