Plight Of Unemployed Physically Challenged Nigerians

Physically Challenged Persons

In October last year, the World Bank announced new poverty indices, as it defined extreme poverty as living on less than $1.90 a day. Following this new development the Bank set the poverty benchmark for Nigeria at $3.2 per day, because it falls in the category of low middle income countries. Nigeria, Egypt and India were grouped together.

For the upper middle-income countries like South Africa or Jamaica, poverty benchmark is $5.50 a day while for high-income countries; it is now $21.70 per day.

Before this new classification, the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said 112million Nigerians were living below poverty level of $2 per day. With this new classification, however, Nigerians living in poverty may have ballooned to over 90 percent of the 196 million populations.

These were terrifying numbers. The worst hit being the about 25million Nigerians living with disabilities who must compete with the able-bodied men and women for the few available vacancies in the public and private sectors of the economy. This is in a country where there are no affirmative action laws to ensure that certain percent of available vacancies are set aside for persons living with disabilities (PLWDs) as obtainable in other caring societies.

It was former World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz who said that; “People with disabilities are also people with extraordinary talent.  Yet, they are too often forgotten.  When people with disabilities are denied opportunities, they are more likely to fall into poverty — and people living in conditions of poverty are more likely to develop disabilities.  As long as societies exclude those with disabilities, they will not reach their full potential and the poor in particular will be denied opportunities that they deserve.”

Nigerian governments at all levels and the private sector are yet to come to terms with Wolfowitz’s assertion that as long as Nigeria excludes those with disabilities the country will never reach its full potential. And it is not that there are scarcity of persons living with disabilities that are academically and professionally qualified for jobs in public and private sectors of the nation’s economy. Yet this well educated Nigerians are denied job opportunities because of their physical challenges and which has nothing to do with their abilities as professionals.

Apparently out of frustration borne of the failure of successive governments to address their employment needs, educated Nigerians living with disabilities in March this year stormed the National Assembly to seek a change from the unfortunate situation they found themselves.

The PWDs who stormed the National Assembly in their numbers were protesting what they described as “marginalization in the area of employment and enlistment into the Nigerian Civil and Public Service”.

Advancing under the aegis of Association of Physically Challenged Applicants (APCA), the group accused the Nigerian government of shortchanging the disabled people during recruitments.

“We want to be engaged in the services of this nation, like every other normal persons. We want to also receive normal salaries like others in the society.

“We are all graduates in our association, we are dying everyday of hunger, we are tired of living like this. Let the government give us job or we die here”, God’stime Onyegbulam, leader of the group had told reporters.

He said the protesters were not ready to go home until the lawmakers assured them of favourable considerations in job placement and recruitment.

He said the group had been to the National Assembly last year where a member of the House of Representatives gave assurance that the ,”marginalization” would be addressed. Despite the protests the federal lawmakers are yet to address their demand for jobs.

If there are no jobs for professionally qualified physically challenged Nigerians, it is then best left for the imagination what the physically challenged Nigerians with little or no education are passing through. This category of PLWDs is found mostly in the rural areas or in urban slums as beggars. Others live only on handouts from passersby on the streets of major cities where they are barely tolerated by environmental authorities. That is why the recent decision of the ITF to train some physically challenged Nigerians in this category is very commendable.

LEADERSHIP newspaper had reported that about 120 physically challenged persons have benefited from skills training and empowerment programme of the Industrial Training Fund (ITF) across the country. According to the report the director general of ITF, Sir Joseph Ari in Kaduna, said that the programme is part of the 2018 implementable programmes aimed at equipping many Nigerians with skills for employability and entrepreneurship in line with the policy direction of President Muhammad Buhari’s administration.

The director general said the objective is to provide technical and vocational training to physically challenged Nigerians in different trades and crafts, adding that nine out of every 10 persons with disability in the country live below the poverty line.

"In most societies including Nigeria, any major disability renders an individual more vulnerable to poverty in view of several factors-some of which are cultural while others stem from the absence of policies that would have ensured that they thrive as any normal person.

" We believed that equipping the physically challenged people with skills will strengthen them socially and economically", he said.

According to him, the training commenced in August this year with 120 participants drawn from Bayelsa, Kaduna, Nasarawa, Osun, Plateau and Taraba states. He said the participants were trained in footwear making, phone repairs, lady's wig cap making and manual clothes design and embroidery. ITF also presented startup packs to the beneficiaries to enable them start business immediately.

While the figure of 120 trained physically challenged Nigerians is too small given the enormity of the challenge and the number of physically challenged Nigerians estimated at 25million, it is a step in the right direction. The federal government should be encouraged to provide more funding for ITF so that it can train more PLWDs and rescue them from the shackles of poverty.

The federal government and the National Assembly should do more by ensuring the signing of Nigeria Disability Bill into law for the sustainable welfare of PLWDs.

In February this year, the President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, in Abuja said that the National Assembly would transmit the Disability Bill to President Muhammadu Buhari within 30 days for assent.

Saraki made the assertion when the “Kapakpando Foundation”, a non-governmental organisation, led by its Chairman of Board of Trustees, Osita Izunaso, visited him at the National Assembly Complex.

Mr. Saraki said that the bill was supposed to have been transmitted long ago having been passed by the two arms of the National Assembly.

According to him, this bill had no business in the National Assembly because it was passed ”but I am disappointed that due to administrative bottlenecks it had not been transmitted.”

“However, may I assure you that within 30 days, this bill will be sent to the president for assent because over 95 per cent work on it has been done,” the Senate President had told his visitors.

The assurances of the Senate President were obtained nine months ago, yet the whereabouts of the bill is uncertain. However, if the bill is already with the President, he should sign it into law quickly to give a sense of belonging to Nigerians living with disabilities. And if it is still domiciled in the National Assembly, Senate President Bukola Saraki should fulfill his promise by transmitting it to President Buhari for his assent.

The Nigeria Disability Bill aims to address issues relating to the perceived discrimination of persons with disabilities in the country. Under the new Bill, a national commission is to be established for persons with disabilities and empowered to look after the education and health of persons with disabilities as well as protect their socio-economic, civil and political rights. It also prescribes fines for corporate bodies that flout the law and six months imprisonment or both for an individual who contravenes the law. This Bill if signed into law will make a lot of difference in the lives of PLWDs. The signing should not be delayed any further. It should be signed before the expiration of the tenure of the Eight National Assembly.