Mary Ekah
12 November 2009
Lagos — As efforts are being made by individuals and various organisations to make life easier for people with disabilities, there is an urgent need to integrate this segment of people into the larger society.
This is by providing them with amenities that would make life easier for them in all sectors of the economy.
About 25 million Nigerians are estimated to be living with one form of disability or the other. Overwhelming majority of them do not have access to facilities that can enable them conduct their day-to-day activities without significant difficulties. For instance, literacy rate among people living with disabilities is significantly lower than those without any form of disability. As it would be imagined, without facilities to aid their mobility, many are unable to attend school like their peers who are able-bodied due to certain inadequacies in the society in which they find themselves.
It was therefore on this note that persons with disability clamoured for accessible environment and integration into the larger society during a sensitisation seminar for the Disability Support Project (DSP) organised by the MTN Foundation. The DSP by MTN Foundation aims to support people living with disabilities by provision of mobility aids and appliances to improve accessibility and functionality as well as create an enabling environment for them in eleven states across the federation, including the Federal Capital Territory under its phase one.
Speaking at the event, the President, Mobility Aid and Appliances Research and Development Centre (MAARDEC), Mr. Cosmas Okoli said accessible environment is one that all people, particularly people with disabilities can use freely without hindrance.
He therefore urged that in designing and construction of buildings, roads and indeed every infrastructure and facilities as well as provision of services, effort should be made to ensure that as much as possible, no one is left out.
"The physical environment can be made accessible to the greatest number of people with facilities like lift ramp where there is a step or steps, covering of drainages, Braille prints on lift control panels, display of routes on taxis, buses and trains, clear street names and directions, clear roads signs and marking, low counters for wheelchairs users and dwarfs in banks and other public places. Others include ensuring that entrances to banks and other public places are wide enough. Where metal detector doors are used, it must be manned by competent personnel who can temporally disable the metal detectors for disabled people," Okoli said.
He explained further that in design and construction of roads, building and other infrastructure, if these accessible facilities are incorporated at the design and construction stage, there is usually very little additional cost and sometimes cost could be saved.
Speaking further on his personal experience, Okoli said for someone with disability to go to school, learn a trade, go to work, go to the market and live a normal life, he should be able to move decently from one place to the other.
"I remember vividly my childhood experience as someone with disability when I was only four and half years old. Being lucky to have come from a family where I was not discriminated against, so when my elder brother started school, my father did not know I could cope with school because at that time I was crawling with my toes. There were no wheelchair and clutches because we just came out of the Nigerian Civil War. And I demanded that it was my turn to start school and my father did not know how he was going to do it.
"All the same, he took me to school. The first day I arrived at school and crawled into the classroom, nearly half of the pupils in class ran away from the class because the kids were shocked seeing someone crawling on the toes to class. Their reaction was very shocking, I was like fish out of water and that only would have sent me out of the school, but I had so much determination to go to school coupled with the fact that I came from a family where I was treated like every other child.
"So I did not see any difference between me and other kids, rather I felt that something was wrong with the other kids who ran at sighting me. But somewhere along the line, because I could not have imagined myself as a teenager continuing to crawl with my toes, so luckily before I was in primary three, my father sent me to a place where I was rehabilitated and I was able to move with clutches in a more decent way and that helped me in secondary school and so on," Okoli told THISDAY.
So mobility aids for Okoli, is the starting point of empowerment of persons with disabilities. He believes that if this segment of people can move around independently with mobility aids in accessible environment, then they can go to school, learn a trade or acquire any skill of their choice as well as do business.
"We are also advocating for making our environment accessible because if you have a wheel chair and you want to get into a building that has steps it is going to be difficult. So these things should be tackled along with this project and by so doing, we would be creating awareness and sensitising the authorities on the importance of accessible environment," he said.
Okoli, who described the physical environment in Nigeria as alarmingly inaccessible to persons with disabilities, noted that in Nigeria today, public buildings and infrastructures such as schools, post offices, markets and public transport system are no go areas for persons with disabilities. He said the most worrisome part of it all is that new public buildings and infrastructures are still being built without any provision of accessibility facilities.
He however expressed hope that the MTN Foundation disability support will mark a turning point in the provision of mobility aids and appliances in the country. "The standard we are setting now will definitely guide others in providing mobility aids and appliances to disabled persons," he added.
The MTN Foundation Disability Support Project (DSP) held at the Ostra Hall & Hotel, Alausa, Ikeja, Lagos would provide people living with disabilities with 5000 MTN branded mobility aids and appliances to improve accessibility and functionality, as well as to enable inclusion of such persons in eleven states and the FCT.
The mobility aids and appliances include wheelchairs, tricycles, walking sticks, armpit crutches, elbow crutches, and guide Canes, Braille machines, Braille wristwatches and hearing aids. The project also involves provision of training for project field officers on repairs of the types of mobility aids and appliances to be distributed. The project, endorsed by the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, aims at creating awareness on the disability issues, marks the commencement of the first phase of the project.
The Executive Director, Independent Living for People, Mrs. Foluke Idowu, from Ibadan, Oyo State, said disability should be seen as a revolving issue.
"I want us to see disability as a revolving issue because even the United Nations (UN) just came to terms with having a convention with disability in the year 2006 and even during that period of developing the convention, everybody agreed that disability is a revolving issue in spite of the fact that there are over 650 million people all over the world who have one form of disability or the other.
"And maybe we should learn and know too that majority of these people live in the developing countries and Nigeria having about 25 million persons living with disability. But then as disability has always been at the margin issues, we cannot expect much presently. But the fact that people are taking action shows that we are taking the right step in the right direction. We all have to be patient with the system and we also have to be advocate.
"What I always assume is that when people discriminate against me, I assume they do not know and I try to let them know why the situation is like this and what they can do to help," Idowu said. She said majority of people do not really know how to help. She said, "some people do not know how to help a wheelchair person, how to push the wheelchair or help the person using clutches. These are all that people in the society must learn. You must also know that people with hearing impairment, for example are having a different culture from our own just like most of us do not know the sign language. Because of this, we have to pass information about ourselves and about the issues of our employments."
Idowu further explained that what they meant by inclusion is that it should not be an after thought that "when we get to a particular place or function, we then remember that there are people with one form of disability or the other and then we start thinking of how to make provision for them. And that is what we need to get society to think about, right from the moment of conception, they have to bring people with disabilities in or bring their experts in to help to know exactly what to do so that every step of society will include persons with disabilities."
Iduwo however said that persons with disabilities are looking forward to a situation where the Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development would be an expert ministry that would compel every other ministry to include people with disabilities in their programmes.
"Like the Ministry of Health to integrate our health problems and ministry of education to give individualised education to persons with disabilities and that would really portray what we mean by inclusion," she emphasised.
Speaking at the seminar, Mrs. Jummai Mohammed, representative of the Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Hajia Salamatu Hussaini Suleiman, said the seminar will provide information on the various aspects of life of people with disabilities that would help the society to live a more understanding life, while it accepts and include persons with disabilities without fear or favour or thinking it is doing them a favour rather that it is their right to live a life of dignity within the community.
She said the ministry has given out a lot of aids and appliances to people with disabilities, adding that if anyone get in contact with the ministry, especially with the rehabilitation department of the ministry, he/she would realise that a lot is being done for accessibility of people with disability. She promised that there shall be campaign that all employers would be made to know that at least two percent of their work force must be people with disability.
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