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•With a special school set for launch in Nasarawa, it’s a new dawn for persons living with disabilities, others
For Hammamatu Isa, a physically-challenged pupil of Lafia East Primary School in Lafia, capital of Nasarawa State, the dark cloud and fears over her future have passed.
Last year, a reckless truck driver hit her as she walked to school and sped away from the scene, leaving her unconscious by the roadside. Rescued by sympathizers and rushed to a medical facility, she was lucky to survive. But she did not return home in her complete form. One of her legs was amputated.
Her dream of becoming a top flight professional crashed without hope of redemption and everything had seemingly gone blank in her world. But on Wednesday, November 15, 2017, Nasarawa State Governor, Umaru Tanko Al-Makura, breathed fresh hope into her when he visited pupils in her school while celebrating his birthday.
The governor had spotted Hammamatu standing in a corner on crutches, and beckoned on her to join him as he rode back to Government House on Shendam Road, Lafia, in company with her parents. She returned to her Tudun Kauri residence with gifts, which included a hand-pedalled tricycle and cash. She was also promised an artificial limb after a sumptuous lunch with the governor.
Two years earlier, on June 8, 2015, luck had smiled on Samaila Dantani, a physically-challenged boy aged six, who caught Al-Makura’a attention during an inspection of flood-ravaged Bukan-Sidi community on Jos Road, Lafia. Samaila not only got gifts but became an adopted child of the governor. The boy, who hails from Ashangwa community in Lafia Local Government Area of Nasarawa State, now has an educational opportunity to the peak.
However, they are just a couple lucky ones in a multitude of persons living with disabilities in Nasarawa State and across the country, an endangered species struggling daily with the loss of their pride as humans, they contend with disillusionment and resignation. In their thousands, they live in pain in their world, where many are distressed. But they now have hope.
A comprehensive special school for persons living with disabilities built and equipped by Al-Makura is scheduled to be inaugurated in Lafia next month, among other projects, by President Muhammadu Buhari, to enable them develop their skills and engage in productive ventures. Described as the first of its kind in the country, it is designed to cater for all categories of physically-challenged persons.
While two of such schools are still under construction in Akwanga and Keffi, the one in the state capital has been completed.
Located on the Lafia-Jos road, the school, with a capacity for over 1,500 students, has facilities and teaching aids to be manned by specialist staff. It also has a well-equipped clinic and laboratory to cater for the medical needs of the students, with a resident doctor, nurses and other paramedical personnel. Umaru Ladan, a physically-challenged resident of Shaabu, Nasarawa State, said the establishment of the school has ignited hope for persons with disabilities, and a manifestation of the Nararawa State governor’s passion to cater for the less privileged.
It is an uncommon gesture, which Al-Makura said was fuelled by an accident of fate that befell him in 1990. Besides, he is sad that, despite the large number of physically-challenged persons across the country, they are neglected by government at all levels and left with a heavy burden of battling for survival.
In a chat with Daily Sun, he said the plight of people living with disabilities was something every God-fearing leader ought to be concerned about.
He said: “First of all, it has been part of my propensity while growing up. I was not disabled while growing up; we did not have the misfortune of having any disabled in my family. But it touched me that one is getting all abilities for free, and somebody out there, for no reason, is befallen by such calamity. So right from my young age, I had been wondering what I could do to assist people with disabilities, to give them relief, no matter how small. It didn’t occur to me that I was also going to be afflicted by one disability or another. I’ve been hard-of-hearing since 1990 but, as God would have it, I took it in my stride and felt that was my fate. That, coupled with my love for people living with disabilities, made me to ensure that I inspire and advocate for them so that they do not feel discouraged.
“You see, the issue of people living with disability in this country is a very pathetic one. First, because if you look at the quantum of resources deployed to the governors generally and welfare of the people, you will be amazed at the infinitesimal fraction that is dedicated to serving people with disabilities, even when their number is on the increase by the day because we see disability as just blindness or physical disability. There is a range of disabilities craving for individual care or government support in terms of policy, in terms of deployment of resources to manage these disabilities, but it appears since we don’t have any disability law in the country, such leverage cannot be accessed by people with disabilities. So, their case is a pathetic one; a case of abandonment, a case of unfairness; a case of lack of equal opportunities; a case of discrimination.”
Al-Makura further spoke on his commitment to shore up persons living with disabilities and why he established the Comprehensive Special School.
“I am looking at something that is more fundamental, more structural and institutional; that was why I decided to build a comprehensive special school for the disabled in Lafia, which has a capacity for over 1,500 students. It is called comprehensive for obvious reasons. It is not just a special school, it is a special school that caters for visual impairment, hearing impairment, for physical disabilities and a school that caters for intellectual disability, what people call autism.
“The school is also comprehensive in the sense that we will start children from infancy, to get them to know the world around them as disabled people. A blind child of six years old would be taught how to live in the world of the dark because that is his world, so let him embrace that world at infancy stage, so also the deaf and all other disabilities. That school has kindergarten, nursery, up to senior secondary school, where graduates will have opportunities to go to higher institutions.
“We will work with all the tertiary institutions in Nigeria that offer special education. We are also into partnership with world-renowned centres for disabilities rehabilitation in the United States, like Perkins School for the Blind and others.”
These are, indeed, good times for physically-challenged persons in Nasarawa State. About two years ago, those in the state’s public service who were abruptly discharged into the labour market during a staff screening exercise had reprieve with a directive by Al-Makura for their immediate reinstatement.
Besides the physically-challenged, rural dwellers in the state say they have also been salvaged from the throes of death. Dozens of lives had, hitherto, been lost in avoidable circumstances in Nasarawa’s rural communities due to lack of primary health care facilities and manpower for the few that were available.
At a remote village in Keana Local Government Area of the state, Mwuese, a 57-year-old woman, was traumatized seven years after her only child died from a malaria attack due to lack of health care.
Amid heart-wrenching tales of avoidable deaths in the rural communities, especially of infants and pregnant women, Governor Al-Makura was said to have taken steps to reverse the trend with the establishment of about 700 primary health care facilities spread across the state in collaboration with the Federal Government’s Millennium Development Goals project.
Last year, the governor commenced construction of the pilot project of a model primary health care scheme at Kwandiri, Lafia Local Government Area of the state, to offer intermediate medical services. The facility, which is set for commissioning by President Buhari in January 2018, would be built in all the 147 wards in the state, according to the governor.
“Apart from providing general services, Nasarawa also has a higher grade of primary health care centre that would serve as a cluster centre, a centre that will coalesce activities within a particular area so that if people go for one medical service and certain things are lacking, just the next door, they will meet these cluster primary health care pilot scheme which has sophistication of activities close to a general hospital, with a laboratory and all kinds of secondary medical services in that particular zone, without having to come to a general hospital. This, we believe, will provide people in the hinterland with quality service next door. It is only when it gets beyond that level they can go to a general hospital at the local government,” he said.
Musa Elayo, the governor’s chief press secretary, said that a good number of projects have already been completed by his boss, including construction of roads, the Lafia International Market, the Kwandiri-Keffi bypass, the cargo airport, e-library and ultra- modern hospitals in Lafia, Akwanga and Nasarawa Eggon, among others.
