When Jamiu Jubril, 23, gained admission to study English at a university in north-central Nigeria, he knew little of the uphill task he was about to embark on for the next four years. Being a blind student, the journey was steeper than initially envisaged and on many occasions, he was broken.

A major hurdle Jubril had to overcome was getting his hands on accessible format copies to make learning possible for him. Only 1 - 7% of the world’s published books make it into accessible formats and in Nigeria, disability rights activists estimate this number to be less than 1%. 

Conversion of books into accessible digital formats for visually impaired people is illegal according to extant copyright laws in Nigeria. If Jubril, like many other visually impaired people, was to make an accessible digital copy for himself through scanning or other means, he could face legal consequences.

But there is a solution. Nigeria is a party to an existing United Nations treaty; The Marrakesh Treaty which was signed in 2013 and ratified in 2016 in Morocco. 

What this treaty aims to achieve is to create exemptions for extant copyright laws in order to allow blind and visually impaired people like Jubril to convert books and other reading materials into accessible formats while also protecting the rights of the copyright holders. 

The treaty has equally been ratified by Nigeria’s Federal Executive Council since 2016 but has not been presented before the National Assembly to be passed into law despite the efforts of the Nigerian Association of the Blind. 

Not domesticating this treaty into law creates a humanitarian crisis for blind and visually impaired people and we must all work to ask the Nigerian government to do the needful. 

Please sign this petition to demand domestication of the Marrakesh treaty to allow blind, visually impaired, and print disabled people to convert works into accessible formats without legal repercussions.