…As Centre For The Right To Health holds advocacy workshop for Journalists in Owerri
| By Eze Adiuku
The plight of the physically challenged women and girls in Nigeria has been laid bare and citizens urged to stop treating them as endangered persons.
Addressing a select group of women living with disabilities last Wednesday, at a 3-day workshop organised in Owerri by Centre For The Right To Health (CRH), for Journalists, President of Women Living with Disabilities, Imo State, Mrs Blessing Okorie bemoaned the physical and psychological torture women with disabilities suffer in the hands of men.
“Because we’re physically challenged, we cannot easily move around, people unduely insults, abuse and molest us, they treat us like third class citizens. Every day, we are psychologically and emotionally tortured and raped by the attitude of our fellow men towards us, unlike in other countries of the world, where people with our plights are honoured, respected and cared for. But rather in Nigeria we are humiliated, isolated and treated as nobody.
“It’s important to educate Nigerians that there are abilities in disabilities. We are equally created by God for destined purposes. We all are equal before God. We don’t need pity but an enabling environment with respect and we will thrive”, Okorie insisted.
The President of Women Living with Disabilities in Imo State extolled Centre For The Right To Health for its sustained advocacy for the plight of women living with disabilities with the organisational vision and mission of ‘Unite To Prevent Violence Against Women With Disabilities’.
She said: “we are so grateful to Center For The Right To Health (CRH) for their concerns, advocacy and sensitization programmes. It’s only Almighty God that can reward them adequately”.
Continuing, Okorie decried that most public and private buildings in Nigeria have no ramp to ease access for women living with disabilities, adding that their woes are compounded by high level of family.
“We have potentials to contribute in the upliftment of the Nigerian society. We should be treated with respect and dignity, after all, most of us are extremely intelligent and more educated than our oppressors.
“We should be given opportunity for employment. We are products of God creation, unfortunately, most members of the society have caused us so much emotional and psychological pains” she stated.
She urged the society to stop seeing them as evil and never do wells and that every body in life is disabled in one way or the other, lamenting that as special citizens, that they shed tears every day as they go about for sense of belonging in terms of socioeconomic activities.
CRH is a non governmental and non profit organization that promotes advocacy for zero tolerance for violence against women and girls with disability.
