A person with physical disability member of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Peter Gwer, has donated 50 sets of wheelchair to other persons with physical disabilities.
He also constructed ramps for them to walk freely.
Gwer, who spoke with The Nation in Makurdi, Benue State, said as someone on a wheel chair himself, he knew what it means to be person with physical disability.
He said: “I have taken it upon myself to alleviate the hardship of people who cannot move around for the sake of their disability because I’m physically challenged too.
“Our society does not care enough for the persons with physical disabilities. They are the poorest in our society not because they want to be poor.
“Physically challenged persons cannot get decent jobs; not because they cannot work. But these and other hardships we suffer are because our society erroneously feels that a disability in the leg equals a disability in the human mind. So, they deny the physically challenged persons opportunities.”
The wheelchairs he donated and the Ramp pathways he constructed at the NYSC, INEC and Makurdi Local Government Secretariats, he said, are things a person with physical disability needs to do everything a person with feet does.
“We don’t need your pity,” he said. “Rather, stop discrimination and create an enabling environment for us.
“ Let us have access to all the offices and every opportunity like every other person. Then watch us recreate the imbalance in the society.”
Peter, a polio survivor, added: “I never walked. I envied people that walked, but that was before I got my first wheelchair donation from a secondary school teacher in 2012.
“Before then, I crawled from home to school and crawled back home under the scorching sun.”
He said although the environment did not make using a wheelchair easy then, he never felt different from the other students.
Gwer with state code BN/21B/1508 served at the Benue State Independent National Electoral Commission secretariat where the wheelchairs were distributed.
He described his service year as a privilege he would live to always remember.
Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom, represented by the Senior Special Adviser to the governor on Disability Matters, Mr. Issac Nor; the NYSC State Coordinator, Mr. Abe Dankaro, and INEC’s Administrative Secretary, Mr. Abdulwahab, eulogised Peter for being a good example others can emulate, adding that posterity would not forget his kind gesture.