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By Chinyere Anyanwu and Doris Obinna
The need to ensure that over 40 million Nigerian children facing the challenge of dyslexia are not denied the right to proper educational development and career achievements formed the crux of discussions at the recent launch of the Joe Ezigbo Foundation in Lagos.
Its founder, Prof. Joseph Ezigbo, said a critical economic group in the country comprising over 40 million children is at risk of being wasted owing to lack of adequate awareness and knowledge of how to tackle the dyslexic challenge confronting them.
He said the Foundation is set to address a critical gap in Nigeria’s educational system to accommodate children with special learning needs. According to him, the foundation will engage in early screening and detection, teacher training, classroom support and parent engagement.
Ezigbo noted that the foundation will as well push for “the formulation of a policy to drive it through the House of Assembly, get the IDEAL (Individuals with Dyslexia Equity Awareness and Learning) Act that will bring it out to the open to allow the Ministry of Education incorporate it into the teachers’ training programme. But in the meantime, we are beginning to do the little we can; get the government to allow us do workshops, bringing teachers, schools, from everywhere to our workshops, so they will also begin to understand and begin to implement it in their schools.”
Narrating a personal experience with dyslexia, Ezigbo whose daughter suffered the condition, explained: “I’m trying to create awareness of the children who are silently suffering from dyslexia. I have a personal experience about this suffering. So it has carved a hole in my heart because as my daughter was growing up, I took her from hospital to hospital, scanning her head several times, not knowing what was wrong with her. Thinking it was a medical condition, I did not realise that all she needed was to be taught differently.
“Brilliant girl but failing all her exams in Nigeria. Until she got to the UK, and the advice was that she was dyslexic, and they controlled it. Today, she has two master’s degrees, and she’s working in the UK. So, I want to open a new chapter for Nigerians to begin to understand that dyslexia is not a disease. It is learning differently. Because we fail to understand how to teach them, we teach them wrongly.”
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Ezigbo called on government institutions, schools and universities, corporate organisations, development partners and civil society groups to join forces with the foundation to achieve its goals.
In his goodwill message at the event, royal father, Igwe Patrick Acholonu, the Eze of Orlu, commended the foundation’s clear practical approach in driving awareness, promoting early screening, strengthening teacher capacity, and creating structured support pathways. These, he said, “are practical steps that can sustain those significantly improved learning outcomes and boost our confidence in our students’ new lives.”
He noted that education must embrace inclusion, adding that, “by addressing dyslexia with intention and compassion, the Joe Ezigbo Foundation is helping to ensure that children’s potential is not limited by their understanding.”
Also speaking, the Eze Aro of Arochukwu Kingdom, Dr. Eberechukwu Oji, lauded the foundation for summoning the courage to confront a silent challenge that has for too long limited the potential of many brilliant Nigerian children.
According to him, “dyslexia is not a barrier to intelligence or greatness. It is simply a different way of learning. When support is provided early through awareness, detection, and tailored intervention, dyslexic minds do not merely cope, they soar.”
Dr. Oji, who traced the Foundation’s chairman’s daughter’s struggles with dyslexia in early childhood and eventual emergence as a “bright, capable, competent, extraordinary mind” said, “no child should endure such isolation when early awareness and intervention can change everything.”
He added that, “by championing awareness as the stated objective of this Foundation, early detection, teacher empowerment, and structural support, the Foundation is laying the groundwork for a more inclusive and equitable education system where no child is misunderstood, neglected or left behind.”
