Jigawa’s succour for the disabled
By Wale Sokunbi
Wednesday September 19, 2007

Within the last two weeks, the Federal and state governments have been involved in the “one hundred days” ritual which involved reeling off statistics on their “achievements” on publicly-owned media. Privately owned media houses have not been left out of this desperate rush to “assess” the president and state governors with the objective of “identifying and commending them for what they have been doing right, pointing out their mistakes and setting an agenda for them for the remaining part of their tenure.”

The 100 days saga, this time around, has also spread to the police with the Acting Inspector General of Police, Mr. Mike Okiro, reeling off, in Abuja, statistics on the number of criminals that the police have arrested in the country and accusing the media of being responsible for the perception of insecurity in the country for magnifying reports of some crimes out of proportion.”

However, one public official that has stood out of the pack in his approach to the 100 days fiesta is the Jigawa State governor, Alhaji Sule Lamido, who marked his first 100 days in office with kind words for the helpless disabled and signed into law the state’s Social Security bill, which provides for special allowances for physically challenged persons in the state. Seriously physically disabled persons in the state will henceforth be entitled to a monthly allowance of N7,000 for their upkeep.

The law provides for a special fund to be established by the state government to pay the allowances. Section 3 subsection 3 of the law states that the fund shall be charged upon the consolidated revenue fund of the state upon a formula of sixty per cent from local governments and forty per cent by the state government.

It also provides for state and local government committees, which will be responsible for the identification of the physically challenged and the disbursement of the funds under the supervision of the state Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, which is to submit quarterly reports on the initiative to the governor.

Adult blind men, blind divorced women above 50 years of age, adult crippled persons (in both legs or both hands) and adult male and female lepers are to benefit from the allowance, according to schedule A of the law. Under age disabled persons, one-legged or one-armed cripples, married disabled women and employed disabled persons are exempted under schedule B. The signing of the bill into law was done in the presence of many of the beneficiaries with the leaders of groups of physically challenged persons in the state, including the Sarkin Makafin Kazaure (Chief of the Blind in Kazaure), Alhaji Abdulahi Ahmed and Mohammed Sani Shehu, the Secretary of the Jigawa State Physically Handicapped Association, in attendance.

The duo confirmed that a census of the disabled in the state had earlier been taken and payments started in June. The ceremony also attracted both Christian and Muslim religious leaders, including Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) officials and the Sultan of Sokoto and Chairman of the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, Alhaji Saad Abubakar III, who all praised the governor’s efforts for being in line with the dictates of the two religions.

At the signing into law of the bill, the Governor said it was a fulfillment of his promise during his inaugural speech on May 29 and also reiterated his government’s determination to confront the historical nightmare of the talakawas in Nigeria, which he traced to the late 1950s. He called for a greater sense of urgency in government’s effort to resolve the poverty crisis in Nigeria and expressed his dreams for a humane society “where no one watches his or her child die of preventable diseases.”

The signing of the Jigawa Social Security bill into law by Lamido is significant in many respects. It is the first time a Nigerian government is signing into law a bill to pay allowances to physically challenged persons. Before now, efforts in some states had been geared towards removing beggars from the streets and hounding them into badly kept facilities to keep them out of the view of other members of the public. The beggars were never happy to live in these facilities and were soon to be found on the streets again.
Lamido says he considered this option in the bid to tackle the problem but did not feel comfortable with the idea because he felt it was “ungodly and inhuman” to take away the liberty of the beggars by forcing them into government facilities.

He is of the view that this will amount to compounding their ordeals and agony. He also said he had been mindful of the fact that some of the disabled had levels of challenges that had also made them untrainable.
Jigawa is one of the few states that has passed a bill into law at a time when some of the state Houses of Assembly are still engaged in bickering over sharing of offices, appointments and other political patronage.

The concern for the helpless and the disabled that has been demonstrated in the state’s social security law is commendable. It is a cause for cheer that the governor, in his first 100 days in office, has decided not to concern himself with selfish pecuniary matters and how to recover election expenses, as has been the case at some levels of government, but has decided to extend a helping hand to the underprivileged in the society.

The attempt by Lamido to re-integrate the disabled poor into the state through a survival allowance is a practical demonstration of the policy of “democratic humanism” on which he promised to hinge his administration.
Lamido deserves commendation for his passion for the helpless. He has demonstrated that he has a heart for Jigawa’s poor. It is passions such as this that move societies forward and it is the root of welfarist policies that have birthed humane societies, especially in the developed world.

The governor, by this initiative, has shown that he appreciates the essence of governance which is, a commitment to the greater good of the people and not to loot the state treasury, lord it over the people and dispense patronage as is erroneously believed in some quarters.

The challenge before Sule Lamido is to keep up the payment of these allowances while striving to improve the productive base of the state to boost its financial capacity to pay the allowances on a sustainable basis. Business owners in the state and wealthy individuals, who will now be free of the zakat or monetary gifts formerly given to these disabled persons, should be encouraged to contribute to the special fund for disbursement to the disabled. Responsible corporate bodies should also strive not be left behind in this laudable effort.

Care, however, must be taken of the need to ensure that only qualified persons benefit from this special fund. The process of identification of the beneficiaries must be above board. Governments officials charged with the responsibility must not be allowed to turn it into a drainpipe for fleecing the state of badly needed funds through introduction of “ghost beggars”.

The state will also need to devise ingenuous ways of ensuring that disabled persons from across the country do not turn Jigawa into a Mecca where they go to collect “allowances” at month end. Efforts should be made to train the trainable disabled in vocational skills that they can use to make a living.
Conclusively, Sule Lamido deserves praise for his courage in passing this bill into law and for implementing it.

His concern for the poor and the disabled is worthy of emulation by other Nigerian leaders, because, in the final analysis, they will not be appreciated based on how much money they have been able to corner from government coffers, but on the impact they have made on the lives of the ordinary members of the society.