Apena, Temilola (2022)

Education is an imperative aspect of human life which takes place from cradle to grave. It determines who and what one becomes in life, it is the key to success, fame and longevity in an individual and determines the level of development of a nation. Open and distance education appears to be a good avenue for adults who are out of school for one reason or the other, the disadvantaged and the neglected to mainstream back and fulfill their life ambition or get placement at work. This article therefore seeks to examine the various ways in which the Open and Distance Learning Education has been used to address the problem of access to the right to education in Nigeria. This article also examines the essentials of Open and Distance Learning (ODL) and in particular, how Nigeria has used the ODL mode of study (through the National Open University of Nigeria) as an instrument of social justice in surmounting the challenges of accessibility to education in Nigeria. The work examines the successes and failures of using the ODL system in protecting the right of access to education. A survey research was carried out on adult learners. 120 learners were selected from across the federation through a multi stage sampling technique. Three research questions were raised. Instrument titled Access to Education Questionnaire (AEQ) was used to elicit information from respondents with reliability coefficient of 0.76. The bio-data was analysed with percentage distribution while the research questions were analysed with simple mean and standard deviation. The result showed that ODL has greatly improved the problem of access in the southern part of the country. It also revealed the importance of ODL to the people and the development of the nation. It was gathered from the result that ODL implementation has been very successful given the number of enrolment and study centres. Regardless of this revelation, awareness seem still low in some other part of the country and access is still a problem because of factors like finance, perception, computer illiteracy, internet connectivity, insecurity and epileptic power supply. It is therefore recommended that National Open University of Nigeria should still embark on different kinds of awareness campaigns to achieve more in both north and south. It is also recommended that stakeholders like government, religious bodies, NGOs, clubs and well-meaning Nigerians should invest more in open and distance learning for the development of the nation.Key words: Access, Adult learners, Open Distance Education, Human Right.