by Chris Agbo
Disability Rights Advocacy Center (DRAC) on Thursday 11th June, 2020 in Abuja organized a stakeholders’ validation meeting on the findings on mapping of OPDs in the FCT.
It is part of DRAC’s policy to practice project (P2P) supported by the ROLAC program of the British Council and European Union, where a Mapping of OPDs was carried out in the FCT in order to determine their Capacity Development Needs with a view to strengthening them to provide basic information and services to women and girls with disabilities whose rights have been violated.
The Executive Director, DRAC, Dr. Irene Ojiugo Patrick-Ogbogu, in her opening remark said that P2P is to get all Nigerian laws and policies especially those relevant to persons with disabilities to begin to work for them and improve their access to justice. The project is also meant to address the issue of sexual and gender-based violence being experienced by women and girls with disabilities whose situation is further exacerbated by the low capacity of OPDs to promote and champion access to justice initiatives for women and girls with disabilities. A situation that has continued to result in their exclusion and inability to access justice.
She pointed out that OPDs are very important stakeholders in achieving this because whenever the rights of a person with disability is violated, their first port of call is Organization of Persons with Disabilities because they know them and trust them.
In view of this, DRAC saw the need to target Organizations of Persons with disabilities in order to strengthen their capacity to respond in appropriate manner to these cases of violations when reported to them. The OPDs should know what to do when they are approached with a case of rights violation by a person with disability. For example, OPDs should know basis of their rights, know how to counsel the person and also how to assist the person to get justice. It is based on the above reason that DRAC decided to start by mapping the OPDS, identifying them, their locations, knowledge and skills gaps and other institutional information that are necessary for designing a capacity building program that will enable them function effectively as first responders for the disability community and be more effective in the services that they render.
She expressed a desire to see OPDs be positioned as resource hubs, saying that OPDs should not exist only on paper or only to be invited to meetings, they should be able to provide services and push for the implementation of laws and policies to improve the lives of persons with disabilities. Therefore, towards attaing the P2P project goals, the mapping of the OPDs has been concluded and the researchers who carried out the mapping through their findings have been able to identify the capacity gaps, status of the OPDs, challenges of the OPDs and highlight areas that OPDs capacity needs to be strengthened.
The mapping consultant while presenting the findings expressed concern on the level at which a greater number of the OPDs lack the necessary capacity and registration requirement to get support from the development partners to carry out projects towards the implementation of the disability laws and policies.
The areas that the mapping looked at are: The Organizational Structure or governance structure of the OPDs, the status of registration of Organizations, level of compliance with relevant National and State Regulations and Legislations, OPDs awareness about legislation to promote disability rights and Access to Justice, organization area of coverage in FCT, Relationship between OPDs and other Stakeholders, MDAs and other NGOs and CSOs, Review of Project and Programmes Implementation of the OPDs and Assessment of OPDs Systems and Structures: Organizational Policies and Plans.
The consultant in his presentation, highlighted some areas of concern which needs urgent attention of the OPDs because they are of basic requirements OPDs if they are serious to mobilize resources to render services to the community of persons with disabilities. For example, the findings show that there are huge number of ODPs that doesn’t have important operational documents such as Child Protection Policy, Gender policy, Procurement policy, Financial policy, Human Resource Policy, Operational policy, Annual Plans and Strategic Plans. Without these documents, there is no way OPDs can get funding to carried out their activities. The result also revealed that 51.5% of the funding of the OPDs mapped are from their members and individual support which is insufficient if OPDs are to dispense their roles effectively.
Another concern arising from the findings is that OPDs level of compliance with relevant National and State Regulations and Legislations is low. Less than 5% of them has SCUML, less than 10% has Group life Assurance, less than 5% have arrangement for Staff pension, about 10% files their annual returns , less than 20% make effort to get their tax exemption certification annually, and good enough, over 60% of them have atleast one form of registration. OPDs were advised to take all these compliance requirements seriously because without them, OPDs have slim chances of getting funding from development partners to carry out their projects and programmes.
The findings also showed that majority of the OPDs work on human rights and disability rights respectively while less attention is given to issues like Sexual and Gender Based Violence and HIV with 6.2% and 9.4% respectively. Their coverage on governance is 18.8%. OPDs were advised to show interest in HIV especially as it affects PWDs and SGBV because of its importance to women and girls with disabilities.
Another important finding is that majority of the OPDs mapped have their offices in AMAC, according to the facilitators, it is not good enough for the services OPDs render. Majority of persons with disabilities are in other area councils, he advised that OPDs should have contact offices in these area councils so that they can carry along PWDs in these areas in their projects and programmes.
The consultants expressed disappointment over the unwillingness of many OPDs speaking to their team during the mapping exercise. Out of 60 OPDs penciled down for the mapping, only 24 were mapped. Whereas the mapping sample was for 50 OPDs.
The report recommended the following: a) Put in place measures for improving the organizational capacity of OPDs, b) Further strengthen partnership between OPDs and other stakeholders, c) Encourage OPDs to comply with relevant national and state regulations and legislations and d) OPDs should be open to collaboration instead of competition
The Consultants also proposed a continuous updating of OPDs database which would be developed and linked with DRAC’s website in order to build a database of OPDs across the country to enhance collaboration and synergy in carrying out projects and programmes, this will make it easier to identify OPDs to collaborate with through the database.
The representatives of the OPDs at the meeting were elated and amazed at the level of omission in their operations. Lack of important policy documents and compliance to government regulations and legislations which has hampered their opportunity of getting funding. They commended DRAC for the initiative and promised to work with DRAC to improve their capacity and also make efforts to develop the relevant policy documents and also effort to acquire all the necessary compliance requirements of the government.
The participants were OPDs from different clusters of persons with disabilities.
