By Hamza Ibrahim Chinade.
The Center for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) has marked the 2017 International Day of People Living with Disability with a series of activities to highlight their plight. It could be recalled that the center has been implementing an ActionAid International Nigeria supported project “Strengthening Civic Engagement in Electoral Process (SCEEP)” which aims to engage and build capacity of youths, women and people living with disability in electoral and governance process. CITAD’s activities lined up for the 2017 people living with ability day started with a radio programme where the PWDs were hosted to a one hour live programme on radio to air their concerns in order to seek redress. The people hosted on the radio programme included a visually impaired, crippled and a woman albino.

After the radio programme, CITAD organized a public lecture where people living with disabilities of different categories attended and papers presented. The first paper titled “Digital Inclusion of People Living with Disability” was presented by a visually impaired person, Malam Abdulkarim Ibrahim, a teacher at a special education school in Tudun Maliki in Kano metropolis, he emphasized the need to connect PWDs with technology in order to ease their quest for education and urged the government and society support PWDs to be self reliant. The second paper and the theme for this year “Transformation Towards Sustainable and Resilient Society for All” was presented by another visually impaired person, Prof. Jibrin Diso of Special Education Department, Bayero University Kano.
In their separate remarks, Malam Ahmad Abdullahi Yakasai, Malam Isyaku Garba, Malam Nura Sani Yakasai, Malam Abdullahi Nashe and Alhaji Lawan Ibrahim all solicited governmental and societal support towards eradicating the suffering of people living with disability.
The annual observance of the International Day of Disabled Persons was proclaimed in 1992, by the United Nations General Assembly resolution 47/3. It aims to promote the rights and well-being of persons with disabilities in all spheres of society and development, and to increase awareness of the situation of persons with disabilities in every aspect of political, social, economic and cultural life.
Building on many decades of UN’s work in the field of disability, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, adopted in 2006, has further advanced the rights and well-being of persons with disabilities in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and other international development frameworks, such as the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the Charter on Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action, the New Urban Agenda, and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development. The theme for the 2017 people living with disabilities day celebration is “Transformation towards sustainable and resilient society for all”.