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Nigeria: 'Out of School, Out Through Life'

Bukola Olatunji
Victor Pineda recommends this. Undo

23 December 2008

Lagos First, they were referred to as 'disabled', 'handicapped' and then 'special needs' people. All these meant they were different and needed to be treated as such. This in turn meant their exclusion from many things, including education. But like the socalled 'able bodied', being out of school for this group of people is a sure way to being sidelined all through their lives, writes Bukola Olatunji Victor Pineda was five when he could no longer walk due to Muscular Dystrophy, a degenerative muscular disorder. His mother, Maria, saw that he could not get the help he needed in their native Venezuela, so she moved to the United States of America when Victor was seven At a reception held for him by the United States Mission in Geneva, Switzerland, recently, Pineda, now 30, recalled that he had just turned seven, was in First Grade and could neither get around by himself nor speak English. But his first regular teacher at Roy O Andersen Elementary School, Newport Beach, California, Mrs. Dearing, lived up to her name. He said she made him feel included and, indeed, one of the most popular pupils in the school. Among others, Dearing told the class that anyone who helped Victor to get to the play area would get 15 minutes extra of playtime, so everyone wanted to help Victor get around. Thus began his growth and development to become a man, who is not ashamed or sorry for who he is, but can hold his own anywhere, as he did during the International Conference on Education (ICE), organised by UNESCO's International Bureau of Education (IBE) in Geneva, recently, which was what took him to Geneva in the first place. The invitation by the United States Mission in Geneva, the country's largest multilateral overseas diplomatic post as a Guest Speaker to celebrate the International Day of Persons with Disabilities and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was only the icing on his cake. It was hard to believe that the powerful voice that addressed Ministers of Education at the meeting came from the 'small' man in a wheelchair, who had tubes attached to his nose to help him breath. Today, Pineda is a confident man, completing his doctoral studies in Urban Planning and Social Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles, after a first degree in Political Economy and Business, and Masters in Urban Planning from the University of California at Berkeley. Victor emerged as one of the young global leaders of the international disability rights movement and was the youngest delegate negotiating the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. He is also a recipient of many awards, including the Jefferson Award (that has been given to the likes of Arthur Ashe, Bill and Melinda Gates, Lance Armstrong, Steven Jobs, among others) But all these began first, with a caring mother, who did not think that 'this disabled child should be hidden at the corner of a room'; to a school community and system that gave everyone a chance, irrespective of their physical, social, cultural or mental disabilities; and a government that formulated and implemented a policy. When Pineda turned 12 in 1990, the then President of the United States, George Herbert Walker Bush signed into law the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), one of the hallmark achievements of his Presidency. US Ambassador to Switzerland, Warren W. Tichenor said it was the largest signing ceremony in the history of the White House, witnessed by 3000 people. According to him, "This legislation became one of the most successful and compassionate reforms in our nation's history, helping to ensure that individuals with disabilities are better able to develop meaningful skills, engage in productive work, and

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allAfrica.com: Nigeria: 'Out of School, Out Through Life'

