By Fortune Eromosele and Ezra Ukanwa
A group, Ferdinand Effah Music Heritage Foundation, FEMHF, has asked the federal government to consider April 2 as an official day for children living with autism also known as Autism Spectrum Disorder, ASD.
Addressing newsmen in Abuja, President of FEMHF, Stanley Effah, said that children living with autism should not be despised, adding that the set date if considered by the federal government would reduce stigmatisation.
He bemoaned poor intervention in addressing issues around the menace as well as lend a voice to children living with autism.
Stanley who is a father of an Autistic child, Ferdinand Effah, said “What inspired the setting up of this foundation is such as a result of my son Ferdinand who was diagnosed of autism at the age of 2 and he is 13 years of age now
“And over these long period of years we have been struggling trying to manage the situation and see how best we can get the best result out of well you know what autistic people what defines them even in the layman term, lacking social skills, communication skills too and if they lack such skills, you can imagine how they can fend in a world where nobody waits for you.
“So it’s been a challenge since that over 30 years and it’s quite expensive in learning from one therapy to the other and at a time we were able to track what he loves so much and it was listening to music. We decided to say okay, let’s try another thing not actually leaving the therapy we have been running over years but to focus our effort on music, which is something he desires so much.
“When he listens to music like particularly jazz music and others you see this tension and all these things, anxiety will be calm and sometimes dance to it.
“But we thought about how he loves music among several other things in this world, why don’t we try to make him play what he likes. And we decided to focus on music as a focal therapy.
“Because autistic people one of the characteristics is that they lack focus but we were able to manage music. And over time, we saw that he was developing himself and building skills and was able to develop passion more for the music, and from that passion he developed.
“We now realize several factors within like our fears what happens of him in the future if I’m not alive again, if society will not accept people like this on several other things like he doesn’t seem to have a career path to follow. But with this music now, we are convinced that we can move to convincingly say we have set the career path for him and also setting the career path for him and several other factors like discrimination against autistic people which is one of the key things why there is need for autism awareness because most people when they see them, they see them as mad people.”
On his part, a therapeutic expert on children living with autism, Ojeawere Majek, appealed to the federal government to give proper support to children living with the disability.
“I will say the government should support these children. They need financing or they should come in support foundations that have decided to take on this duty. These foundations are not just to make money but to create this awareness that autism in our society is not diabolic. These children are human beings because if we can show them love and sponsor them, they are people that can be trained,” he said.