The Executive Secretary National Commission for Persons with Disabilities, Mr James David Lalu has assured that the Commission will partner with African Polling Institute and other Stakeholders in the disability community, to protect the rights of Persons with Disabilities, to alleviate their plights in Nigeria and to further ensure their inclusion in all government programmes.
The ES made this assurance recently in Abuja during a validation Workshop organized by the API which was themed “validation for workshop on PWDs’ diagnostic tools for Institutions in Nigeria”
In his address, the ES re-affirmed his commitments to providing a baseline for inclusion and accessibility for persons with disabilities in Nigeria.
He further harped on the importance of the documents on PWDs which he also stated would help bridge the gaps between Ministries, Departments, Agencies and Persons with Disabilities in the country.
Lalu however, disclosed that the document will also assist in having unalloyed deliberations with MDAs. He also promised that the document will be put in use by the Commission in a very near future.
The ES commended API for generating the document/data and assured that it will be pushed for policy changes considering that 90% of policies in Nigeria do not have provisions for Persons with Disabilities.
“As API is helping to fill in the gaps, the Commission is gearing to put this document in action before the end of 2022” he assured.
In his response, the Executive Director African Polling Institution, Professor Bell Ihua commended the ES for taking time out of his tight schedules to be part of the validation Workshop.
Ihua futher presented five components of the workshop which include networking with NPS to gather statistics, action research component to engage scholars from six geo-political zones of the country, sexual and gender based violence among PWDs, Development of diagnostic tools capacity building for Persons with Disabilities across communities in Nigeria and what have you.
Present at the meeting with the Executive Secretary were the Ag. Director Social Integration Department NCPWD Mr Lawrence Idemudia and the Sign language interpreter NCPWD Mr Timothy Tinat.