Adebayo Adenrele
A non-governmental organisation under the auspices of the All Rights Foundation (TAF Africa) has advocated inclusive education for children living with disabilities, insisting that the era of segregating Persons With Disabilities (PWDs) into separate schools should end.According to the organisation, special schools for the deaf or blind unintentionally reinforce discrimination and social exclusion.
Speaking in Ado-Ekiti at the grand finale of its week-long activities ahead of June 20 gubernatorial election in Ekiti State under the project “Able2Vote Community Outreach for Persons with Disabilities in Ekiti State”, the Programme Manager of the project, Dr Andrew Adaji maintained that integrating children with disabilities into mainstream schools would foster equality, social acceptance and mutual understanding among citizens from an early age.
Adaji further urged Nigerians to accord persons with disabilities the respect and dignity they deserve, rather than discriminate against or stigmatise them because of their physical conditions.
Meanwhile, in its quest to ensure that Persons With Disabilities (PWDs) are deeply involved in deciding the next Governor of Ekiti State come June 20, the organisation has revealed plans to deploy 25 language interpretation experts to provide assistance for PWDs at the poll.
Adaji explained that reason for the deployment of experts, is borne out the need to make every living individual that is of the electoral age participate in the exercise without let or hindrance.
According to him, those selected for deployment would serve as interpreters at polling booths, as per the pressing need in every polling centres, adding that intensive trainings, already arranged for them, would start some days later.
His words, “It’s another great time and opportunity to meet with persons with disability and then also to have conversations around voting and then also enlightening them about their rights to vote and their rights to be voted for.
“But the major reason why we are here today is to sensitize persons with disability to come out and vote in the next forthcoming election, governorship election.
“After now, we are going to train our sign language interpreters, we’ll be training them because we’ll be deploying them to our polling units during elections; we’ve been able to map our polling units that have persons with hearing impediments so we’ll be deploying them there to assist them during the elections.
“We are doing all of these because, perhaps many Nigerians do not know, Persons with disabilities account for about 25% of Nigeria’s entire population.
“This is why we keep saying it that contrary to wide-held impression, PWDs do not need special schools again, because by doing so, you are already stigmatising them.
“Therefore, people should stop using the acronym, “School For The Deaf”, “School For The blind”, and so on.
“Rather, what we expect Governments at all levels to do, is to create the habit of putting both the PWDs and the non PWDs children in same school, but have ready teachers to teach, according to their areas of need for every child.
“I have been monitoring elections in Ekiti, marred with one form of violence or the other, but I am surprised that this is the first time I will be witnessing a peaceful pre-election period. I also hope this scenario plays out during the real election.
“On the side of God, we are all equal. Nobody must be discriminated against, because the way we look, is principally the making of God’, several millions of PWDs in Nigeria are of the voting age.
“To verify my point, currently in Ekiti, over 900 of the figures are already validated in Ekiti and many more are still not yet captured, I’m tasking others who are yet to do necessary things with INEC to do so without wasting time any further”.
Speaking with participants, Helen Ibitoye and Ebenezer Ogunlade described the programme as a wonderful initiative that has enlightened them about the unforeseen circumstances surrounding elections, especially the ones applicable to PWDs.
