The Clement Abonyi Foundation, in collaboration with South-West Association of the Deaf (SWAD) has commenced a training for Southwest Deaf leaders on use of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) to achieve leadership skills.
The 3-day event themed: “Repositioning South-West Deaf Leaders Towards Achieving Sustainable Development Goals In the Post COVID-19 Era” held in Abeokuta. The training is the foundation’s way of giving back to a community its founder has gained so much from.
In his welcome address, the Executive Director, Clement Abonyi thanked the organisers and SWAD for collaboration to ensure the event’s success.
He expressed hope that at the end of the training, participants will gain adequate knowledge and use the experience to make big differences in their leadership back home.
The Senior Special Assistant (SSA) to Governor Kayode Fayemi on Disability Matters, Mr. Tunde Ogunrinde urged the leaders to imbibe the culture of making requests in-line with SDG.
He said “it’s important for leaders to understand the importance of using sustainable development goals plans to achieve results.
Ogunrinde says, “whenever I want to make request from my state government, I always apply international best practices with the use of SDG to get my requests approved.”
Chairman of SWAD, Sulaimon Akinremi advocated for 5 per cent reservations for PWDs in compliance with the National Disability Rights (Prohibition) Act, 2018.
Akinremi notes: “the CBN, Bank of Agriculture and several other organizations give loans to farmers annually, he went on to query why no leader in the community made request of 5% reservations for people with disabilities.
He called on deaf leaders to use the knowledge gained on SDG to improve their leadership potentials.
Also speaking was Dr. Tola Odusanya, a chief lecturer and founder T.O.L.A foundation. Odusanya pointed out that one area where deaf leaders failed to deliberate on is the use of SDGs to benefit sign language users.
He urged the leaders to organise programs to analyse and come up with ways they could use SDGs to harmonize sign language.
According to him, We need to learn what’s involved in the SDG and analyze it in connection to sign language. We should think of ways we can benefit from the goals and use it to improve our lives.
Mr. Bamidele Raji, another chief lecturer blames Deaf leaders for failing to demand for their rights.
Raji says, “if government present employment opportunities, and nobody from the community makes request to be part of those opportunities, it’s not the fault of the government.”
“We are part of the society, what they give to others, we must also be given. It’s left for us to enlighten the government on what we want – “equal treatment.”
Deaconess (Mrs) Adedoyin Beyioku-Alase urges Deaf leaders to be patient after making requests. She notes that everybody has a problem, but we must be patient when making requests. Adedoyin however charged them to keep applying pressure while exercising patience.
Other facilitators at the event were Mr Adelani Mohammed, Barrister Prosphen Dumi, Dr Gabriel Soje, Dr Lekan Mohammed, Mrs Agatha Ugwu-Olaniyi.
Photos from the event,
