The beautiful Ndifreke Andrew-Essien (Freky), has over twelve years of experience in civic leadership, volunteering, community work and in different programs in relation to non-profit organization sector.
This Rivers State born founded Freky Andrew-Essien Care Foundation known as FAECARE Foundation, a Non-Profit Organization which focuses on vulnerable groups in communities; providing step gap support services to these vulnerable groups such as vulnerable children, persons with disabilities, youths, and other less privileged in communities.
As a woman with disability, she focused her work on persons with disabilities especially women with disabilities, pioneering various programs, forming networks to promote the rights of women with disabilities.
She has volunteered and worked with international and local organizations, for instance, she participated in President Barak Obama’s Flagship and Inaugural Young African Leaders Initiative, she is also a Mandela Washington Fellow.
An industrious woman with some enviable academic qualifications, she is a certified management consultant, BSc and Masters in Human Physiology and Public Health with various training and certifications and now a renowned disability rights advocate, a motivational speaker and she is blessed with a sensational voice for singing.
In this interview, she shared with us the challenges women with disabilities face and brief about her NGO.
TQM: How did your Disability occurred?
In the year 2002 on the 26th of December precisely, I was in school in the university where I was a student at the medical school, I was preparing for my professional exam that was coming up in the month of January. Being that it was a day after Christmas, I decided to do some visitation in town, since I didn’t travel home for the holidays. After studying for the better part of the day, in the evening, I picked up cards and gifts that I will do some visitation with. I boarded a bike (Okada) but unfortunately, we got involved in a road accident and I fractured my spine on the spot. I broke my back; I had a burst fracture on my spine. It is a long story, I can’t go into all of it in one stretch but basically it resulted in being bedridden for a while and then having series of surgeries, learning how to seat and finally having to resort to being on a wheelchair due to spinal cord injury. So, that is how my disability occurred. I wasn’t born with a disability, I had spinal cord injury as a result of a road accident as a student in the University on the day after Christmas.
TQM: As a woman with disability, can you take me through the challenges faced by WGWDs in Nigeria?
Well, as a woman with disability who lives in Nigeria, I can give first-hand information and details of some of the challenges faced by women and girls with disabilities in Nigeria. They are many, but I will give a few of them. One of the major challenges that we face for most parts, is the interaction of being a woman and being a person with a disability. The interaction between these two Dynamics confers on the woman with disability a double disadvantage. We know that in history as regards to the rights of individuals or persons that we have the women’s Rights movement and we have the disability Rights movement. Both are really strong around the globe and in Nigeria, but in these two movements I have seen, it is unfortunate that the woman with disability does not come up as a priority on both platforms. This is a challenge because the needs and the concerns of women with disabilities doesn’t make the front of a line of challenges making her even more vulnerable among already vulnerable groups.
Another major challenge that women and girls with disabilities face is the challenge of not being taken seriously as regards their own input in community life and participation. This usually result in participation restriction. They are not allowed to thrive; they are not allowed to engage freely.
What we see especially at community level is a lot of deprivation of the basic rights. Like the right of women and girl with disability to education. The priority of basic rights is very low and in other words non-existent, they would rather train the boy with disability. Infact, they have not even finished training the girl without disability talk less of the girl with disability, this is the attitude towards WGWDs and it is a challenge.
It doesn’t come up in the scale of preference as a priority as regards to the basic rights of WGWDs to acquire education, this is sad.
Working in non-profit organization sector, I have seen that girls are usually hidden and secluded in family compounds and most of the time going by the findings from the work that we do at FAECARE Foundation, which focuses on women and girls with disabilities, we have to do a lot of individual tracing of these girls to be able to find them.
Another challenge has to do with the sexual reproductive health rights. The thinking that a woman with disability is not a woman first is wrong in every ramification because whether we like it or not, we are women first then we have bodies and we are not asexual. So, women and girls with disabilities have the right to access Sexual Reproductive Health Services: antenatal care, care when pregnant and care after delivery. We have a right to say no when we feel that our bodies are being violated.
This brings me to another challenge of women and girls with disabilities face which is sexual violence, gender-based violence, domestic violence and really this violence even sometimes starts in childhood, where the girl is verbally abused and told every day that you do not matter. These are some of the challenges that I have seen women and girls with disabilities face in Nigeria.
TQM: After your disability, how did you cope in your family, society and school?
My challenge has more to do genuinely with developing coping strategies and being able to rediscover my purpose in the state I had found myself and re-insert myself back into society as an optimal functional and thriving member of society. That was my focus and has remained my focus for a long time and what that helped me to do was not allow the obvious challenge, be it gender or disability, stop me from developing coping strategies with every different challenge I face in this journey.
My family is very supportive. In my family, the issue of becoming person with disability never came up as a problem to them. It was clear that things would be done differently. I think their ability to cope was also because I decided that I was going to be strong and resilient in the face of the challenges that I had been exposed to.
