Visually impaired people in Nigeria have joined their counterparts around the world to commemorate the World Sight Day, calling on Nigerian government to provide technical support for visually impaired pupils.
As part of the celebration, Management of School of the Blind, Jabi, Abuja, the nation’s capital has solicited the support of government for improved funding to ensure academic excellence of the visually impaired pupils.
Head Teacher of the institution, Mrs. Regina Dung, made the call in Abuja on Thursday during a road walk organised by the Nigerian Optometric Association (NOA), in commemoration of the 2018 World Sight Day with the theme “Universal Eyecare”.
In a monitored report via the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) the World Sight Day is commemorated globally every second Thursday of October.
The international communities set aside the day to draw government’s and stakeholders’ attention to the challenges facing the populace in respect to eye care.
The head teacher noted that poor funding is a major challenge of pupils living with eye defects.
On other challenges militating against quality academic performance of pupils in the school, Dung said include lack of teaching aid, inadequate funding and lack of conducive learning environment.
“A book for the regular child goes for N50 while a brail paper for the visually impaired child goes for N3,500.
“The environment is not conducive for the visually impaired people to move around independently; so we solicit for government to come to our aid to improve their learning skills and well-being.
“So, if government is allocating one million naira to regular schools, it should allocate three million to visually impaired schools; this will enhance academic performance.
“Also, 80 per cent of the visually impaired pupils are from poor socio-economic background and cannot afford the cost of these aids.
“Ordinary N5,000 would have prevented majority of them from going blind but due to poor financial status of their parents, they find themselves in this condition,” the head teacher said.
Blessing Okon is a pupil of the school who spoke on behalf of other pupils of the school at the event.
The visually impaired pupil commended NOA for including them in the commemoration.
According to Okon, some of their challenges include lack of access to gadgets including computers, brail machines and typewriters which she said would aid their writing skills and capability.
“When I got blind some years ago, I thought all hope of schooling was gone.
“I never knew that being handicapped does not deter anyone from forging ahead academically.
“Though we still lack a lot of facilities in the school but the school has really helped us,” she said.
