Persons with disabilities have staged a protest in Awka, the Anambra State capital, over their voting rights.
Persons with disabilities have staged a protest in Awka, the Anambra State capital, over their voting rights.
The group said its members were being marginalised in election issues.
It demanded equal voting access in the November 18, 2017 poll in the state and in other elections.
The Executive Director of Centre for Citizen with Disabilities, Mr. David Anyaele, led the protest.
Anyaele said persons with disabilities were more than 600,000 in Anambra State and over 25 million in Nigeria.
He said, “The number of people with
disabilities in Nigeria towered above the number of citizens in
countries like Croatia, Belgium Denmark, and New Zealand put together.”
He said the group would take their
protest to the Independent National Electoral Commission and ask to be
provided with items as braille ballots, assistive devices, especially
for the visually impaired amongst them.
The group threatened to take its protest
to the National and State Houses of Assembly if they were not properly
accommodated in the electoral processes of the country, starting with
the Anambra poll.
It maintained that it had lined up
activities in that respect, including interfacing with INEC officials,
political parties, security agencies, heads of organisations, the media
to sensitize them on areas of intervention on the marginalisation of
their members.
It added, “Also, we will train and
deploy two persons with disabilities each as observers across the 21
local government areas of Anambra State to observe the governorship
election of November 18.
“We shall also impress on INEC to
carefully choose the location of polling units to ensure that they are
accessible for PWDs by locating polling units on flat surfaces as
opposed to corridors, especially where ramps and hand rails are yet to
be provided”
The group used the occasion to launch its chapter in Anambra State.
Punch
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