By Chris Agbo,
Disability Rights Advocacy Center (DRAC) in collaboration with the National Commission for Persons with Disabilities (NCPWD) on Thursday in Abuja organized a one-day Stakeholders’ Meeting on Disability Data. This event funded by Ford Foundation was held to discuss the topic; “Making Disability Data Visible in Nigeria Statistics”.
According to The Executive Director of DRAC, Dr. Irene Ojiugo Patrick-Ogbogu; data is important in development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of disability comprehensive policies as it is reflected in Article 31 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and in the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development, which calls on member countries to disaggregate indicators by disability status as stipulated in paragraph 48, to measure progress and ensure comprehensive benefit to all and that no one is left behind.
The global indicator framework clearly states that the SDG indicators should be disaggregated, where relevant, by income, sex, age, race, ethnicity, migratory status, disability and geographic location, or other characteristics, in accordance with the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics. She stated that a gap still exists between policy-makers, civil society and statisticians in Nigeria.
Speaking further, she said that the meeting seeks to address access to multi-sectoral services for persons with disabilities especially women and girls in Nigeria through an increase in the amount of quality disaggregated data of persons with disabilities based on standardized tools now available in many countries.
The Consultant while emphasizing on the need for data in planning and implementation of policies that would address the needs of persons with disabilities pointed out some surveys that have taken place over the years in some MDAs who did not take into cognizant persons with disabilities, and that MDAs in charge of Data collection lack the knowledge of using the right tools that would enable them to gather disaggregated data of persons with disabilities.
He introduced the Washington group set of short questions (WGSS) which he described as the international acceptable method of capturing the data of persons with disabilities without asking direct questions such as ‘what kind of disability do you have’, as it may hinder the success of gathering accurate data of persons with disabilities.
Stating that the WGSS would help to gather information from persons about their disability status without mentioning disability. He also described it as most effective for determining disability status because it would enable the discovery of more people who have disabilities.
The Organizations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs) raised concerns over the exclusion of persons with disabilities in most survey going on in Nigeria.
It was however established in the meeting that not so much have taken place in Nigeria when it comes to data gathering. OPDs suggested that at the planning of surveys, persons with disabilities should be part of the process and some persons with disabilities should be trained as enumerators because they understand the terrain and it would be easier for them to identify persons with disabilities.
The participants identified MDAs, the survey they have carried out and the strategies to adopt in order to mainstream persons with disabilities in the future data collection exercise.
Participants emphasized the need for DRAC and NCPWD to engage National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) to ensure that they adopt WGSS in all their data collection exercise especially in the next National Census.
Other agencies whose duties involves data collection such as National Identity Management Commission, were advised to conform to section 26 of Discrimination against Persons with Disabilities (Prohibition) Act 2018 which spoke about Service on Queues and priority giving to persons with disabilities and also apply tools to disaggregate data of persons with disabilities.
INEC was also advised to intensify training of their adhoc staff to understand the need of ensuring that persons with disabilities fills form EC40H and also in their incoming registration exercises, they should include tools that would help in gathering data of registered persons with disabilities to help them in planning and deployment of disability assistive devices such magnifying class, braille ballot guide etc on election day.
The participants were drawn from MDAs such as Head of Service, INEC, NIMC, NPC, Ministry of Education, Health, Labour and Productivity etc, CSOs and OPDs.
TQM learnt that DRAC will follow-up with technical meeting to develop a white paper on advocacy priorities in disability data, as well as an environmental scan from the 24th – 28th May, 2021 to determine the availability of disability disaggregated data on nationally representative data in economic, health, political and social sectors to inform the development of a comprehensive disability inclusion guide with indicators cutting across domains of persons with disabilities in Nigeria.
