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allAfrica.com: Nigeria: Where Deaf Don't Need News - Blessing Aroh - Deaf And Ambitious (Page 1 of 2)
Deaf people cannot listen to the news on television and they protest that no captions or sign language are used to help them in this regard. It is even worse if a man is both deaf and illiterate.
Continued from Thursday
Africa 2007
News for some citizens!
There are some 3,000 deaf persons in Abuja, the nation's capital, and they are all on their own, as we are wont to say these days. They seem to live in their own world where the borders are well defined, not because they love such conditions, but simply because the state is organised such that the deaf are neither heard, seen nor recognised. They are shunned and stigmatised. This is Nigeria's 37th state which, though physically nonexistent, strangely functions side by side with the 36 state structure? Quite naturally the deaf themselves are very upset on account of this organised shunning.19 million persons make up the population of the physically challenged in the country today given recent statistics, but the deaf may be the group which has received the greatest or
most intense sneers and mockery by members of the public, whose freedom to mock is simply justified by the fact that they, those who mock, are not deaf!. We seem to have become a nation of persons who have turned sneering at the disabled, or mythmaking, into a high art. An art which has now grown to epical standards.Idemudia Lawrence leads the Abuja Association of the Deaf. He tells Daily Trust the full range of impediments which deaf persons encounter on a daily basis. The first of these ,he indicates ,comes surprisingly from their own families. His words' Once a couple have a deaf child he becomes a second class citizen in the home. One whose needs and aspirations can only be met after satisfying those of the so called normal children.' He went on to show that society generally treats the deaf with disdain and consider them last in everything.
He says' Our needs are relegated to the background and no one has enough time to spend with us, and no one is willing to dissipate his energy waiting on the deaf'. According to him the government has not only abandoned the deaf, but has completely forgotten about the group.We may call this executive ostracism. The deaf are usually not involved in most programmes of government, neither are their opinions sought for on any matter. They have been totally alienated, he just stops short of saying. Then he comments on popular news programmes aired on a number of electronic media outfits' Take the occasional news for example. How do the deaf hear it? There are no captions for us to read. The same thing goes for other programmes of government.
We are always in complete darkness, and always read a news item after it has become stale in all the media'.Clearly, the deaf don't need news ,or maybe they only require stale news.. Next he commented on the kind of education available for deaf persons in Nigeria. His words' most schools of the deaf are actually manned by teachers who cannot actually communicate with the deaf. There are no teaching aids ,speech therapists, note takers, sign language interpreters and other structures that could make educating the deaf less cumbersome'.
He adds that for those who by dint of hard work graduate from the Nigerian educational system, they finally encounter employers of labour who are 'always more conscious of able bodied individuals rather than the disabled'. According to him there is no policy in place to guarantee some percentage of job openings for persons with disabilities, the deaf inclusive.' His words 'There is no law in Nigeria that enables us to sue when we feel that we have been discriminated against on account of our disabilities'. They are excluded from news and other programmes, and their schools are poorly equipped. Never has exclusion been more total in its coordination. It is not surprising that many of the deaf are poor.
Exclusion by society is very soon followed by poverty, a fact confirmed by Hajiya Hadiza Abdullahi,Administrator AMAC,when she stated in an earlier interview with this reporter that stigmatized groups are usually very poor groups, and extra effort must be made to free them from this cycle of poverty. Idemudia Lawrence in explaining the point on stigma and the deaf now spoke on the images of the deaf which have become quite popular today.One is the belief which holds that the deaf are devils and that they are wicked. Such thinking also avers that the deaf are not to be associated with, and that they have been cursed by the gods. These further alienate the society from the deaf and vice versa .He also revealed the painful fact that some parents actually hide their deaf children so that they won't be ridiculed by society.
The pull of Gallaudet
The story of Godwin Irokaba is a very instructive one. According to Jim Haner writing recently in Deafnotes , in 1976 Godwin lost his hearing owing to an outbreak of Meningitis, today he is on a Fellowship at Gallaudet University USA, the world's leading institution of higher learning for the deaf. His education there is being financed by the Ford Foundation as part of a $355 million campaign to provide post graduate degrees to 4,000 students from developing countries by 2014.About 5 percent of the Fellows are physically challenged, including about 10 who are deaf.Irokaba,a Nigerian, experienced culture shock when he first arrived on Gallaudet's Florida campus in 2005.His words 'In America, deaf people are permitted to drive!...In truth I say now, I belong to the Deaf nation'.,,a worldwide republic without borders, he said.'