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participate fully in the life of our nation." He described Victor Pineda as a "living proof of the effectiveness of the ADA in American society. Through hard work and personal drive, he said, Pineda has "taken advantage of the opportunities that the law provides to become one of the most recognised young leaders of the disabilities community in the United States. "Victor has served on the President's Council for Disabilities, has worked as a consultant for the U.S. government and has testified before Congress, has advised the United Nations and other governments, and is the author of two books on disabilities. Victor has received numerous awards and fellowships for his work in promoting disability rights and integration policies, and is the founding director of the Victor Pineda Foundation, which works to support education and disabilities programmes worldwide." Of the Foundation, Pineda said, "I felt a kind of commitment to take a leadership position to defend people in my community. And a community that is very diverse, people that can't see well, hear well, speak well, walk well and remember well, you know, these are all my brothers and sisters. We must all fight for justice, no matter where we are." With representatives from 153 countries, which have more than 90 percent of the world's children, including Ministers of Education from more than 80 countries, the ICE was good representation of the world. Pineda's colleagues the meeting included, Natalia Buga from Moldova, Anik Kohli from Switzerland, Kentaro Fukuchi from Japan, Kamar Eid from Palestine, Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim from Chad and Abir Kassim from the Shatilla Camp in Lebanon. Some of them have literarily fought to be included and educated, while for others, it is an on-going battle, what with no home to call their own and lack of a national education policy by their home governments. Kentaro Fukuchi, Japanese, lost his sight to cancer at the age of two. But the 24 yearold attended regular schools in Japan, studied Inclusive Education and International Cooperation and graduated from the University of Tsukuba last March. Fukuchi, who works with the Japanese Red Cross Society, said his education "was enabled by communication and cooperation among the parents and teachers, local government education office and the ministries of education and also local volunteers and other parents as well." But not all young people like himself have been that fortunate in his country. Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, on the other hand belongs to the nomadic Mbororo tribe in Chad. The government has no policy for the education of this and similar groups of people. Where individuals struggle to get educated like Hindou had done, obtaining a Baccalaureat and planning to go to the university, getting a job becomes a Herculean task. At an interactive session with Ministers of Education at the ICE, these young people spoke on behalf of their colleagues around the world. The message was simple and clear. The word 'invalid', which means 'having no value for society' should never be used to describe any human being. A defect on a person's body is not a defect on his or her mind. The needs of people with special needs are not as expensive as people think. People with disabilities do not only take. They have huge potentials and a lot to give too. They only need to be given the chance to do so. On matters concerning them, they demand to be part of decision making because they know best what is good for them. The same message was echoed by the Director of Disability Equality in Education, a charity organisation registered in the United Kingdom, Richard Rieser. He told THISDAY that the ICE came "at a time when we have what is called a paradigm shift in the way we're thinking about disabled people and the excluded. We have to now move to an inclusive system where children with disabilities are supported in being included. We have gone past where these children walk around with the weight of a label on them, a label of 'special needs'. "Yes, we have different needs, but we need to be supported to be included alongside all of our peers, because if we are not included in school, we are not included through life. Disabled children, yes, but they have the right to be included. If you put the emphasis on their 'special needs', then you miss the point of their being children, all equal, also all different." Victor Pineda's story has been so elaborately told because it captures the essence of the message from Geneva, which must not be lost - It takes all to make inclusive education happen. As Tichenor rightly observed, ADA did not just happen. It was the culmination of the work of thousands of disabilities activists, civil rights leaders, Congressmen and Senators from both parties, representatives of the private sector, and citizens from all walks of life who supported the full and meaningful inclusion of a key segment of the general population into society. He said, "For all of us, we risk the loss of valuable human resources, talent, and
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productivity for our economies and societies when we sideline our fellow citizens. Other nations of the world, whatever stage they are now, have a worthy example in the US. As the ambassador noted, "Like many of your own countries, my country in its early years spent decades marginalising some of its citizenry because of their colour, or because of their gender, or because of their physical or mental disabilities. It has taken us many years to overcome the prejudices behind these policies, and while there remains work to be done, we continue to reap the benefits of a more inclusionary society - one in which the talents and productivity of all of our citizenry can contribute to the vibrancy and prosperity of our society. "Since becoming law in 1990, the ADA has proven its worth in American society. More importantly, it has become a model for other countries seeking to develop a legislative structure to maximise the engagement of disabled citizens into their societies", he said. For countries that were in Geneva and those that were not therefore, the message is, 'take a look at the ADA', Nigerian Ambassador and Permanent Delegate to UNESCO, Prof. Michael Omolewa, who presided over the Drafting group, which had the challenging task of coming up with the final outcome of the conference identified the stakeholders that have to engage in inclusive education to include, the parents, the teachers, the learners themselves, the donors and the community, not necessarily in that order. He said, "The global community has to share the responsibility. Those who have the money have to support those who do not have because, in the long run, it is the global half that is going to benefit from the inclusion of everyone, so that there would be no room for terrorism; there would be no room for anti-social behaviour and we can move towards the achievement of peace for all within the context of the Millennium Development Goals and Education For All." Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC), Prof. Godswill Obioma, was involved in the many regional meetings and international conferences that culminated in the ICE. A representative of the Africa region at the Community of Practice (COP) in Curriculum Development, a platform set up by IBE in 2005 to jointly discuss curriculum issues; Obioma, said the key massage that came from the meetings for Africa is the need for strong national support, formulating public policy, that takes the cultural peculiarities of the people into consideration and turning them to actionable plans that are observable and measurable, as well as creating strategic partnerships for sustainability, both between the public and private sector within each country and between developing and developed economies. Executive Secretary of the National Commission for Mass Literacy, Adult and Non formal Education (NMEC), Dr. Dayo Olagunju said the Geneva conference reinforced everything he had been saying over the years that by concentrating all efforts and resources on primary, secondary and university education, Nigeria is excluding a lot of her people, the nomads, the adult illiterates and out of school the children. On lessons learned, he said, "those of us who came here would go back with that knowledge that now, we need to work to make everybody get included. We have also seen that since inclusion does not only mean getting everybody to school, people have to be taught in their own language because if you are not teaching in their language, they may actually be excluded because mother tongue education has also been emphasised here, which is one of the things that we are losing in Nigeria. "By losing our language, we are losing our personality. The mistake we make in Nigeria is that people think language is only a means of communication. No, language is the totality of the person. So when you lose your language, you lose your culture, you lose your personality. When people talk about cultural problems or moral decadence, you have to trace it back to the loss of our language. So it has been emphasised here that these are areas that every nation has to address to make education inclusive." His counterpart at the National Commission for Nomadic Education (NCNE), Dr. Nafisa Dahiru Mohammed, said, "I think our organisation, our commission is a typical example or model that shows how Nigeria has included people or groups of people that, as it were, could have been excluded from education and other services. I am taking back the assertions and the affirmations and the resolutions that have been made here to stamp the need for each member state to go back and see how they can include everybody in the process of education and development as a whole."
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