Nigerians with visual disabilities on the street to mark the International White Cane and Safety Day 2019
To verify the governor's claim, the reporter contacted the principal of the Nigeria Farmcraft Centre for the Blind, Mohammed Shuaibu Afegbua, who made it known that no student attended the centre in 2018, not even in 2017. That is an estimate from an old study though. For over a decade now, just one national blindness and visual impairment survey has been carried out across the country.
The beggars have not come to observe the Jumat prayers. Rather they would wait patiently for the worship to end, and the scramble for the day's Zakat, the Islamic form of religious alms-giving and show of benevolence to the needy, would begin. “It has to be so because the phone obviously is not designed to enable a visually impaired person receive calls or identify his callers,’ he explained.“
Ahmed is not alone in the dark about the option of rehabilitation and assistive technology available to enable him live an independent life. So is Isaac Olayinka, a blind clergyman at the Christ Apostolic Church in Ibadan who also relies on others every day to enable him navigate the crowded Ibadan roads and elsewhere he goes to preach.
That is in addition to a combination of depressing geographical, financial, and personal hurdles which constantly stand between this vulnerable community and the rehabilitation they need to be independent. “Unfortunately, Nigeria is yet to come to term with this social model of rehabilitation. And that’s why the traditional model of rehabilitating the visually impaired continue to fail us.”
“He was born blind, so I didn’t know anything could be done to get him an education. But by the time I heard about Pacelli School for the Blind in Lagos, they were not willing to take him again,’ he told the reporter. Part of the implementation problems is the scanty number of rehabilitation centres for the blind, compared to the population of persons living with visual disabilities across Nigeria, explained Nicholas Obot, Principal of the Vocational Training Centre for the Blind in Oshodi, Lagos, and National Secretary of the Braille Advancement Organization of Nigeria.
People wey get two eye dey H. So.....
If you ask me, na who i go asked?