Exclusion by society is very soon followed by poverty, a fact confirmed by Hajiya Hadiza Abdullahi,Administrator AMAC,when she stated in an earlier interview with this reporter that stigmatized groups are usually very poor groups, and extra effort must be made to free them from this cycle of poverty. Idemudia Lawrence in explaining the point on stigma and the deaf now spoke on the images of the deaf which have become quite popular today.One is the belief which holds that the deaf are devils and that they are wicked. Such thinking also avers that the deaf are not to be associated with, and that they have been cursed by the gods. These further alienate the society from the deaf and vice versa .He also revealed the painful fact that some parents actually hide their deaf children so that they won't be ridiculed by society.
I was lucky to come to Gallaudet when I did, because I got to see what happened here with my own eyes'. The student protest that swept the campus recently offered a lesson that Irokaba had never experienced before. In a nation of 140 million people where hearing loss among the youth occurs at a rate at least two to three times greater than in the West, a 'disabled rights movement is barely in its infancy'. Deaf people around the world pay attention to what happens here,'Irokaba says of the University. Commenting on the situation in Nigeria, he says' In Nigeria when you become deaf',...people look at you with pity. Most of my associations with people when I was young were based on that. They viewed me with pity, and I really, really hated it'. He recalls that his father who raised ten children on his salary warned him at an early age not to set his sights too high' to learn a trade, to find a job as a mechanic or carpenter that did not involve public contact-because life for the deaf in Nigeria is hard'. Despite government policies guaranteeing the rights of the disabled, the deaf are still subject to what Irokaba calls a 'culture of oppression' that discourages them from seeking an education or even being seen in public.' How can you articulate a dream and insist on your rights,'Irokaba asks' when you don't even have the means to communicate?' Irokaba says that at Gallaudet he encountered a learning environment designed for and by the deaf for the first time, classrooms bristling with computers, television monitors, digital captioning equipment...a state of the art library.'
Recalling his school experience in Nigeria, Irokaba says' Even the seating arrangements are wrong. They still line deaf students up in rows, so all they see is the back of each others heads. How can they communicate?' By necessity, students would band together outside the classroom.' We taught each other.It was the only way'. Irokaba's mission he said will be to plant the seeds of deaf culture in Nigeria, and to change laws that prohibit him from going anywhere in his Volkswagen without a hearing chaueffer at the wheel. In his opinion deaf children must be taught to believe in themselves first,' but they need people they can look to and say 'If these people can do things with their lives, then we can, too.We can start something.We can stand up for ourselves.'
Idemudia's ideas
Idemudia has many lofty ideas about what life of deaf persons could be like if reforms could be carried. He said many of the blind persons are quite illiterate, and have to resort to begging to feed themselves and their families. But he says of the 3,000 deaf in Abuja, 20 of this number are employed in federal establishments in the city, and these work in areas such as the social development office, programme officers, typists, teachers, and some do clerical duties as well. There are a group of deaf persons who are self employed, he said, and are carpenters, fashion designers, shoe making, they are in trading and other related fields, he said. Next he spoke on problems which the group faces in terms of job placements.
His words' some are qualified, but because they are deaf they lose out'.He would like something to be done to in this regard, which would have the immediate effect of widening the social space for the deaf and other physically challenged persons in the country.The transport system in Abuja does not favour the deaf and, may be called anti-deaf, he says. He speaks of numerous occasions when members of his association wait for buses in the evenings, and they cannot hear the routes being called, and nobody is patient enough to assist them. It is therefore a miracle that they can get home each night ,he stops short of saying. He is also filled with disgust at the experience he regularly goes through in town in the course of doing his work. Some persons assume that because he is deaf he must then be a beggar, and proceed to give him twenty naira notes, which, he says, he does not need.
And residences for the deaf? Idemudia says that this is another big problem, especially since many of them do not even have jobs, or they are often sneered at in society. His words 'most of us do not have permanent houses, and besides the rates are quite exorbitant.His words'The government does not provide special consideration for us,and to move all the way from our houses to Abuja is difficult. 'He argued that deaf persons should be given a soft loan or an allowance which would allow them to move around Abuja easily. Above all ,he called for legislation which would guarantee the rights of persons with disabilities in the country.He added that in America, from where he obtained a Master's degree from Gallaudet University, there is an American's with disabilities Act, and the same has been replicated in Spain and a few other countries across the world.
