Mohammad Musa is a contractor living with disability from Zaria, Kaduna State, he is using a roller skate as his mobility aid. He shared with us his ordeal in the hands of a security man when he went to seek for a contract in the office of NPDC like every other Nigerian. Below is exactly his story.
I was in Benin, Edo State last two weeks, at NPDC (Nigerian Petroleum Development Company Ltd) seeking for a contract. I dropped from a taxi bus within the NPDC cars parking space, I used my roller skate moved straight to the procurement department, from there I headed to the MD office, we were about 30 people at the waiting room wanting to see the MD.
All of a sudden, a security man came and singled me out and asked me to come out.
I came out and he asked me to come downstairs, after I managed to roll down. He asked me if the MD is aware of my coming, I replied yes.
He asked me if I do have a letter from Abuja or somewhere else, I replied no. At this point, I felt embarrassed so I asked him these two questions,
1. why did you picked only me leaving others who are also waiting to see the MD?
2. We are about 30 persons at the waiting room, do they all have such letters?
He ignored me and didn’t care to answer me. At this juncture, I understood that it was all about my disability, I am being subjected to all these questioning and was denied to see the MD just because I am a person with disability.
To my surprise, they chased me out of the premises to the security post at the gate of the office and asked me to leave. It was painful because I travelled over 800 kilometers from Kaduna to Benin City just to see the MD in the course of struggling like every other person. I call on human rights activists and authorities to look into this matter because security men in the offices have tagged us beggars and are preventing us from carrying out our lawful businesses.
