By Jerome-Mario Utomi
It is common knowledge that the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) in line with its dedication to advancing the implementation of President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda and implementation of impactful youth programmes, recently in Port Harcourt, Rivers state, rolled out an internship scheme for 10,000 youths across the Niger Delta region.
Also relevant to the present discourse is the awareness that the 12-month internship programme would prepare participants with the training and experience needed for gainful employment and empower the benefitting youths in the areas of technology, music and arts, agriculture and marine, among others, also made arrangement that factored for each intern a stipend of N50,000 per month.
But of all that I heard and witnessed on that day, at that time and in that place, the most remarkable and of course, the newsiest was the declaration by Mr. Chiedu Ebie, Chairman, Governing Board of Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), that ‘’persons with disabilities would be given special attention’’. Ebie did not stop at that mere declaration as he went ahead to encourage disabled persons to apply and indicate the type of disability, noting that the scheme would accommodate young people across different levels of education and experience.
In this piece, there are so many illustrations that qualify Ebie’s line of thinking as unprecedented, impressive, exemplary and a new dawn for the region and Nigeria in general.
First and very key, Nigeria, according to reports, ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD) in 2007 and its Optional Protocol in 2010. Since then, civil society groups and people with disabilities have called on the government to put it into practice without success.
In 2011 and 2015, the National Assembly, it was reported, passed the Discrimination Against Persons with Disabilities (Prohibition), but former President Goodluck Jonathan declined to sign it into law. The bill for the new law was again passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate joint committee in November 2016 but was not sent to Buhari for his signature until December 2018.
On January 17, a report said Buhari denied on national television that he had received the bill. Hundreds of people protested, and barely five days later, he signed the bill into law.
The law, going by its provisions, prohibits discrimination based on disability and imposes sanctions including fines and prison sentences on those who contravene it. It also stipulates a five-year transitional period for modifying public buildings, structures, and automobiles to make them accessible and usable for people with disabilities.
Despite the existence of this law and all its charming provisions, it has not been an easy road but a rough and tumble ride for Persons with disabilities in Nigeria as the law only existed in frames.
Separate from being openly discriminated against and ignored by structures, personalities and other state actors, there were no records that people with disabilities in Nigeria, before now, enjoyed structured or level playing ground to accessing education, employment and healthcare among others.
Not even the establishment of a Commission for Persons with Disabilities, charged with the responsibility for ensuring that people with disabilities have access to housing, education, and healthcare, could save them from going through the pangs of discrimination.
Take as another illustration, the Commission was empowered to receive complaints of rights violations and support victims to seek legal redress amongst other duties. Yet, there is no tangible record of success to that effect.
These failures and failings partially explain why many in such situations do not contemplate education or seek employment in government establishments. But as a ‘’formidable and credible alternate’’, they choose to dot the major streets and cities across the nation begging for alms.
Evidently, the Commission’s governing board and management’s choice to do things differently and herald a new order for persons living with disabilities did not start today. It was first spotted by this author during the Niger Delta Summit in July 2024, an event which had critical stakeholders drawn from mandate states of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) in attendance, and aimed at Developing strategies for economic growth and development of the Niger Delta Region, translating the Renewed Hope Agenda of President Bola Tinubu into an actionable plan and articulating a roadmap for the sustainable development of the Niger Delta Region.
Like the present experience, Persons with disabilities from the region were massively present in their numbers at the Summit, they were given their pride of place and allowed to make inputs during the Technical Session. That was a record-breaking experience.
Viewed broadly, the way the Commission is handling Persons with Disabilities aligns completely with the global requirements.
The facts are there and speak for it and the easiest instance that comes to mind is the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), an international human rights convention which sets out the fundamental human rights of people with disability.
The purpose of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is to promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity.
It is reportedly made up of two documents, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which contains the main human rights provisions expressed as a series of Articles and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The CRPD and its Optional Protocol opened for signature on 30 March 2007 and Australia became one of the original signatories. The CRPD entered into force for Australia on 16 August 2008, and the Optional Protocol in 2009.
Finally, the people of the Niger Delta region celebrate the internship scheme which for sure will get “the youths to acquire meaningful and self-sustaining skills that would improve their lives, support their families and communities and thus ensure peace in the Niger Delta region,” the latest leadership model by the Commission has again brought to the fore two similar but separate realities.
One, the action of the governing board and management so far supports the time-honoured belief that “a society is poor not because of its geographical location but because its leaders make decisions that engineer poverty and promote powerlessness.” The Commission’s current board and management have truly proved beyond reasonable doubt that NDDC can work and is working.
Secondly, NDDC has finally gotten a board with the understanding that it is their duty to serve our communities and embrace its aspirations, both now and in the future, by assuring the people economic growth, education, health, security, stability, comfort, leisure opportunities and freedom in ways that will allow for the most conducive atmosphere to achieve the targets that will guarantee citizens welfare and a bright future.
Utomi writes from Lagos, Nigeria