Sports for the deaf
There is the neglected field of deaf sports in the country today which is easily a mirror into the entire shunned existence of the group. The president of the Nigeria Deaf Sports Federation (NDSF) tells this reporter that the field suffers from a complete lack of sponsorship from corporate bodies, and there is general lack of awareness about deaf sports in Nigeria. On the other hand sports for the 'fit' seems to be doing well, and enjoys government patronage as well as vast media coverage There is also a palpable absence of funds to run activities relating to deaf sports in the country, and representation from the government is quite insignificant, he says.The best way of correcting the situation, he adds, is by getting both the federal and state governments to sponsor sporting activities for the deaf across the country and abroad as well.
If you are female, and deaf
Idemudia says that deaf women practically go through hell everyday. It begins from the home where the deaf women are exploited by the men, then in the wider world they go through the cynicism and sneers which other deaf persons endure everyday. According to him 'Some women get married to men who have no hearing impairment. Soon they are abandoned by the same men and left to fend for themselves. He adds that most of the women lack good education because their families won't invest in them. Therefore they end up being used to beg on the streets. Miss Aroh Blessing is a deaf student of the Federal College of Education (Special) Oyo. Finally she hopes to go to the USA for further education a decision, which is clearly indicative of the difficulties which deaf persons have to go through in the country today.
A good sign
If the recently commissioned domestic terminal of the Murtala Mohammed Airport, Lagos is to be used as a pointer to the future, then good days may lie ahead for physically challenged persons. The symbolism at the airport may very well spread to the rural areas. A report carried in This Day shows that the skywalk at the terminal is user friendly even to the physically challenged. There is also the interesting fact that arriving passengers come in through a wide staircase or by a ramp that can be used by physically challenged persons. They can easily move unaided through the airport to the four star hotel and conference centre across from it. What this shows is that architecture has slowly come to consider this group, a fact which directly indicates a major policy change. This is significant. Also a young crippled beggar was recently admitted at the University of Lagos and his is a story of extraordinary willpower and courage. These combined to lift the young scholar off the streets and into the Ivory Tower. A living sign to his kind as well as to society. The recent national conference on Albinism, the first of its kind is another radical pointer to the future for the physically challenged, for it shows that society is finally prepared to halt a decades old system of social exclusion and a denial of rights, and instead embrace disadvantaged groups ,among which can be found the crippled, blind,deaf,Lepers, Albinos, and many others, who have always been at the receiving end of a verbal system of fantastic myths and heart breaking stigma. But then there are many golden individuals such as Hajiya Hadiza Abdullahi, Administrator AMAC, who has consistently shown a deep concern for disadvantaged groups and the Lepers at Alheri village, have since confessed this.
Concluded.
Deaf people cannot listen to the news on television and they protest that no captions or sign language are used to help them in this regard. It is even worse if a man is both deaf and illiterate.
Continued from Thursday
Africa 2007
News for some citizens!
There are some 3,000 deaf persons in Abuja, the nation's capital, and they are all on their own, as we are wont to say these days. They seem to live in their own world where the borders are well defined, not because they love such conditions, but simply because the state is organised such that the deaf are neither heard, seen nor recognised. They are shunned and stigmatised. This is Nigeria's 37th state which, though physically nonexistent, strangely functions side by side with the 36 state structure? Quite naturally the deaf themselves are very upset on account of this organised shunning.19 million persons make up the population of the physically challenged in the country today given recent statistics, but the deaf may be the group which has received the greatest or
most intense sneers and mockery by members of the public, whose freedom to mock is simply justified by the fact that they, those who mock, are not deaf!. We seem to have become a nation of persons who have turned sneering at the disabled, or mythmaking, into a high art. An art which has now grown to epical standards.Idemudia Lawrence leads the Abuja Association of the Deaf. He tells Daily Trust the full range of impediments which deaf persons encounter on a daily basis. The first of these ,he indicates ,comes surprisingly from their own families. His words' Once a couple have a deaf child he becomes a second class citizen in the home. One whose needs and aspirations can only be met after satisfying those of the so called normal children.' He went on to show that society generally treats the deaf with disdain and consider them last in everything.
He says' Our needs are relegated to the background and no one has enough time to spend with us, and no one is willing to dissipate his energy waiting on the deaf'. According to him the government has not only abandoned the deaf, but has completely forgotten about the group.We may call this executive ostracism. The deaf are usually not involved in most programmes of government, neither are their opinions sought for on any matter. They have been totally alienated, he just stops short of saying. Then he comments on popular news programmes aired on a number of electronic media outfits' Take the occasional news for example. How do the deaf hear it? There are no captions for us to read. The same thing goes for other programmes of government.
We are always in complete darkness, and always read a news item after it has become stale in all the media'.Clearly, the deaf don't need news ,or maybe they only require stale news.. Next he commented on the kind of education available for deaf persons in Nigeria. His words' most schools of the deaf are actually manned by teachers who cannot actually communicate with the deaf. There are no teaching aids ,speech therapists, note takers, sign language interpreters and other structures that could make educating the deaf less cumbersome'.
