People with disability taking to the streets begging for alms, are becoming sources of worry to government. Dr. Emmanuel Olufemi Adeniyi, a specialist in the education of the disabled and Provost, Federal College of Education (Special), Oyo tells ABIODUN FANORO that governments should be more alive to its responsibilities to the physically challenged.General CommentsThere is no human being, irrespective of his or her physical, or mental level, that God has not endowed with one talent or the other. What should be done is to give them the right environment to develop and utilize these talents. This is where the critical issue of education comes in.The Federal College of Education (FCE), Oyo is the only government institution that is handling education for the disabled. This is why it is also called College of Education, Special. It is supposed to take care of the education of the disabled in all ramifications, and it is supposed to serve all the states of the federation.How far are governments taking advantage of opportunities provided by the institution'It is very sad to note that government at all levels, and particularly state government, are not making any good use of opportunities available in this institution to train and develop the population of disabled persons in their various states. Even when we wrote to state governments requesting that they should send people to the college. I think it was only Kano State that responded once.Two years ago, when we observed that they were not responding, we wrote them, requesting that we come to organise workshops and seminars for this category of people. Again, this was not taken.Why are you not taking up this matter at the level of the Federal Ministry of Education'The Federal Ministry of Education is aware, because annually we go to brief the officials about activities of the institution and in turn the ministry would send people to monitor our work and assess our facilities. Then, don't forget that education is on the concurrent list, therefore, the Federal Ministry of Education could not compel states' Ministries of Education to send people to the College.In my view, what these state governments should do is to declare education totally free for the disabled. Not only that, they should go ahead to give them money for anything they would need in the institution, provide transport for then, guarantee jobs for them when they complete their education and if possible, pay them stipends even when they are in the school. If they have all these, they would not want to stay on the streets.Since the establishment of this college 34 years ago, no other one has been established. Why'Special education is unlike other forms of education, but unfortunately, it has always been treated as if it is the same with normal education. To train somebody to meet the needs of these special people outside is expensive.Could the lack of interest by government and individuals, stem from fear of where the graduates would practise'I think, members of the public have to be educated to know that products of this college are to function both in ordinary schools and in specialised school as well. When they work in this ordinary or normal schools, due to their special training, they would be able to easily detect children and pupils with potential disabilities, which the ordinary teacher would not be able to detect. With this, they would be able to identify pupils with challenges early enough in order to provide early intervention.Graduates from this college are supposed to be employed and posted to all sectors and departments, be it sea-port, hospital, governor's office, National Assembly, states' Assembly, Aso Rock or the Presidency.Recently, a group of disabled persons raised the alarm that people in their category were being discriminated against by government. How true is this'I am not a politician, but I want to give Kudos to the former Oyo State Governor, Alao Akala, who during his tenure appointed a blind lawyer as one of his special aides. My prayer is that other public officers or leaders would emulate that. Apart from the appointment by Akala, I don't know of when or where any of the people in this category had been offered such opportunity. I am not saying there may not be elsewhere, but I don't know, and if there are, it is certainly very few. This will tell you that the discrimination they cried about is real.Special education is very expensive, so how are you coping'We rely heavily on statutory funding from the Federal Government and assistance from donor agencies like the Education Trust Fund. Also a few corporate groups, like the First Bank and M.T.N have at one time or the other extended their corporate assistance to us. M.T.N gave us some brain documents for blind students, which we put in our library, while First Bank gave us a Hiace bus.What is your immediate aspiration for the College'It is going to be difficult to put all these in one basket, because our aspirations are many. One of my immediate goals is to have this college up-graded to a university, to make it the only special university for the disabled.Government would only be doing the needful and giving people in this category what they rightly deserve by up-grading this college to a university. In furtherance of this ambition, we have gone into talks with the University of Ibadan, which had already visited the college to inspect our facilities to run degree programme.Also, a team of the National University Commission (NUC) had visited the college. We are hopeful that we would get a favourable report and begin the programme very soon.
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