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Summary
Through her inspiring story as a person living with disability, Anifat Sadu sheds light on the importance of empathy, accessibility, and equal opportunities for individuals with disabilities.
Living with cerebral palsy, Anifat Sadu has navigated the challenges of accessibility and stigma. As such, the trailblazing disability rights advocate began advocating for inclusive practices to ensure a better Nigeria for people with disabilities.
Anifat, a public speaker and postgraduate student of Psychology at the University of Lagos (UNILAG), illuminates the importance of empathy, accessibility, and equal opportunities in an exclusive interview with BO News’ Wakilat Zakariyau.
On the need for systemic change, innovative solutions, and collective action to promote disability inclusion
- How has your disability shaped your perspectives or experiences?
It has shaped my experience by making me more empathetic because it is easy to sit down and judge someone else’s experiences if you are not in their shoes. However, having a disability myself has made me realise that people are going through a lot, and if a person can be going through or might have another disability or another issue that I have not experienced before, I still need to be empathetic towards that person because it can be painful. Just as I have cerebral palsy, and some people just speak without trying to understand where I’m coming from.
Maybe if I didn’t have cerebral palsy, I wouldn’t know that over 47,000 children are diagnosed with cerebral palsy every year in Nigeria. If I didn’t have cerebral palsy, maybe I wouldn’t know that there are so many kids who are still at home just because they have a disability. They are denied access to education. Nigeria’s health system is not as good as it should be. It’s not catering for the masses. It does not cater for a lot of people with disabilities.
It has made me more empathetic. It has also better informed me about what is going on in the disability space and the challenges.
- Could you highlight how it has shaped your work as a disability advocate?
When I share my story and tell parents of children living with disabilities that I live with a disability, and I earned my first degree at age 19, it allows them to do more for their children. Not just parents but diverse individuals, they’ll be like, okay, if Anifat can do it, I can also do it.
So, it has given me the opportunity to do more in the disability space and inspire more people.
- Have you ever faced discrimination or stigma? If so, how did you address it?
Although I have received a lot of love and compassion, I have faced discrimination, especially when I was a kid. An example is when my peers would want to participate in extracurricular sports, games, and debates. But I couldn’t sit in one place or do anything. So I would have preferred if they created something for me, even if it’s just chess, to feel like there’s something I can also do.
So, I think that’s one of the discriminations I faced. But as a child then, how would I have managed this? I didn’t know how. They were like my parents in school. I had little or no power and just did anything I was told to do.
Another experience that I wouldn’t call discrimination, I would just say a fault in the system in my undergraduate degree when I used to struggle to write and complete my exams. So I would have preferred it if I had just had an easier way to write down whatever I wanted, maybe typing my answers or oral examinations, but that never happened. I struggled to write, so what another person would write in 10 minutes, it may take me one hour to write with a lot of pain, of course, and discomfort and even the handwriting won’t be clear, and it will be very scattered. And get to a point where you just lose that energy to keep writing.
So education shouldn’t be so difficult that just because you have a disability and you know what you are doing, you are cognitively sound, but just because they want to prove that this is the system, you must adapt to it. I feel like there’s a lot of discrimination.
I wish I had that opportunity, but thank God, I now fight against that in UNILAG. I started my first semester at PGD using my laptop to type my exams, and it feels very good. I’ve never been that happy in my life because, for once, I was allowed to write down all I knew by typing on my computer. So it was a long, difficult journey. It got to a point where they were acting like they were doing me a favour and sending me to one another. I’ll go and meet this, go and meet that, I’ll go there, they will say go and meet them back. So it was a very difficult process, but all in all, at last, I was given the chance to.
That will also set the pace for other students with similar disabilities because I know that in UNILAG, more attention is paid to blind students. They give them that extra attention. However, disabilities such as cerebral palsy are still kind of new. So, they don’t even know what to do with you because they’ve not seen your case before. So, that was it for me. They didn’t know what to do, but then I felt like I would set a pace for other postgraduate students who were coming behind. It was a long journey, a long, painful one, full of tears, but I got it done at the end of the day.
- As a disability champion, what inspired you to advocate for disability rights/inclusive practices?