He adds that for those who by dint of hard work graduate from the Nigerian educational system, they finally encounter employers of labour who are 'always more conscious of able bodied individuals rather than the disabled'. According to him there is no policy in place to guarantee some percentage of job openings for persons with disabilities, the deaf inclusive.' His words 'There is no law in Nigeria that enables us to sue when we feel that we have been discriminated against on account of our disabilities'. They are excluded from news and other programmes, and their schools are poorly equipped. Never has exclusion been more total in its coordination. It is not surprising that many of the deaf are poor.
Exclusion by society is very soon followed by poverty, a fact confirmed by Hajiya Hadiza Abdullahi,Administrator AMAC,when she stated in an earlier interview with this reporter that stigmatized groups are usually very poor groups, and extra effort must be made to free them from this cycle of poverty. Idemudia Lawrence in explaining the point on stigma and the deaf now spoke on the images of the deaf which have become quite popular today.One is the belief which holds that the deaf are devils and that they are wicked. Such thinking also avers that the deaf are not to be associated with, and that they have been cursed by the gods. These further alienate the society from the deaf and vice versa .He also revealed the painful fact that some parents actually hide their deaf children so that they won't be ridiculed by society.
The pull of Gallaudet
The story of Godwin Irokaba is a very instructive one. According to Jim Haner writing recently in Deafnotes , in 1976 Godwin lost his hearing owing to an outbreak of Meningitis, today he is on a Fellowship at Gallaudet University USA, the world's leading institution of higher learning for the deaf. His education there is being financed by the Ford Foundation as part of a $355 million campaign to provide post graduate degrees to 4,000 students from developing countries by 2014.About 5 percent of the Fellows are physically challenged, including about 10 who are deaf.Irokaba,a Nigerian, experienced culture shock when he first arrived on Gallaudet's Florida campus in 2005.His words 'In America, deaf people are permitted to drive!...In truth I say now, I belong to the Deaf nation'.,,a worldwide republic without borders, he said.'
Exclusion by society is very soon followed by poverty, a fact confirmed by Hajiya Hadiza Abdullahi,Administrator AMAC,when she stated in an earlier interview with this reporter that stigmatized groups are usually very poor groups, and extra effort must be made to free them from this cycle of poverty. Idemudia Lawrence in explaining the point on stigma and the deaf now spoke on the images of the deaf which have become quite popular today.One is the belief which holds that the deaf are devils and that they are wicked. Such thinking also avers that the deaf are not to be associated with, and that they have been cursed by the gods. These further alienate the society from the deaf and vice versa .He also revealed the painful fact that some parents actually hide their deaf children so that they won't be ridiculed by society.
I was lucky to come to Gallaudet when I did, because I got to see what happened here with my own eyes'. The student protest that swept the campus recently offered a lesson that Irokaba had never experienced before. In a nation of 140 million people where hearing loss among the youth occurs at a rate at least two to three times greater than in the West, a 'disabled rights movement is barely in its infancy'. Deaf people around the world pay attention to what happens here,'Irokaba says of the University. Commenting on the situation in Nigeria, he says' In Nigeria when you become deaf',...people look at you with pity. Most of my associations with people when I was young were based on that. They viewed me with pity, and I really, really hated it'. He recalls that his father who raised ten children on his salary warned him at an early age not to set his sights too high' to learn a trade, to find a job as a mechanic or carpenter that did not involve public contact-because life for the deaf in Nigeria is hard'. Despite government policies guaranteeing the rights of the disabled, the deaf are still subject to what Irokaba calls a 'culture of oppression' that discourages them from seeking an education or even being seen in public.' How can you articulate a dream and insist on your rights,'Irokaba asks' when you don't even have the means to communicate?' Irokaba says that at Gallaudet he encountered a learning environment designed for and by the deaf for the first time, classrooms bristling with computers, television monitors, digital captioning equipment...a state of the art library.'
Recalling his school experience in Nigeria, Irokaba says' Even the seating arrangements are wrong. They still line deaf students up in rows, so all they see is the back of each others heads. How can they communicate?' By necessity, students would band together outside the classroom.' We taught each other.It was the only way'. Irokaba's mission he said will be to plant the seeds of deaf culture in Nigeria, and to change laws that prohibit him from going anywhere in his Volkswagen without a hearing chaueffer at the wheel. In his opinion deaf children must be taught to believe in themselves first,' but they need people they can look to and say 'If these people can do things with their lives, then we can, too.We can start something.We can stand up for ourselves.'
