By Ibrahim S. Adam
Our Sign Language is a unique language in the culture of Deaf community anywhere around the World. Its unique is in the facial expressions, fingers/hand, body movements and gesture.
It got me thinking why is it that too hard to learn Sign Language or included in Nigerian curriculum as a compulsory course for everybody regardless. A language that is very easy to learn within minutes or hours where as normal language like Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo and other takes too long to understand.
Well, with the recent ugliest trending of discrimination and unequal treat my good brother Richard Ezekiel and Barrister Catherine Chi Edeh faced with financial institutions and Dana Airlines respectively, I promoted and encouraging people to embrace our language as a way to end of barriers in communication gap between Deaf and hearing. Including government MDAs, Organisations, Businesses, health, job and scholarship opportunities etc.
I have it with Hearing people often assume that Deaf people would naturally want to take advantage of any method that could lead them to the hearing world. In reality, that assumption is far from true.
According to Nyle DiMarco a US Deaf model said as I quoted “We have our own culture, our own community. A lot of people don’t realize that. They just assume that Deaf people are very unfortunate, very disabled, but no”.
This literally life is unfair, you should never judge a person until you hear his own side story. I am Deaf with a capital “D” which many people don’t believe in until I have to convince them, I have my own miserable side story about my Deafness and how I found myself in a world of discrimination, injustice and unequal treat. A world that paints us to look like criminal for being a Disability.
I call on our government, and other stakeholders to create an awareness and promote Sign Language, provide accessibility and other assistive technology for the Deaf and other PLWDs as well as pregnancy women as a way to end discrimination since technology is cheap.
Though we have been calling, crying, demonstrating and protesting for our Rights to be protected, we won’t stop there until our demand meets. Our fight is for posterity.
#Learn_by_heart_not_because_it_is_cool_and_fun