Dr Victor Aleburu of the School of Education, Federal College of Education, Special, Oyo, has said that Education for All Programme process in the Nigerian educational system was yet to cover people with special needs who are in different communities across the country.
The programme failed because there are not enough schools that can address their learning challenge in these areas, while some communities in the country are not aware of such special schools to send their children.
He made this observation in his lecture titled “Reinstating the Missing Sheep Through Functioning Senses, Packages and Development,” at the 10th edition of the inaugural lecture of the college held recently.
He noted that there were millions of Nigerians with one disability or the other across the country without access to basic education and necessary self-sufficient skills to make them independent in the society.
According to him, the concerned bodies in the education sector should conduct a statistics on the people with special needs in the country who are outside the school system for adequate data and planning for them, saying that development would go a long way to reduce street–begging on our streets.
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Dr Aleburu declared that special education is a customised educational programme designed to meet the unique needs of persons with special needs that general education cannot provide for.
He also suggested that the government should ensure that every school in the country has the facilities and human resources to cater for people with special needs.
He berated the absence of adequate funding to equip the existing schools in the country while suggesting that modern instructional technology could solve the problems of instructional problems of persons with special needs.
He emphasized the need to develop functional senses instructional packages for persons with special needs outside the school system across the country.
His words: “This college possesses the best quality resources, human and materials for promoting special needs education in Nigeria and the college should consider setting up a distance learning programme for special needs persons, therefore, the college should utilise its leadership position to commence the design, production and use of the proposed packages. Also, Nigerian Governments and other relevant organisations and individuals should take more active steps towards providing full, equal and equitable instructional access to everyone in the country.”