House Committee Commits To Full Implementation Of Disability Act

By JAMES KWEN, Abuja 

The Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Disability, Hon. Bashir Dawodu has pledged the commitment panel to the full enforcement of Persons with Disability Act.

Dawodu also has said efforts are ongoing to re-enact the Act as there is a huge lacuna in it that amendments alone will not address all the challenges.

The lawmaker said this at a media parley to mark World Children Day, focusing on Children with Disabilities and the Disability Act 2018.

He said the Committee interacts with the conditions of PWD and that inputs of stakeholders will be collated at the public hearing for the amendment.

Dawodu also said the Child’s Right Act needs to be amended to include the concerns raised by the PWD community.

He Speaker Tajudeen Abbas has approved the use of sign language in the chambers for effective communications with PWD.

On her part, the Executive Director, Women and Girls with Albinism Network, Constance Onyemeachi said that children with albinism are first targets for rape and child trafficking.

“There is child with albinism I met in an orphanage in Kuje Area Council whose parents are still alive but the community wanted to kill the child and the parents had to send her to the orphanage.

She cannot go home, not because are parents are dead, she is seen as a taboo and cannot grow up in her community like any other child just because she was born with albinism,” she sad. 

Itodo Yusuf, a PWD said that law and its implementation is the fulcrum for rights protection.

Yusuf who is a legal practitioner said that he had observed that in all the laws in the country, the right of children with disabilities is not well spelt out.

He said that the African Union Charter on Persons With Disabilities come with elaborate provisions but the Nigerian Child Right Act, which is a product came with limitations.

“In section 16 of the Child’s Right Act, it talks about special measures for special children or children with special needs. But it comes down to say, whatever provision that will be made for them would be subject to availability of funds.

“That limitations is a big problem for us, we need to visit that provision particularly the sub-section 2, we need to remove that limitation on funding. This is Nigeria, there are resources to go round, if other children can be catered for, child with disabilities or special needs should also be catered for,” he said.