AdminAn International disability rights and social inclusion advocate, Ekaete Umoh, who is the country director at CBM Global Nigeria, was selected as one of the Ford Foundation 2021 Global Fellows. She was honoured in recognition of her role in promoting the human rights of people with disabilities in Nigeria. In this exclusive interview with Prime Business Africa, she speaks about her social welfare activities and how she plans to take it further with the opportunity of being a fellow of the prestigious global foundation.
As a Fellow of Ford Foundation 2021 Global Fellowship, how would you continue to address the plight of disabled persons in various communities across Nigeria?
Let me first of all thank Ford Foundation for giving me this global platform as a Ford Fellow to connect, influence and recruit new sets of change agents and Champions across various communities of practice to promote equalisation of opportunities for persons with disabilities across sectors and circle of influence.
Interestingly, I have had varying levels of experiences across international, regional, and local contexts, and there is no gainsaying the fact that disability concerns must be taken into consideration in all endeavours. I have learnt and still learning from promoting disability as a cross-cutting issue.
In all my engagements, developing programs through cross-generational grass-root movement building in order to sustain gains from project implementation has proven to be most effective strategy to address disability-based discrimination and marginalization, and this will continue.
From a demand-side perspective, I will improve on my strategy of capacity building and amplification of voices of persons with disabilities in order to channel their legitimate claims into planning and decision-making processes from a rights-based perspective.
Consequently, one of my future actions will aim towards creating and strengthening Organisations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs) to develop effective mechanisms (streaming from guiding principles under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities-UNCRDP).
I am seriously keeping my eyes on movement building. These movements when strengthened through multi-pronged strategies that are forged with plans around community-based actions would empower and create safe spaces for persons with disabilities as demand-side actors to collectively disrupt all forms of inequalities that have led to their exclusion in community participation and all development efforts. Specifically, I will enable opportunities to build social networks of young disability advocates across the sectors, who would sustain disability activism from a right-based perspective. This would therefore assist to activate bottom-up elements that serve as strong and sustainable pillars that would effectively attempt to advance disability inclusion on a national scale through issue-based advocacies, and implementation of programs that advances their access, participation and visibility.
From the supply-side perspective, and as Country Director of CBM Global Nigeria, I intend to place and advance OPDs operations in Nigeria as the centre of disability-inclusion engagements in order for them to comprehensively lead to improve quality of lives and reduce prejudice for persons with disabilities. Strategically, I intend to connect both the supply and demand-side actors to collectively work together to break the circle of poverty and disability and improve the quality of life for persons with disabilities through stakeholders’ engagements.
In addition, I intend to advance and reinvest my knowledge scopes as enabled through the Ford Fellowship to increase representations of persons with disabilities across decision-making platforms; without this, the rights of people with disabilities are less likely to be realised.
What specific programmes would you be considering in addressing educational and medical needs of disabled persons in Nigeria?
The Nigerian government currently possesses limited knowledge about the nature and advantages of inclusive and quality education and health, and the diversities therein. For instance, although the current policy of inclusive education presents elements of inclusion, it does not clearly address disability context. As an aftermath, the general dearth of knowledge of disability issues among the key implementing partners reveals a clear absence of a disability perspective in most development endeavours in education, and health when relating with the broader perspective.
Against the above background, I am proposing the strong need for the formulation of guidelines to conduct disability audits in terms of disability responsive and sensitive curriculums and facilities, increase budget allocations to address them and embark on capacity-building of all relevant stakeholders like educationalists, teachers and health practitioners in these sectors.
On the education front, I will specifically position to strongly advocate for the need to immediately activate private sector driven mechanisms that are positioned to model inclusive education methodologies (at primary, secondary and university) especially for Out of School Children with Disabilities (OOSCwDs) which was estimated to be around 120 -150 million pupils in developing countries, according to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) of 2014. In the health sector, there is an urgent need to facilitate sustainable health care services that are affordable, accessible and available. These services will enable equalisation of opportunities for persons with disabilities, especially through government-enabled social protection programmes.
More importantly, enabling the accessibility factors in the two sectors require the development and institution of universal designs that meet accessibility standards and seeks to address usability concerns for all, irrespective of their disability status.
Are there economic empowerment programmes you would be thinking of attracting for disabled persons?
Yes, there are several economic empowerment programmes I would be looking at both in the formal and informal sector. Generally, to promote economic empowerment of persons with disabilities, services and programmes that commit to supporting the self-employment of persons with disabilities through the provision of entrepreneurship trainings, grants, loans and micro-credit schemes should be strengthened.
Although Article 27 of the UNCRPD recognizes the right of persons with disabilities to work, on an equal basis with others, and to gain a living by work freely chosen or accepted in a labour market and work environment that is open, inclusive and accessible, the current poor narrative around unemployed persons with disabilities is likely going to increase if proper interventions are not taken. In this case, I will seek partnership in the design of interventions that would lead to the implementation of Article 27, keeping my eyes on Article 2 as well that which speaks to “Reasonable Accommodation”, to enable people with disabilities to gain formal employment that is decent and accessible.
