The Nigerian National Association of the Deaf (NNAD) has petitioned Nasarawa State Governor, Abdullahi Sule, requesting justice for discriminatory practices against students with disabilities at Government Comprehensive Special School, Lafia.
This was revealed in the petition signed by Labaran Bala, National Public Relations Officer of NNAD and made available to INN. The petition was made public two days ago and has at the time of this writing gathered 127 signatures.
The school, which accommodates three main streams, namely: the Deaf, the Blind and the Learning Disability, is located in Lafia, Nasarawa State, some 265 kilometers from Abuja the nation’s capital city.
According to the petition, the school is currently run by Mrs. Baerbel Jaja, a German lady who happens to be a longtime Nigerian resident. Although she claims to have both administrative and special education experience, this has proven to be a ruse.
To validate the petition, NNAD made the following arguments: “despite two-thirds of the pupil population being deaf, Mrs Baerbel has no knowledge of sign language and has made no attempt to learn the language in the two years she had been in the school.”
“Several parents have repeatedly lodged complaints about their children’s lack of progress in the school owing to a number of strange policies. They have thus withdrawn their children in large numbers from the school.
It is also important to note that she does not support any type of vocational skill training for the students to help prepare them for independent living.”
“Among her strange, discriminatory policies against the Deaf is barring of deaf students above age 18 from enrolling in the school. And this is despite many of the so-called ‘older’ students having never had primary school education. In effect, they are being deprived of their right to basic education.”
“Again, there’s this strange policy which disallows children playing in the school playground during break time. She even went as far as removing playground equipment with only two swings left for the entire school.”
“A glaring example of her poor handling of the children was her false accusation of a girl with learning disability of being pregnant because she had a protruding tummy. She rashly insisted the girl leave the school without verifying the cause of the big tummy. When a pregnancy test taken in the school clinic turned out negative, Mrs. Baerbel Jaja remained adamant insisting that more pregnancy tests be taken outside the school. Again, all came out negative and she reluctantly had to throw in the towel and allow the pupil stay on in the school.”
“Furthermore, owing to her poor administrative performance and unwillingness to improve teachers’ capacity, the school has lost several teachers leading to mass general demoralization amongst the staff.”
“Regular bullying and harassment of teachers in students’ presence has become the norm within the school.”
NNAD noted that the situation has been reported several times to the State Ministry of Education, however, all efforts to stop a further decline of the school have proved abortive. Consequently, the purported renewal of Mrs. Baerbel’s contract to continue running the school has met with stiff opposition.
Summarizing the petitions against the principal, NNAD wrote: “This shows injustice and gross misconduct based on discrimination and unjustifiable oppression by Mrs Baerbel Jaja against People living with Disabilities, particularly the Deaf and those in their community. We implore the Governor of the State as ultimate decision maker in this matter, to commence investigations and act promptly in order to restore the confidence of PWDs in the State Government”.
Meanwhile, NNAD said the embattled administrator has been doing everything possible to sweep her numerous indiscretions under the carpet.
The school, Inclusive News Network learnt, was commissioned by President Buhari in February 2018.
1 comment
It simply means that she is not qualified for the job since she is not ready to learn sign language and don’t have psychology reasoning I therefore suggest she should be ask to start learning more about people living with disabilities or else she should be asked to leave for the well being of staff & the parents of the students..