A Lagos-based NGO, Center for Citizens with Disabilities, has commended Governor Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia State for creating the Ministry for Special Duties and Vulnerable Group.
In a statement in Umuahia on Tuesday, the Executive Director, David Anyaele, said: “With this creation, disability issues have been separated from the Abia Ministry of Women Affairs.
“This new ministry is commendable, as vulnerable people – like persons with disabilities – have over the years been neglected and marginalized by the various Ministries of Women Affairs in Nigeria and Abia in particular.”
Anyaele, who is also the founder of the NGO, said the centre had over the years yearned for the creation of such a special ministry.
He expressed the hope that the new ministry would cater to the needs of the vulnerable in the society.
The founder said that experience had shown that the Ministry of Women Affairs often design their programmes and services with special focus on women and girl-child only.
He said that the development had left persons with disabilities and other vulnerable groups excluded from and marginalised in the services of the ministry.
He said: “This ministry so created by Ikpeazu shows that the pains, agony and cries of vulnerable people, especially Abia people with disabilities have got to him.
“This new ministry, if properly managed, will go a long way in reducing the challenges and difficulties vulnerable people face.”
Anyaele listed such challenges to include stigmatisation, discrimination, marginalisation and exclusion from government programmes and activities by the relevant ministry across the country.
He, therefore, called on the Federal Government and other states of the federation to take a cue from Abia “on how to integrate vulnerable people in governance”.
The executive director said they could do this by creating similar ministry in their areas.
He said that such a move would also help to ensure that citizens with disabilities were carried along in a democratic governance and development process.
The CCD boss urged Ikpeazu “to take appropriate measures to criminalise discrimination on grounds of disability by supporting the passage of the disability bill before the Abia House of Assembly”.
He assured that the centre would support the new ministry “to ensure optimal service delivery to the vulnerable groups in Abia to set standard for other states in Nigeria to emulate”.
Anyaele described the center as a non-profit making and foremost human rights organisation.
He said: “The centre works to promote the inclusion, participation, access, and the mainstreaming of issues of critical concern of citizens with disabilities in the programmes and activities of state and non-state institutions.”
He said the centre, incorporated in 2002 as a charity organisation, also works to educate, support and empower persons with disabilities and their families to maximise their potential.
Anyaele, who wears prosthesis on both limbs said that he founded the Centre, following his “harrowing experience” of having his two hands amputated during the fierce war in Sierra Leone.
Prosthesis is an artificial device to replace or augment a missing or impaired part of the body.
The new ministry has Precious Achumba as the commissioner.
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