By Comr. Yusuf Kumo,
Comr. Yusuf kumo is a Pioneer President, Gombe State Deaf Students Association, GSU Chapter. Writes to The Qualitative magazine from Bauchi state Agency Persons with Disability.
Permit to say that, the biggest challenges we Deaf and Hard of hearing usually encounters especially at home and within the other agents of socialization is mostly Communication Barriers and Isolation.
This Barrier is frequent at home because many parents of the deaf and hard of hearing in the Northern part of the country communicate in Hausa and they are not familiar with English language, but unfortunately majority of the deaf don’t know Hausa and their mother tongues. Why? Simply because most parents hardly teach them Hausa/their mother tongue from childhood just because they are deaf, I’m sorry to say.
The schools which supposed to educate them how to communicate with their hearing counterparts usually teach them only in Manual Sign Language and English language which majority of the parents hardly understands, as a results, deaf people are mostly isolated at home with little or no communication between them and their families because most families in the north unlike the southern parts, hardly communicate in English or sign language while the deaf hardly understands Hausa language.. See the barriers… it’s unfortunate.
Personally, I don’t know Hausa much, I learned few when I was hearing, I had to put pressure on family and siblings to educate me some Hausa words I don’t understands. Up till today there are many Hausa words and sentences I don’t understand. That’s perhaps the reasons I hardly writes or chats in Hausa.
It’s worthy to note that in almost all deaf schools right from primary to secondary they don’t teach Hausa language or any other language except English Manual Sign language which is ASL. If they do, I’m sure that the issues of communication barriers and isolation at home could be minimized because this will give chance for the deaf to communicate with their parents and siblings in Hausa which is the language most parents and siblings understands at home.
I must commend President Muhammadu Buhari for signing this Disability Right Bill in to law, and most importantly the NASS for gazetting it, we are applying for full implementation.
If the Disability Rights Act is implemented, it will ensure the inclusion of Sign language in our schools curriculum. This will be commendable as it will helps (especially the younger generation) to reduce communication barriers between the deaf people and other people. However, this is not enough, deaf people also need to learn in their local languages especially those from the Hausaland, learning also in Hausa language will help them to communicate with their parents and siblings who might not be a beneficiary of the newly inclusive sign language in school curriculum. This will no doubt reduce communication barriers between them and their parents/siblings at home.
In conclusion, I’m using this opportunity to urge my state ministry of education, and most importantly the FMOE to please kindly include Hausa language in our schools curriculum especially in the North/Hausa speaking Communities, Yoruba language in the west and Igbo language in the East which will help minimize communication barriers between the deaf and hard of hearing people and their parents, siblings and the society at large.
Secondly, there is a need to improve Special schools’ facilities, I’m sorry to say that most of our deaf and special schools are in dilapidated, neglected and in dire conditions. I can vividly remember that when the wife of my immediate former Governor visited my former school, Special Education Centre, Gombe, she wept because of the poor facilities and conditions the school is facing. Unfortunately, still little or nothing was done to improve the school thereafter.
Just last week when the Governor of Kwara State Abdulraman Abdulrazak visited his state’s Special School, he was shocked to the extent that he apologized to the special needs pupils over poor State of facilities in the schools. The Governor In his words,
“now that I have seen things for myself, I know the depth of the problem we have in this sector and we will be responsible in allocating scarce resources.
“We will come back here to ensure that basic standards are met. The truth is that basic needs are not met and it is a shame.
“As a government, we want to apologise to you for living in this kind of condition and we will make sure that minimum standards are met,’’ the governor said.
(reported by Punch newspaper and the Qualitative Magazine)
You can now see we people living with disabilities are suffering all sorts of discrimination, Communication barriers and isolation and our schools suffers negligence and poor welfare and facilities. Please government at all levels and the society at large do the needful.
