Dr. Adebukola Adebayo, disability inclusion excerpt has emerged Chairman of the Lagos State Chapter of the Joint National Association of People with Disabilities, JONAPWD.
The election which had representatives of the Lagos State Office for Disability Affairs and Ministry of Youths and Social Development was an open ballot system which had 30 contestants for 17 positions.
The voters were 5 delegates from the eight disability cluster groups with a total of 40 voters in all. The eight cluster groups are; Blind, Deaf, Physically Challenged, Spinal Cord Injury, Intellectual, Dwarf, Albino and Leprosy.
While delivering his acceptance speech, Dr. Adebayo appreciated all the members of the association for believing in him to deliver.
He commended the electoral committee for the process and said Lagos JONAPWD has started a new chapter which would be sustained.
He explained his manifestos again and stressed the three key issues his administration would address.
He said, “one of our focus is education for our children. We need secure the future of our children with disabilities, show concerns to their education because without education, a person with disability has no value.
“JONAPWD under our leadership will ensure that pwds are engaged and gainfully employed with the aim of addressing poverty. We will ensure that disability is no longer synonymous to disability.
“We will also revive sports for pwds, these and more are the things we’re going to do and you can hold us to account on all of these thing we have said.”
Adebayo said the new executive will “render our steward to you as a community. Also, eery year, we will have our get together as a family apart from what the government does.”
The new chairman said the team “will set up elders advisory committee so that we do not loose the wisdom among us. All contestants and elders within the community will be members of the Elders Advisory Committee.
“To ensure that no-one is left behind and all disability clusters are captured, we will ensure that those clusters that are not adequately represented in the executive will be coopted into the various committees.”
He added that there will be Special Advisers on Public Engagement, Youths, Women and Family Affairs amongst others.
Dare Dairo, co-contestant for the Chairmanship position described the election as free and fair and also charged the new executive to harness all possible opportunities for the interest of persons with disabilities in the state.
For his part, Babatunde Safiu, Treasurer Nigeria Association of the Blind, Lagos described the process as “transparent enough, all contestants are happy and everybody conducted themselves peacefully during the election.”
Advising the new executives, Safiu said, “they need to safeguard the interest of PWDs, so we can have a better life and compete favourably among the general public.”