FG To Prioritize Enrollment Of Out of School Disability Children Into Schools
The Albino Foundation Public Notice
By Oliver Nweke
The Executive Secretary of the National Commission for Persons with Disabilities, Mr James Lalu has revealed that the federal government has commenced aggressive campaigns to re-enroll out of school children especially those with disabilities back into schools.
The NCPWD boss was speaking at a 5 Day Workshop On Curriculum Development On Disability And Inclusive Development organized by National Commission for Persons with Disabilities.
Lalu added that President Muhammadu Buhari had given them a mandate to enforce the rights of persons with disabilities and to prepare an enabling enviroment to implement the act.
He explained that the President had ordered that the national commission for persons with disabilities should make educational attractive for persons with disabilities.
His words, “This is the beginning. When the minister for humanitarian affairs has been given the task of ensuring that out-of school children, are returned to school. When she received that mandate from the president, the next thing she did was to invite the management of the national commission for person with disabilities.
“She asked how many out of school children are with disability in Nigeria, and how are we going to return this out of school children with disabilities back to school. If you look at this, this is a very, very heavy mandate. We have millions of children with disabilities on the street today, we have millions of children with disability out of school. And a lot of them want to go to school”.
He added that to make education attractive the commission alongside its stakeholders will be reviewing the curriculum for persons with disabilities to ease the burden of education.
“Our intention for planning this program is tied to section 18 of the discrimination against person with disabilities prohibition 2018 session 18 sub section two which specifically give us the power to be able to review our own curriculums and find ways to include disability and inclusive development in what we are teaching our students in the university”, He said.
“Teaching our students in the schools would be the basis for us to be able to eliminate discrimination from the root, which is becoming too rampant in the society. There is a way that we must be able to harmonize ours interest with the academia, to see what we can be able to do, to be able to correct this type of attitude, as we gather here today”.
“We are here to develop some minimum curriculum approach for us to be able to forward it to the regulatory bodies so it can be achieved”.
“Once we are able to develop this curriculum, the next is to forward the curriculum to the University Commission for consideration and approval, and subsequent adaptation by our universities”.
Earlier Prof. Ajekomoya Julius a Lecturer from the University of Ibadan said that the commission has done quite well in implementing some of its programmes within its one year in office and if given the necessary support can do much more.
“I like to state that this assignment is coming at the very appropriate time. For many of us in academia. We will know that for the past eight months, the national university commission has been organizing curriculum review program, putting all, all things together, all courses together and not just review the old ones, but also bringing new.
“I’m so happy to know that this commission has now proposed to take disability education to all Nigerians in everywhere. I think that’s a very commendable thing at all”.
Dr. Iquo Okon who represented the executive secretary of the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE) observed that this is a giant stride by NCPWD.
He added that the NCCE already has a program for special needs education saying, “the curriculum we draw for them is totally inclusive and will not relentless effort at this. And also want to believe that when after this curriculum review, it’ll be equally sent to our commission so that we also see where there is lapses, and we include it in our own curriculum equally”.
The National President of the Nigeria National Association Of The Blind, Mr. Isaq Adamu commended the leadership of the commission for the exemplary leadership in handling the affairs of the commission.
“We are one. And he’s thinking just like the movement, today we are having another milestone towards the inclusion of person with disability, with the development of the curriculum. We are going to ensure that we catch these young people, right from the beginning, to the university’s, tertiary institution, to understand what disability means, what is inclusion and how they can promote inclusion of person with this disability in Nigeria.
“1.5 million persons with disability, are slowly coming back to the mainstream of the society life with this kind of policies and program, we are very sure we can become productive. We are no longer a liability to the community”.
Dr. Juliana R. Bodang of the University of Jos called for the involvement of all Nigerian Universities into the programme, saying, “the executive secretary has approached some universities, but I would love it to go around all the universities.
“So that at the end of the day, every individual that finished from any university or colleges of education will have some kind of knowledge about persons with disabilities. They are part and parcel of us in the mainstream of the country”.
