Inclusive Friends Association (IFA) has trained 280 Persons with Disability Supervisors on data collection of voters with disabilities in 280 Local Government Areas (LGAs) of 13 States. The group said it targets 13 more States in 2021 and another 13 in 2022 in preparation for 2023 General elections.
The Program Manager of data for Inclusion project for IFA, Jesse John, with support from Voice, in an interview with Inclusive News Network said it had recently recruited and trained 23 Persons with Disabilities, one from each of the 23 local government area of Sokoto State.
The group stated that the PWDs Supervisors were trained on the manual methodology for data collection to assist them collect the disaggregated data of voters with disabilities in the state. The data collected would be shared with the Independent NationaL Electoral Commission (INEC) in a bid to update the disability status of voters already captured in the INEC Voters Register.
The group is currently conducting similar training in Kwara State and its 16 LGAs. Eleven other States are still in the offing.
“We are currently working with 13 States. The total number of LGAs in these States is 280. There are still some 44 LGAs in Kano State. In all, we have trained 236 PWDs in 12 States. We hope to do additional 13 States in 2021 with another 13 in 2022 in preparation for 2023 general elections.”
“Well, I think our objective is simply to collect the disaggregated data of PWDs who are registered voters.”
“And the reason we are doing this is that without data, it is impossible for any Government agency or ministry to plan for the inclusion of persons with disabilities in their program.”
The group urged INEC to use the data and ensure Persons with Disabilities are mainstreamed into their programs and systems.
“And for other organizations, it is crucial that we collect relevant data at different levels of engagement within our constituencies and learn to share such data with agencies that need to use them in making decisions that affect PWDs positively.”
When asked if the current unrest in the country has slowed down its activities, the group responded in affirmative: “Yes, the Kano training was slated for last week Friday but due to the unrest in Sabon Gari last weekend, we had to postponed the activity.
“The #EndSARS protests in itself didn’t affect our activities, it was the unrest that followed which affected it. We are in support of the #EndSARS protest as an organization. However, we are against the violence carried out by hoodlums, which hindered our training from going smoothly.
“As an organization of persons with disabilities, we know that each time violence erupts, more persons acquire disabilities. This directly increase the index of persons with disabilities in the country. And its instructive to know that the country has yet to understand and plan for the already existing millions of PWDs we currently have”.