It is similarly worthy to note the direct correlations between economic empowerment and poverty which may increase the risk of disability. For instance, within the context of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), a non-disability-sensitive design may increase the risk of poverty through the lack of employment and education opportunities, lower wages, and increased cost of living with a disability. Therefore, the economic empowerment of persons with disabilities is important to increase their participation which has always been over looked by policymakers.
Being the biggest economic influencing context for current economic empowerment programmes in Nigeria, the AfCFTA generally offers a unique opportunity to develop a disability-inclusive trading system which will require strong policy development and implementation to allow Nigerian entrepreneurs with disabilities enter new markets and participate effectively in key sectors. As a drawing factor, I will largely propose wide-scale incentives on business formality of businesses owned by persons with disabilities under the AfCFTA. As a direct consequence, a sizeable number of entrepreneurs with disabilities currently in the informal sector are enabled to migrate from the informal sector to strengthen their aggregation systems as formal business actors. This will encourage them to build up finance and pursue skillsets to meet economic empowerment requirements.
Again, since Nigeria has comparative advantages in certain informal sectors, especially in the agriculture and service sectors, where persons with disabilities are dominant. There is a need for a deliberate focus on these sectors in order to fully explore accruable economic potential under the AfCFTA. In practice, government policies and programmes must holistically enable awareness about the opportunities in the AfCFTA that could lead to increased interest for persons with disabilities (both in the formal and informal sectors), and in seeking information on financing options and standardisation requirements for their participation, especially given The COVID-19 realities.
Generally, I will be looking at reviewing policies at all levels, from trade, to agriculture, to formal employment/private sector Human Resources practices, with the aim of promoting inclusive economic empowerment for persons with disabilities.
As part of those who participated in the struggle for signing the Nigerian Disability Bill into Law in 2019, what is your assessment of the progress so far in using the law to advance the cause of disabled persons in Nigeria?
The best thing that has ever happened to the community of persons with disabilities and their families is the Signing of the Disability Bill into Law. So far, there has been some level of increased awareness about the Law driven by Organisations of persons with disabilities and the Disability Commission, although progressive, more deliberate actions have to be in place to ensure effective deliverables using the Twin Track approach to disability inclusion.
As one of the compliances under Article 33 of the UNCRPD, Nigeria has established a government commission for persons with disabilities through which existing disability-related legislations and policies, proposed recommended amendments to the Government, in terms of implementation of the national strategy and As one of the compliances under Article 33 of the UNCRPD, Nigeria has established a government commission for persons with disabilities through which existing disability-related legislations and policies, proposed recommended amendments to the Government, in terms of the implementation of the national strategy and cooperating with civil society organizations working in the field of disability is enabled. However, there is a strong need to activate recommendations on disability-sensitive capacity building, and improve existing and planned activities aimed at the protection of persons with disabilities and the realization of their rights from the duty-bearer perspective.
In the absence of the above, there will regrettably be reinforcing elements that will continue to widen the gap between laid out disability agendas and laws on the one hand, and policies and practice on the other. This will further the marginalisation of persons with disabilities to share best practices and design, coordinate, and implement a campaign to raise public awareness on their rights and hold the government to account for their obligations.
How do you engage with disabled persons especially those in rural communities to benefit from relief programmes?
It is very true that Disabled people in rural communities are most marginalised when it comes to accessing opportunities and benefits from programmes. This is simply because in most cases the disability component is never considered in the design and implementation of most programmes including relief programmes.
So what I have done in recent times as the National President of the Joint National Association of Persons with Disabilities (JONAPWD) to reach out to disabled persons in the rural communities, was to use the well-established structure of JONAPWD which has a very wide coverage up till local government levels as my distribution outlet. So, when contacted for distribution of relief materials, especially during COVID, I contacted the Zonal coordinators of JONAPWD, who in turn contacted the state Chapters and the State Chapters would, in turn, contact the local government chapters chairpersons. This way we are able to mobilise and reach out to as many disabled people in the grass-root as possible.
The failure to understand or implement the human rights model of disability on humanitarian interventions are simply due to the lack of knowledge/understanding of the barriers faced by persons with disabilities within the community and society and how their impairments may bring about participation restriction when trying access services or opportunities in an environment that is designed without taking diversity into consideration.
According to the CBM Global standard, for humanitarian response to be truly effective, it must include all of society, at all levels of activity. Yet, when it comes to preparing for and responding to the increasing number of natural and human-made disasters happening on a global scale, the capacities, rights, and needs of people with disabilities are not yet fully addressed by the international humanitarian community.
As CBM Global Nigerian lead, I will premise my engagements on the full commitment to assisting the Nigerian humanitarian sector to become more inclusive and compliant with the CRPD, the Humanitarian Disability Charter, and the Sendai Framework for disaster risk reduction 2015–2030.
Streaming from the above, I will similarly pursue CBM Global’s adoption of a three-tier approach which is embedded in; prioritising investments in humanitarian preparedness and operational delivery; policy development through advocacy; and technical advice and support in close collaboration with local, national, and international partners and the disability movement through OPD systems like JONAPWD.
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