Idemudia's ideas
Idemudia has many lofty ideas about what life of deaf persons could be like if reforms could be carried. He said many of the blind persons are quite illiterate, and have to resort to begging to feed themselves and their families. But he says of the 3,000 deaf in Abuja, 20 of this number are employed in federal establishments in the city, and these work in areas such as the social development office, programme officers, typists, teachers, and some do clerical duties as well. There are a group of deaf persons who are self employed, he said, and are carpenters, fashion designers, shoe making, they are in trading and other related fields, he said. Next he spoke on problems which the group faces in terms of job placements.
His words' some are qualified, but because they are deaf they lose out'.He would like something to be done to in this regard, which would have the immediate effect of widening the social space for the deaf and other physically challenged persons in the country.The transport system in Abuja does not favour the deaf and, may be called anti-deaf, he says. He speaks of numerous occasions when members of his association wait for buses in the evenings, and they cannot hear the routes being called, and nobody is patient enough to assist them. It is therefore a miracle that they can get home each night ,he stops short of saying. He is also filled with disgust at the experience he regularly goes through in town in the course of doing his work. Some persons assume that because he is deaf he must then be a beggar, and proceed to give him twenty naira notes, which, he says, he does not need.
And residences for the deaf? Idemudia says that this is another big problem, especially since many of them do not even have jobs, or they are often sneered at in society. His words 'most of us do not have permanent houses, and besides the rates are quite exorbitant.His words'The government does not provide special consideration for us,and to move all the way from our houses to Abuja is difficult. 'He argued that deaf persons should be given a soft loan or an allowance which would allow them to move around Abuja easily. Above all ,he called for legislation which would guarantee the rights of persons with disabilities in the country.He added that in America, from where he obtained a Master's degree from Gallaudet University, there is an American's with disabilities Act, and the same has been replicated in Spain and a few other countries across the world.
Sports for the deaf
There is the neglected field of deaf sports in the country today which is easily a mirror into the entire shunned existence of the group. The president of the Nigeria Deaf Sports Federation (NDSF) tells this reporter that the field suffers from a complete lack of sponsorship from corporate bodies, and there is general lack of awareness about deaf sports in Nigeria. On the other hand sports for the 'fit' seems to be doing well, and enjoys government patronage as well as vast media coverage There is also a palpable absence of funds to run activities relating to deaf sports in the country, and representation from the government is quite insignificant, he says.The best way of correcting the situation, he adds, is by getting both the federal and state governments to sponsor sporting activities for the deaf across the country and abroad as well.
If you are female, and deaf
Idemudia says that deaf women practically go through hell everyday. It begins from the home where the deaf women are exploited by the men, then in the wider world they go through the cynicism and sneers which other deaf persons endure everyday. According to him 'Some women get married to men who have no hearing impairment. Soon they are abandoned by the same men and left to fend for themselves. He adds that most of the women lack good education because their families won't invest in them. Therefore they end up being used to beg on the streets. Miss Aroh Blessing is a deaf student of the Federal College of Education (Special) Oyo. Finally she hopes to go to the USA for further education a decision, which is clearly indicative of the difficulties which deaf persons have to go through in the country today.
A good sign
If the recently commissioned domestic terminal of the Murtala Mohammed Airport, Lagos is to be used as a pointer to the future, then good days may lie ahead for physically challenged persons. The symbolism at the airport may very well spread to the rural areas. A report carried in This Day shows that the skywalk at the terminal is user friendly even to the physically challenged. There is also the interesting fact that arriving passengers come in through a wide staircase or by a ramp that can be used by physically challenged persons. They can easily move unaided through the airport to the four star hotel and conference centre across from it. What this shows is that architecture has slowly come to consider this group, a fact which directly indicates a major policy change. This is significant. Also a young crippled beggar was recently admitted at the University of Lagos and his is a story of extraordinary willpower and courage. These combined to lift the young scholar off the streets and into the Ivory Tower. A living sign to his kind as well as to society. The recent national conference on Albinism, the first of its kind is another radical pointer to the future for the physically challenged, for it shows that society is finally prepared to halt a decades old system of social exclusion and a denial of rights, and instead embrace disadvantaged groups ,among which can be found the crippled, blind,deaf,Lepers, Albinos, and many others, who have always been at the receiving end of a verbal system of fantastic myths and heart breaking stigma. But then there are many golden individuals such as Hajiya Hadiza Abdullahi, Administrator AMAC, who has consistently shown a deep concern for disadvantaged groups and the Lepers at Alheri village, have since confessed this.
Concluded.