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A non-profit organisation, Ugo Edward-Dibiana Down Syndrome Foundation, has alerted President Muhammadu Buhari and the National Assembly leadership to the lack of access to adequate education and healthcare resources, lingering discrimination and stigmatisation against children living with Down Syndrome and other disabilities.
The Foundation, which stated this to mark the 2023 World Down Syndrome Day today, said the action is outright violation of the Discrimination Against Persons with Disabilities (Prohibition) Act 2018.
Down Syndrome (or Trisomy 21) is a condition in which a person has an extra chromosome. People living with the syndrome are often impacted by diverse health challenges, including internal organ defects and intellectual disability.
World Down Syndrome Day is annually celebrated on March 21 globally to highlight the peculiar challenges faced by people living with Down Syndrome and how government and the society could help to assuage their plight.
Signed by President Buhari in January 2019, the disability rights law, among other things, prohibits discrimination against anyone on the basis of disability.
The president and the legislature have, therefore, been called upon to take steps to ensure compliance to the law, by compelling relevant government agencies to escalate enlightenment and sensitisation about the provisions of the law across the nation to promote compliance and curb discrimination against people with disability.
This charge was informed by the persisting discrimination and stigmatisation (by both public and private institutions) and cultural and social prejudices against children living with disability in Nigeria, despite the law that frowns at such insensitive acts.
This call was contained in a letter to President Buhari and the leadership of the National Assembly, by Foundation, dedicated to advocacy for true inclusion, acceptance and fundamental human rights of children living with Down Syndrome and other such children with (learning or physical disabilities), categorised under ‘special needs’.
According to the Foundation, access to quality education and adequate healthcare resources have remained a daunting challenge for children living with special needs in Nigeria.
Co-founder of the Foundation, who is also a parent of a child living with Down Syndrome, Edward Dibiana, in a statement in Abuja, yesterday, said: “Despite this law which was supposed to protect the interest of people living with disability, parents of children with special needs still experience difficult and distressing challenges in getting schools to accept their children or wards, as many schools in Nigeria still reject these children on account of their conditions. That’s a sad example of obvious discrimination that the law prohibits.”