For the society I initially used to get very upset with the different reactions and opinions people had in their response to me having a disability, but I soon learnt that me getting frustrated or angry was not the solution and that it wouldn’t help me in anyway getting emotional about what other people thought. So, I learned to become emotionally intelligent in handling society’s reaction by simply settling it in myself that everybody is entitled to their own opinion however their opinion doesn’t count or doesn’t necessarily translate to how I should behave or live a full life inspite of Disability. So, anyone can have their opinion on what they think of me being a woman with disability, it does not translate to my purpose and to my existence on this earth. This philosophy has helped me not to get angry at people when they respond negatively either based on ignorance or based on the little information they have. Instead I have found myself as an advocate, here to educate, inform them to know better and do better when it comes to PWDs especially the woman with disability.
As regards being a woman with disability and school, it was interesting.
I tried to go back to school after I had gotten some health interventions but I was told that I can’t go back to the course I was studying; it was devastating but It didn’t stop me from going on to focus on my goal of having a degree. Despite the challenges and difficulties, I went on to have a first degree second class upper in human physiology and then a master’s in human physiology and for good measure another Masters in public health.
When you put your mind to it and God helping you, nothing is impossible.
I believe it is your perspective as a woman with disability that is actually more important. How you see yourself is actually more important than how the society, the family, school or anyone sees you. Because when you learn to love yourself, when you understand that you are here for a purpose and you deserve a full life, it will help you to overcome whatever other people try to do to pull you down.
TQM: Do you think that implementing Nigeria Disability Law will go a long way towards ameliorating challenges faced by PWDs especially WGWDs?
The Prohibition act is a great milestone in the disability Rights movement in Nigeria but its implementation is what is more important than just having a law on paper. it is going to take a lot of political will for that law to be implemented or to take effect, it will also take the cooperation of all clusters and persons with disabilities setting aside selfish interest and differences for that law to work for us. If we do not push together for implementation of the prohibition act, that is, the disability law in Nigeria, it will continue to be a piece of legislation, a nice piece of paper and document.
Having said that, individual persons with disabilities should learn the law because it can be very effective in insisting on one’s right when somebody’s individual rights infringed on.
So, yes, implementing a Nigerian disability law will go a long way to allow persons with disability flourish in Nigeria.
TQM: What do you think can be done to expedite the implementation of the Act?
Just like I said earlier, persons with disabilities needs to come together, we need to set aside our differences, we need to set aside personal interest and selfish interest we need to work together and raise one strong loud voice to expedite implementation of the act.
TQM: There has been public outcry that PWDs especially WGWDs are not being carried along in the campaign towards curbing the spread of COVID-19, what advice can you proffer to ensure that PWDs are no left out in this campaign?
I think the issue of most marginalized among persons with disabilities which includes women and girls with disabilities starts from the foundation and lack of existing structures and systems, it is not tied to COVID-19 Pandemic, it has been long in existence. The norm had been that that people who are in the City centres, state capitals and national capital are the ones that usually gain any of the so-called benefits as opposed to persons with disabilities in grassroots areas who actually really need the help.
We need to get our act right. First of all, where is a database of persons with disability in this country at Federal level and state level at local government level, at any level really? It is not there.
So, who then benefits from any campaigns be it COVID-19 or anyone, group who gets them, usually the same sets of persons with disabilities? Campaign marginalization is not tied to COVID-19, it didn’t start today.
If the relevant ministries and the agencies responsible for disability affairs at Federal and state levels won’t do what they should do, can’t we get our act together? We have all sorts of SSA on Disability to state governors etc who can insist on the right measures when it comes to persons with Disabilities. It baffles me sometimes.
TQM: Is there any other relevant information you want to share with us?
Relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic I want to say that persons with disabilities should not be careless with the standardized preventive measures.
The virus doesn’t care if you are a person with disability, it is an infection, a viral infection.
For now, we know how it can be prevented therefore, we cannot and should not act ignorant in not carrying out the preventive measures, so let’s do the needful.
Wash your hands for at least 20 seconds with soap and wash them often.
Have hand sanitizers close to you, this is one of the easiest ways. sanitize your hands and ensure your aid do the same if you can’t do without an aid at this time.
For those of us who use assistive devices; wheelchairs, crutches, white canes, and other forms of assistive devices, sterilize and clean them often.
if you have a caregiver, your caregiver has the responsibility to take care of themselves so that if they too do not expose you.
Finally, Social distancing it is 2 metres, nobody should be up in your space in the name of assistance.
This is our Disability Messaging from FAECARE Foundation
TQM: Talking about your NGO, can you tell me more about your NGO?
FAECARE Foundation remains grateful to be a leading organization for persons with disability especially in the south south region of Nigeria. We will continue in our capacity to advocate for the rights of persons with disabilities, build the capacity of PWDs and empower women and girls with disabilities.
We commend you and thank Qualitative magazine for the opportunity to pass on valuable information via this interview.
You can get information via these medium:
www.faecarefoundation.org
www.facebook.com/org
www.twitter.com/faecare_org
www.insragram.com/faecare
