The Lagos State government has promised pupils and students with disabilities of continuous care for their needs in schools.
The state Commissioner for Education, Mrs Folasade Adefisayo, gave the assurance at a forum organised by the ministry at the Police College Ikeja to celebrate school children with special needs in the state.
According to her, no child irrespective of the state of health, is useless, hence the need to pay due attention to children with one form of disability or the other.
While disclosing that the forum as part of activities to mark the 2019 UN’s Children with Special Needs Day held earlier in the year with a theme: “The future is accessible,” Mrs Adefisayo said Nigeria could not afford to sacrifice the future of any child including those with disabilities at the altar of today’s pleasure.
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“And we are disturbed as a responsible government that if the able-bodied could find it very difficult to eke out a living, what then lies the hope of those with disabilities,” she said.
“But our consolation is that there are abilities and possibilities in special children waiting to be explored. And that is why the government is making frantic efforts to help this segment of the population to discover and develop their potentials to make them relevant and useful to themselves and the society and also contribute meaningfully to the national development.”
She said the state government would not only continue to provide quality and quantitative classroom education for them but would also equip them with what she called 21st-century vocational skills to achieve the dream.
In her welcome address earlier at the event, the permanent secretary of the ministry, Mrs Abosede Adelaja, disclosed that the state government runs five special schools, 31 and 12 inclusive schools at primary and secondary levels respectively across the state.
She said there is no need for any parent who has children with disability to keep them at home rather enrol them in one of these schools nearest to them.
Thousands of pupils and students with special needs from various schools in the state attended the party and exhibited some of their handwork items such as sandals, adire, neck beads and so forth.
A total of 17 individuals, groups and companies including Rev. Esther Abimbola Ajayi Foundation, Rotary Club of Ogudu, Ibeji Foundation, Graceco Industries Limited, Petrocan Nigeria Ltd, Mrs Sherifat Abike Rabiu and Mrs Titilola Adenuga, among others were also presented with awards of excellence by the state government for what it called their significant contributions to education of children with special needs in the state in the last one year.
