UBEC Act Leaves Out Children With Disabilities- JONAPWD President
The Albino Foundation Public Notice
By Our Reporters
The president of Joint National Association of Persons With Disabilities (JONAPWD) in Nigeria, Miss Ekaite Umoh has described the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) Act has not been favourable to children with disability as it is not accessible.
Umoh who spoke during an interview via zoom with Inclusion Magazine also raised concerns over the institutionalization of schools for persons with disabilities.
Her words, “we have this Universal Basic Education Act which says free and compulsory education, but looking critically at the Act, we saw that the Act is implemented in such a way that does not cover children with disabilities.
“Now, this is not to say that the Act is obviously discriminating against students with disability, but the Act says free and compulsory education, you will agree it’s free and compulsory but not accessible.
“It is free. It is compulsory, not accessible that automatically excludes children with disability from taking advantage of the Universal Basic Education Act. So if it is free and compulsory and it’s not accessible. So, how will these children learn?
Speaking on the issues of institutionalizing the education of children with disabilities, the JONAPWD president noted that labeling schools with the handicaps of the children has not helped them fully integrate into the society adding that most of these schools are not adequately funded to cater for the needs of these children.
She said, “the system tends to institutionalize education of children with disabilities, meaning that they, create separate institution just to educate children with disabilities.
“You have school for the blind, deaf, school for the handicap and all those kinds of labeling. And over time we have come to find out that these schools are grossly under-funded and they don’t even deliver quality education.
“Most times they are even very far away from the city center very, very far from the state itself, maybe located somewhere on the highway in between two States or in-between states.
“The curriculum is such that it’s just looking at how to fix the child with a disability, not really allowing this child with disability, to socialize with his/her peers”.
“Again, if you look at the statistics of out of school children in Nigeria, you see that we have over 3 million out of school, children with disabilities. We have the highest population.
“Is it because student with disability has refused to go to school or they can’t learn? But the answer is just that society wasn’t just ready for their education because they’ve institutionalized it.
“Now when you bring together all children with disabilities, you will find out that those separate schools or those special schools still will not be enough to accommodate the number of children with disabilities that we have.
“So where would the rest go to? Must they go to school for the handicap or whatever? Why can’t they go to mainstream schools, where they can learn and play with their peers and develop some kind of social capacity?
