A cross-section of people with disabilities (PWDs), on Monday, converged in Abeokuta for a workshop to amend the disability law in Ogun for speedy implementation.
At the two-day workshop, Abdulwahab Matepo, interim National President, Spinal Cord Injuries Association of Nigeria (SCIAN), decried the non-implementation of the law in Ogun.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that former Gov. Ibikunle Amosun signed the disability bill into law in 2018, providing for the full integration of persons with disabilities into society.
According to Matepo, it is unfortunate that Ogun, one of the first states in the South-West to sign the bill into law, is yet to implement it.
He said this and many other reasons brought the cluster together to brainstorm the needed amendment to the law.
“We discovered that Ogun is the only state in the South-West that is not implementing any disability law whatsoever.
“We looked back and discovered that Ogun even signed the law before the federal government in 2019; Ogun State signed it in 2018.
“However, we’ve been told the law is not implementable; it’s copy and paste and needs to be amended, but nobody is doing anything; everyone is just giving excuses.
“We know that the government does not give the people their rights freely; you have to demand it, and that’s why we came up with this advocacy: to sit down and do the amendment ourselves as persons with disabilities because we wear the shoe and we know where it pinches,” he said.
Matepo said the association decided not to toe the line of a legal battle with the government as advised by its lawyer.
He, however, expressed hope that the law would be speedily implemented after the review and amendment.
“When the argument was that the bill signed into law had not been implemented, our consultant, who is a lawyer, advised us to take the government to court.
“For instance, the law says we’re entitled to a disability allowance, and the government has not paid.
“Let’s go to court and tell them Ogun State is owing us X amount of money according to the disability law, and then we can argue it out in court.
“But we felt we shouldn’t take that approach because there are issues we can use to convince the government to make them change their mind,” he said.
Matepo said after the review, the association would seek an audience with the state actors and stakeholders to fashion out ways to implement the law.
Also, Dr. Michael Ebohon, Chairman, Joint National Association of Persons with Disabilities (JONAPD), stressed the need for the government to domesticate the law in Ogun.
According to Ebohon, the state has no fewer than 900,000 people living with disabilities, lamenting that their welfare and aspirations have stagnated since 2018.
He argued that the Ogun disability law remained one of the best documents because it provided the payment of social security benefits for vulnerable people.
This, he said, was enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities.
Nevertheless, he wondered why the government would take such a long time to implement and domesticate the law.
In his presentation, the consultant to the association, Yusuf Iyodo, noted it was the constitutional right of PWDs to enjoy every aspect of the law.
According to Iyodo, a legal practitioner and the technical assistant of Optimum Accessibility Resources Ltd., the law is not bad.
“Hence, it is implementable,” he said.
He thanked the former administration for signing the bill into law, thus complying with international best practices.
He also urged the present administration to implement the law on getting to its table after the amendments.
“That a particular clause in a law is bad does not nullify the entire law,” he added.
NAN reports that participants at the workshop, themed “Promoting the Implementation of Disability Law in Ogun State,” were drawn from the state’s disability clusters. (NAN)
