By Lanre Oloyede
Senior Special Assistant to the President on Special Needs and Equal Opportunities, Hon. Mohammed Abba Isa, yesterday reiterated his resolve to liaise and engage with relevant stakeholders and development partners in implementation of the Discrimination Against Persons With Disabilities (Prohibition) Act, 2018.
Hon. Abba Isa stated this at an event commemorating International Disabilty Day 2023 in Nigeria organized by Joint National Association of Persons With Disabilities (JONAPWD) in Abuja.
The theme of the event is: Advancing Post-Moratarium Agenda of the Discrimination Against Persons With Disabilities Prohibition Act, 2018.
The Senior Special Assistant to the President, who was ably represented by his media aide, Mr. Lanre Oloyede at the event, in his goodwill message highlighted the mandate of his office as prescribed by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
He also reeled out the plans and programs of his office as well as the efforts so far made since assuming office in advancing the matters of PWDs in line with the Renewed Hope Agenda of Mr President.
These, he noted included some high level meetings and engagements with relevant stakeholders.
The Presidential aide also participated in the first panel session alongside Chairman House Committee on Disabilty, Hon Bashiru Dawodu, and President of JONAPWD.
At the panel session, he highlighted some of the plans he has in place for proper implementation of the Act which included liaising with MDAs, NGOs, CSOs, development partners as directed by Mr President to ensure that the Disabilty Act is implemented to the letter.
He added that this is expected to be achieved by working with stakeholders and the NCPWD to conduct policy impact assessment to ensure the MDAs and all other agencies are complying with the provisions of the Act.
He also mentioned that a Joint Task Team is in the pipeline which shall comprise of members cutting across different clusters to work together to ensure thorough implementation of the Act.
The major highpoints of the discussions among panelists and participants centered around the 5-year moratorium that is about to expire, implementation of the Disabilty Act, issues of Access and Inclusion.
Participants and panelists are of the consensus that the journey in disabilty advocacy has just begun as the Act remains non-beneficial to PWDs until it is turned into action.
The keynote speaker of the day, Dr. Kole Shettima spoke on the need to conduct auditing of the Public offices to evaluate level of accessibility and compliance with the Act.
House Committee Chairman on Disabilty Matters, Hon Bashiru Dawodu hinted that the house has developed an implementation plan that will be laucnhed next year.
He added that as part of his Committee oversight duty, he will mandate the Ministry of Information and its agencies to commence and scale up massive awareness campaign on the implementation of the Act.
Executive Secretary of NCPWD, Mr James Lalu hinted that out of the 15 million households that are supposed to benefit from FG’s Conditional Cash Transfer scheme, about 1.5 million slots has been approved for the PWDs community by the Ministry of Humanitarian, and that different clusters and associations are required to help in gathering the data of PWDs to benefit from this.
At this junction the SSAP reiterated his commitment to the wellbeing of people with disabilities which is exemplified in his hitting the ground running so far.
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