Visual impairment: Association tasks Gombe govt on provision of textbooks
The Nigeria Association of the Blind has called on Gombe State government to make budgetary allocation for the production of braille textbooks to improve reading skills of blind students.
The National President of NAB, Mr Ishaku Adamu, made the call on Thursday, while donating braille textbooks to students of Special Education Centre, Gombe Student.
He said the books were specially made for the school using their curriculum to ensure that students benefitted maximally.
According to him, over 158 copies of braille textbooks comprising 18 different subjects have been donated to the school to support education of the blind students.
He said that the cost of producing the textbooks with transportation cost included was over two million naira.
“So we are appealing to the government to make budgetary allocation for textbooks and other reading materials for our blind students at all level of education in Gombe State.
“Education is inevitable. It is tantamount to reading and writing. Our people cannot read, we always listen.
“Our people have lots of spelling issues simply because we only listen; we can speak but cannot write efficiently. This makes our education incomplete.
“Today, we have made different production of textbooks for the students in this school.
“We have Biology, Economics, Government, Geography, English, Mathematics, Basic science textbooks amongst others for students’ consumption,’’ he said.
He stated that there were other subjects that books had not been donated, and appealed to the state government to ensure that those braille textbooks were supplied to the school.
“We believe that the government can do better; we donated these textbooks just to show the government that the production is possible and not difficult.
“We produced these books on behalf of the association, all the executives and our sponsors particularly the World Intellectual Property Organisation make these books available to our students from primary to secondary school,” he said.
Adamu appealed to wealthy Nigerians in the state to support the students to ensure that they get quality education to become major contributors to national growth and development.
On his part, Mr Ibrahim Yusuf, the chairman of the Association of Non-Governmental Organisations, Gombe State chapter said the ceremony had availed him the opportunity to learn more about the plights of blind students.
Yusuf said his coalition had been advocating for domestication of Disability Act in the state, stressing that the Bill if passed would help address some of the challenges facing the education of blind students.
He stated that plans were already underway to ensure that there was adequate knowledge on the bill when passed to ensure that communities across the state own the Act to protect the physically-challenged persons.
While appreciating the gesture from NAB, Malam Mohammed Lawal, the principal of the school said the books would help address contemporary challenges of teaching his students as against the existing outdated books.
Lawal said any attempt to address the reading challenges in special school would help address half of the students’ challenges.
He stated that the books donated would benefit over 70 blind pupils and students of the school, “so we thank Dr Ishaku Adamu for this good gesture done to us.”
On his part, Idris Ali, an SS3 student sitting his external examination said the book would help him to study better.
“After my exams, I will still be coming to read and assist others using these books.”
