 The Nigerian Association of the Blind has insisted on the domestication of the Marrakesh Treaty in the FCT and the 36 states of the country. The call was made in Abuja during its National Conventional Act and AB 2023 in Abuja. Plus, TV News correspondent Emmanuel Ehidjena completes the report. We are facing a lot of challenges in Nigeria already and with the removal of the subsidy a lot of stress has been added to Nigerian families and this is more double to people who are blind and visually impaired Nigerians. We are facing a lot of challenges. Our course of transportation affects us the more because we cannot go to work alone. We need somebody to take us. So it means we are providing two transportation for two people, four on front. If somebody is complaining for double transportation, for us it's like time is four of that because we are paying for two people. If you are going to school the same thing, work the same thing, any small thing you want to do the same thing. So it's going to affect our social, economic and our educational life. So we are appealing to the government now that there is an effort between the Nigerian Labour Congress and the government to form a committee that will look into the effect of the subsidy removal. So they should consider including a representative of persons with disability into that committee so that our issue will be adequately addressed so that at least some palliative will be provided for our people, for those who are working and for those who are unemployed within the community nationwide. Stakeholders and government representatives all agree on the impotence and domestication of Marrakesh Treaty. They say it will help to give blind persons access to learning aids to improve their learning skills. Good news to say that we have domesticated the Marrakesh Treaty with the signing into law of the Copyright Act on the 17th of March 2023. Like you know the Marrakesh Treaty, the name comes out of the negotiation that was concluded in Marrakesh, Morocco in a bid to provide blind and visually impaired persons with access to learning and written materials. It's an attempt by the international committee to end what they call the book farming because it's understood that less than 10% of the books and reading materials available in any library are accessible to the blind. And you can imagine what that would be in the developing country like Nigeria where we believe that maybe less than 1% is available for the blind. So it means that for every school you go to where you have a hundred books in the library, maybe only one book will be accessible. In some cases, in some cases no book is available for the blind to read. And under the old Copyright Act there was provision for reproduction of books or materials in Braille. We have a lot of cases today on our table that has been reported across the 36 states of the federation about discrimination on the rights of persons with disabilities. Our partnership with the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence and the Nigeria Police is yielding very very positive results that enable us to access and solve some of these problems. Some of these problems are there on the table which we are working on to make sure that we address the challenges for persons with disabilities to be free in their own community. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.