Mr. James Lalu, the Executive Secretary of the National Commission for Persons with Disabilities (NCPWD) has unveiled the Nigerian Disability Partnership Group (NDPG) to coordinate the implementation of the commission’s five-year Strategic Development Plan.
The NDPG consists of the World Bank (WB), Foreign and Common Wealth Office of the British High Commission, and Sight Savers, who are ready and willing to provide all the necessary technical and financial support to the Commission to achieve the set targets in its five-year Strategic Development Plan.
Speaking during the unveiling in Abuja, Lalu said, “the partners have already shown their commitment; we welcome them with the beautiful idea and it is a very important thing for us as an institution to set the pace; that is why we are setting up a secretariat here and the secretariat has been inaugurated.
“One of the functions of the Secretariat is to ensure the implementation of the five-year Strategic Development Plan, then bringing the total commitment of everybody on disability in Nigeria, whether local or international,” Lalu added.
Also speaking at the unveiling, Dr. Adebukola Adebayo, the World Bank Technical Assistant to the Commission described disability as a multi-sectoral issue that cuts across all aspects of life.
Adebayo said there are a lot of international development partners, Civil Society Organisations, and organised private sectors, working across sectors such as Education, Agriculture, health, transportation, and others, adding that it is important to harmonize these efforts with the aim of driving disability-inclusion in Nigeria,
According to Adebayo, the primary goal of the NDPG “is to provide technical and financial support to the Commission, to meet its mandate across all these sectors. So in the long run, the whole idea is to ensure that whatever is done in the support of PWDs is documented and harmonized to avoid duplication, waste of resources, and unnecessary competition.
“The secretariat of the NDPG is domicile at the Commission and run by its staff, but with the technical and other forms of support from development partners,” he said.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that members of the Group’s Secretariat include, Mr. Abba Isawa as Coordinator, Adewale Olasoji Ebenezer in charge of PRS, Mrs. Olanike Akinbola, Head of Women and Gender, and Ikem Uchegbulam.
Others are Mariam Saleh Hassan as Legal Adviser, James Hassan as Director Human Resource, Haruna Mohammed as Technical Adviser, Fatima Doki Abubakar, and Maria Kamba.
(NAN)