Disability Act: FG threatens to seal MDAs over noncompliance

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May 14, 2024

People with disabilities

By Gabriel Ewepu

ABUJA -THE Federal government has threatened to seal Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs, over noncompliance with the full implementation of the Disability Act.

The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Disability Matter, Mohammed Isa, stated this while speaking at the two-day ‘National Disability Convening’ organised by the National Commission for Persons with Disabilities in collaboration with Disability

Rights Advocacy Center, DRAC, with support from the Ford Foundation.

Isa said that it is not going to be business as usual again considering the effort and support of the President Tinubu-led administration to make sure that the Act is implemented, hence compliance should not be an hindrance.

He said: “With the collaboration with the National Commission for Persons with Disabilities, they

have been wonderfully doing well in trying to see that they create awareness and they make a necessary collaboration with the agency that they are responsible in the implementation strategy. So we have gone far, and all these MDAs very soon we are going to start a pilot base.

“You will see that they will comply, and any ministry that they does not comply, honestly, we are going to seal that Ministry. You will see the implementation very well.”

Meanwhile, he said all hands must be on deck to make sure that the strategy is reviewed for prompt

implementation.

According to him, the President will soon launch a national accessibility committee to make sure that they monitor implementation progress and ensure that are mechanisms in place.

“The business cannot be as usual, It’s not all our strategy that will come through the media and expose it. With the National Commission for Persons with

Disabilities in collaboration with my office, we came out with a very robust strategy”, he added.

Meanwhile , he called for more awareness about the Disability Act by collaborating with the Ministry of Information and other strategic partners.

Also speaking was the Executive Secretary, National Commission for Persons with Disability, James Lalu, which he explained that the Convening is a practical union of

the disability community, aimed at reviewing the past three years of the implementation of the Disability Act, receive all the necessary input and ideas from the disability community, sharing experiences from the grassroots, to know their reach and harmonize unity among themselves.

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Lalu further stated that the Commission is working on areas of accessibility on the implementation of the Disability Act, working

towards engaging the services of different important stakeholders and consultants who are expected to provide the necessary capacity building.

“Accessibility is not just a way of trade, anybody can just enter into it the regulation has provided the Commission the power to license experts.

“And in this area, we are commencing the proper training to identify the most important

stakeholders, as well as the consultants, who will be able to handle the six geo-political zone. These consultants are expected to provide the necessary capacity building for us to be able to identify the experts in the meaning gap”, he said.

He added that the Commission has partnered with universities to establish Center for Disability

Studies with a degree programme on accessibility engineering, assistive technology, general language and disability inclusive development which aim at building experts through the academia to be able to come up with the proper certification.

He added that the immediate intervention now is to select the engineers and architects from the field and built industry to be able to build their capacity and bridge the gap.

Senior Global Advisor on Disability Inclusion, Save the Children International, Dr Toyin Aderemi, pointed that the use of data for inclusion, monitoring, accountability and advocacy is very expedient for prompt implementation of the Disability Act.

However, Aderemi called for collaboration and partnership to ensure strengthened alliance on disability issues, and pointed out that many of them work in silos, an act which is a setback for the Disability Act