The Center for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) in collaboration with the MacArthur Foundation has unveiled the first of its kind Digital training hope for people living with disabilities (PWDs) which targeted over three hundred (300) people in Kano state.
While launching the center, the executive director of CITAD Engineer Yunusa Zakari Ya’u said the development is aimed at complementing United Nations (UN) calls that no one should left behind digital which was declared some years back.
According to him, the center was built in such a way that visually impaired people, physically challenged, Albinism, and other special needs would operate the computer and perform a lot of tasks which differs it from general computer centers in Kano state and the country by extension.
“Some years back, the UN declared that no one should left behind digitally and if you don’t train people with disability they would be left behind, so that is why we come on with the idea, and if you look around most of our primary and secondary schools in Kano state don’t have digital facilities for PWDs to use in learning digital skills, and now higher education is turning to be digital, and if you don’t train PWDs they will be left behind digitally and educationally,” said Ya’u.
“Also, every member of a society should give his or her contribution to the inclusion of PWDs, and so establishing a pilot center would tend to inspire other people from different organizations to build similar things like this one,” said the executive director.
He urged other philanthropist to visit the center and ask questions so that it would help them build their own.
In his remarks, the Country Director of the MacArthur Foundation in Nigeria, Dr Kole Ahmed Shettima, said the world has turned into a global village hence the need to provide the required knowledge to make PWDs contribute their quota in uplifting the society and self-reliant.
“With a population of 30-40 million PWDs in Nigeria, if they are left behind it means that those that will move the nation forward are not knowledgeable so we have to start from somewhere,” he said.
Shettima then urged the Kano state government to develop similar centers in local government areas so that people with special needs among others would benefit from it.
Also speaking, the Senior Special Assistant (SSA) to the governor of Kano state on ICT, Yusuf Ibrahim maintained that Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf has approved the establishment of CBT ICT centers across the 44 local government areas.
“N309 million will be spent to establish the pilot CBT center where PWDs will be given due consideration”
Speaking on behalf of the trainees Malam Ibrahim Abdulkarim commended CITAD for the initiative saying that it has made him realize that people with special needs are not left behind but rather brought into the limelight on ICT.
He appealed to the MacArthur Foundation to provide CITAD with sophisticated equipment such as braille touch and braille embosser for the visually impaired and the Kano state government to include PWDs in any activity related to ICT.
“Am also appealing for the provision of laptops for the PWDs to enable us to practice what we have learned and certificates at the end of the training to enable us for into the job market of information and communication technology.”
Each set of PWDs will undergo eight weeks of training while equipment at the digital lab includes computers, screen magnifiers, braille displays, braille keyboards, screen readers, Perkins brailler, and others.
