President Buhari’s action of signing into law, the bill prohibiting discrimination against people living with disabilities in Nigeria, just a few weeks to the general elections in February 2019 has been described as a desperate gesture without substance.
The Civil Empowerment & Rule of Law Support Initiative, CERLSI) made the remark on Thursday in a press statement issued in Benin City Edo State.
CERLSI Deputy Executive Director, Bob MajiriOghene Etemiku said that when President Buhari was asked about that same bill on live television earlier, he gave the impression that he had not given it any thorough consideration deserving of an assent and signing into law.
“Commendable as signing the bill into law is, it remains to be seen if the president can muster the political will to push through the other aspects of the disability law. One of such aspects is the recognition that the human brain first is not an organ of sex and as the central control all sensory and extra-sensory nervous systems, discrimination on physical inability should be abhorred,” Mr. Etemiku said.
He said People with disabilities live normal lives elsewhere, and this is because systems and structures are in place to enable them function and contribute their quota to national development.
“Young people in those climes are employed as volunteers and are paid by the state to assist the PLWDs. Two prime examples of Steve Hawking and Franklin Roosevelt persist.
“Stephen Hawking, author of A Brief History of Time, was an English theoretical physicist who directed research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge from a wheelchair at the time of his death, while Roosevelt lifted the American people from despair and depression from his wheelchair after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.
“Our nation and indeed our politicians must cease playing poker with PLWDs, cease relegating us to the backwaters of society, the economy and all political activity. Politicizing the interests and needs of PLWD will not help; rather what would help is first a massive enlightenment campaign against discrimination against PLWD.
“Second of all Nigeria must begin to make plans for the empowerment of PLWDs by factoring the creation of an enabling environment into federal and state budgets,” Etemiku said.
