By: Temi Bamgbose
Many people use the phrase there is ability in disability to console people who are living with disability. But a Nigerian man Julius Shemang is proving with his achievements that the phrase is no mere cliché.
Julius was not born with any disability However by the age of 16, he lost his ability to hear. Although it was a terrible blow at that time, Julius didn’t let the event weight him down.
Julius is currently a teacher, writer, publisher and disability rights activist.
After he lost his hearing, he developed a passion for reading and writing because he felt that as a deaf person, those were the only options he had to cope effectively  with the world.
He read Special education but later took up advocacy issues on the rights of the Deaf and other Nigerians with disabilities.
He started in the deaf community as Public Relations Officer. He moved on to become Secretary General and  then Coordinator for the Northwest deaf community under the regime of late Engr. Jonathan Tinat.
He went on to become the first deaf person in Northern Nigeria to establish a newspaper that is fully registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) and which serve not only the interest of the disabled but also other Nigerians  suffering from one form of discrimination or the other.
Julius is the Chairman, Joint National Association of Persons With Disabilities (JONAPWD) Kaduna State Chapter, the first deaf person to be elected  into that office in the history of the State.
He is also a member, Board of Directors of the Kaduna State Rehabilitation Management Board; Executive Interim Secretary of the African Deaf Initiative (ADI) Headquarter in Kitwe, Zambia. He is a serving Board Member of the Kaduna State Rehabilitation Management Board.
In August 2017 and on the ADI platform, he was part of the Strategic Planning Team that went to Republic of South Africa on the invitation of the Africa Federation of Sign Language Interpreters (AFSLI) to deliberate on strategies to liberate the African Deaf community.
He was part of the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) as Head, Media and Publicity when AFSLI held its first regional conference in Abuja Nigeria in May 2017.
Julius is a founding member and the Executive Interim Secretary of the African Deaf Initiative (ADI) , a Non Governmental Organisation (NGO) established in 2015 and registered under the Laws of the Republic of Zambia. ADI exists to advocate for Deaf people human rights and inclusion in Africa.
Politically minded Julius was a contender for the office of the Nigerian National Association of the Deaf (NNAD) in 2016 during the last national convention held in Benin City, Edo State which produced Alhaji Saka Dagbo for a second term.
Despite all his achievements, Julius has remained humble and focused on helping the deaf community and all other people living with disability to stay true to their course, proving with every achievement that there is ability in disability.
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