By Ozumi Abdul
To mark this year’s World Poetry Day, which has the theme: “Empowering People with Special Needs”, the Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) in collaboration with All Poets Network International (APNI) on Saturday, organized a 1-day workshop for 30 selected people with special needs in Kano state.
Speaking at the event, the CITAD’s Coordinator for Persons with Disabilities, Sagiru Ado Abubakar noted that CITAD has always had special projects for PWDs, hence its reason for partnering with APNI to train them on the need to arm them with poetry skills to amplify their voices.
According to him, the program is geared towards equipping the PWDs to pursue and press home their demands and needs with poetry, especially in the areas of accountability and inclusion.
“The program aims at helping the people with special needs to pursue their needs and demands, especially on the issue of accountability and inclusion”.
He added that the workshop will expose the people to the rudiments of writing Hausa poetry so that they can be able to send their messages to the people in appropriate quarters for consideration, especially during political activities.
On his part, the Curator and Founder of APNI, Khalid Imam explained that World Poetry Day is an annual ritual but a debut one for PwDs in Kano.
He noted that it is imperative to facilitate the promotion of poetry within and beyond the Nigerian borders, adding that poetry as a driving force of communication, will endear the participants at the end of the day to utilize the knowledge they derive from the training towards pressing homes their demands from the appropriate quarters until they are met.
“As group facilitators, the promotion of poetry within and beyond Nigerian borders, we collaborated we CITAD to gather the participants while we give the training to them,” he said.
He also hinted that several exercises have been earmarked to evaluate the performances of the trainees at the end of the training that at the end of the training.