One, I would say that myself. Two, I’ve met amazing people with disabilities who are lawyers, engineers, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, and so many other things. They are doing wonderful things for themselves, their community, and society at large. So I wonder, if they didn’t give this person access to education, we’d be losing out on this talent, we’d be losing out on this gift.
So that is one thing that pushes me to keep playing my own part: just give that child access to education, give that child an inclusive environment, and let the child thrive. A lack of motor skills and movement doesn’t equate to a lack of cognitive abilities. A person can’t write, a person can’t walk, a person can’t speak well doesn’t mean that they are useless in every other thing.
And overall, it’s going to harm society if we don’t cater for this group. This is contributing to more chaos in our country. The money that we are supposed to be spending on other useful projects, we are spending it on other things. Rape cases, poverty, children or adults with disabilities who can’t do anything for themselves are still going to be liabilities to society, to their families and even to themselves. So I think those are the things that just push me to keep playing my part, even if it’s just to speak or counsel the parents.
5. How do you think government and private organisations can better support employees or students with disabilities?
First of all, whatever you are giving youth or students without disabilities, give us that, and give us that opportunity also. Whatever opportunities, skills, or grants you are giving to people or youth without disabilities, give us the opportunity to also access those things. Like I said before, just because a person is in a wheelchair or physically impaired doesn’t mean that they are completely useless.
So, that’s the first thing I would say. Give us that opportunity to access those things that you give youth and students without disabilities, ranging from grants to employment opportunities to skillsets, just try to give us, even in the educational sector. Make things easier for us.
For something like policy, I would say there are so many things the government has put in place, but it’s just there and not active. You would hear people say, under the constitution, that people with disability have rights under Nigerian law, so those things are there, but we are not practising them. They are not effective, so if the government can come up with other ways that these things can be affected, other ways that they can be practical enough for people to see, and other implementation techniques, people will know that it is there and we are doing it. We do not just want to be contributors; we just have laws, and they are just for camouflage.
6. What innovative solutions would you recommend to improve accessibility?
In the educational sector, many buildings in Nigeria, especially schools, use stairs and inaccessible infrastructure. It’s almost as if everywhere is built, not for people with disabilities. The structures are just shouting or screaming. It’s not meant for you if you have a disability. So I feel like if there’s a way that almost our buildings or our facilities or our structures can be built in such a that it is accessible for everybody, including those with disabilities, those that are blind, those wheelchair users.
I mean, it’s not so expensive, right? It can be just a wheel for wheelchair users. It can be just making little things in place for more people to access your buildings. For example, in UNILAG postgraduate school, there are a lot of stairs. So, I think I was there last semester for registration, and I was wondering, okay, so if someone is in a wheelchair, how do they expect the person to register or go to school? And it’s the same in almost every department.
So, some things must be restructured or amended for accessibility.
Also, it is making life easier for students. If I have cerebral palsy, I shouldn’t be depressed or anxious that I’m going to school because I know there are accommodations for me. If I don’t have a hand or I can’t speak, I should be able to get some modalities to prove what I know, tell you what I know, or get assessed based on what I know.
So, the educational sector and structural buildings need to be accommodating of people with disabilities.
7. Do you have any other suggestions or recommendations?
I’ll just say that in a bid to improve the quality of life for people living with disabilities, everybody has a role to play. If you have a disability, you have a role to play. If you do not have a disability, you have a role to play in the government sector, as a stakeholder, or in anything you are, even if you are just a father to someone out there. Just look around you, and you’ll see something that you can do to improve things.
It can be just donating to a child with a disability for school fees, or you can just be speaking up against violence or discrimination against people with disabilities. It can be anything. Just everybody has a role to play. You can be using your social media and making comments, sharing something, putting a smile on someone’s face, smiling at that child in the wheelchair, making the other person feel heard or feel among or feel like they belong to a part of something.
Anybody can become disabled at any time. You don’t choose not to have a disability. I did not choose to have cerebral palsy. The child you see on the road in the wheelchair didn’t choose it, so you could have been that person. It’s not like you are better, so just try to be empathetic.
This interview was conducted by Wakilat Zakariyau, MSc Student of Mass Communication (2023/2024), University of Lagos, following the training on Disability Reporting facilitated by Blessing Oladunjoye, Publisher of BONews Service.
