Written by Phyllis Ifeoma Jekhine
Want to start a debate at a Nigerian university or a Yaba tech hub? Skip crypto and local politics, and ask about the price of an academic paper.
Today, a single paywalled journal article or historical law report can cost more than a student’s monthly allowance, or a significant share of an SME’s research and development budget. With exchange rates favouring foreign academic publishers, knowledge now carries a luxury price tag. Our cultural and intellectual history is increasingly a subscription service, and many Nigerians are being logged out.
How do we stop foreign paywalls from locking Nigerian scholarship behind them? One answer is already in our hands: the National Library of Nigeria. This is not a story about dusty shelves and whisper-only reading rooms. It is about legal and bibliographic frameworks that can serve as a blueprint for Open Access.
The Apex Library’s Existing Tools for Open Science
The National Library of Nigeria already runs three national functions that suit an Open Access agenda.
Legal Deposit. Nigerian law requires publishers to deposit copies of their published works with the NLN. Extending this tradition to digital works, with a digital-first approach to deposit, would help build a national repository of Nigerian research that is preserved and, where rights allow, freely accessible.
The National Bibliography of Nigeria (NBN). The NBN is the master index of Nigerian publishing. Published as open metadata, it would let anyone, from a scholar in Kano to an app developer in Lagos, discover and build on local works without paying licensing fees for the catalogue data.
ISBN and ISSN Registration. As the national agency issuing these international identifiers, the NLN gives Nigerian books, policy papers and journals their passport to the world. Well-managed identifiers and metadata are a foundation for making our research FAIR: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable.
Preservation Needs Access
There is a lingering idea that preserving culture means keeping rare texts, indigenous knowledge and local research in a climate-controlled vault, out of reach of the public. But preservation without access only half does the job. Heritage that nobody can consult cannot inform, inspire or be built upon.
When public institutions, publishers and innovators embrace Open Access through national library schemes, they do more than cut research costs for businesses and students. They keep our story ours. A nation that cannot afford access to its own research risks having its history written, and sold back to it, by others.
The Bottom Line
Open Science is not an academic luxury for Nigeria; it is an economic and cultural necessity. By developing our national library functions into open digital platforms, with respect for copyright and author rights, we can democratise memory, support local innovation, and show that our national heritage belongs to every Nigerian, not only those who can pay the subscription fee.