Dr. Chidi Topaz Olujie, the president, Nigerian National Association of the Deaf (NNAD) has assured of his administration’s total commitment to embracing innovation in the next four years.
Olujie made the disclosure while fielding questions during an online interactions session with general members on Sunday.
When asked about his stance on innovation and its adoption, and how he will encourage innovation within the NNAD’s fold, the president says his administration has already branded itself as the only innovation-friendly administration in the history of NNAD.
He said, “NNAD embraces innovation so much. It’s very important for NNAD’s progress and growth”
” You know innovation doesn’t happen overnight; it occurs in stages. When I refer to stages, I mean starting from a conceptual idea, moving to manual testing, and then to automation”
Olujie added, “currently, we have completed the conceptual idea to manual stage, as seen in our Sign Language project conducted in Uyo, Abuja, and Kano.”
“We have developed a sign language dictionary and videos. Now, we are using this as the initial stage to drive innovation, such as developing an Nigerian Sign Language (NSL) app and partnering with telecoms to enable Deaf individuals to make calls easily and effectively through video relay service”
According to the NNAD’s president, his administration has made so much efforts towards embracing an all round innovative projects which has direct bearing to the development of the Deaf community in Nigeria. The latest of such initiative that the NNAD’s president is aiming to accomplish in the next four years if re-elected is the Video Relay Service (VRS).
The President added, “you know Video Relay Service (VRS) is one of our projects. We are waiting to launch this for the right time, as a lot of works is ongoing behind the scene regarding VRS.”