The captivating news coming from the newly established National Commission of Persons with Disability is that the President Muhammadu Buhari led administration is going to empower 50,000 persons with disabilities through its Conditional Cash Transfer with a view to mitigating their plight very soon. The newly appointed Executive Secretary of the commission, Mr James Lalu, disclosed this at a press conference in Abuja.
In fact, the PMB government should be commended for this gesture, especially at this time when the COVID-19 pandemic has added to the untold hardship faced by this group as 98 per cent of them are currently struggling.
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Indeed there are millions of PWDs in Nigeria, especially young women and children that deserve more attention and economic empowerment as they are suffering from discrimination, lack of access to basic necessities of life, abandonment, sexual assault and other challenges. Some of them are entirely fed up with their lives because of the negative attitude of society towards them.
According to the WHO’s World Disability Report of 2011, approximately 15 per cent of Nigeria’s population or at least 25 million people are living with disability. The Department of Economic and Social Affairs Disability (UN DESA) has also pointed out that girls and women of all ages with any form of disability are generally among the more vulnerable and marginalised of society.
I, therefore, appeal to PMB to increase the number of PWDs that will benefit from the gesture from fifty thousand to one million. The federal and state governments should also resuscitate abandoned skills acquisition centres for PWDs, while establishing more. Those skills will enable disabled persons either women or men, to earn money on their own without begging on the streets.
I also call on members of state Houses of Assembly that are yet to pass the law on disability to do so as soon as possible.
Mustapha Baba Azare,
Bauchi State
