By Joy Baba-Yesufu
Persons With Disability (PWD)in Abuja has called on the federal government and governments at all levels to give them the five percent reservations to them as stated in the disability act 2018.
They said the disability act 2018 gave provision that five percent be reserved for PWD in government, employment and ant other interventions but unfortunately all these good policies are just ther and not being implemented.
Ms. Rose Daniel, project officer of Disability Inclusion in Governance (DIG) state this at a training on DIG organized by Cedar Seed Foundation in Abuja.
She said this capacity training was put together by the foundation to sensitise women, youths, PWD on inclusion in governance adding that they have the right to vote and be voted for despite having physical challenges.
Ms. Daniel said “PWD representation in governance is at a zero level in Nigeria and that is why we are calling on the government to include us base on the section which states that said no one should be left behind unfortunately in Nigeria we are far left behind; we are just like third class citizens of this country which is not supposed to be.
“This project seeks to call on the government, to include us, to give us our right. We are not strangers in this country, we are citizens. We participate in voting for them, whenever they are contesting, they will seek for votes from us and we will vote them and when they get what they want, they will just forget about us.
“This is a clarion call to the government to include us and give us our right, that five percent reservation is our right. We have people that have great potentials to become minister, senior special assistant, director generals of different agencies and we want them to include us and the right time is now”.
Also speaking at the training, a team member of the project, Oluwaseun Eyalonibu said PWD have overtime being marginalized in cases of electoral processes adding that when you go to some polling units you will see that there is no provision made for PWD.
She said the list that we have, PWD are not included. “It is a believe that this person really are not qualified to lead them so we are advocating that we are also able. We all have the ability to do or stay in position of power so we are also advocating that government should give PWD the opportunity to come into power and also play their own quota in making Nigeria better” she noted.
