Infrastructural deficit, insurgency worsen plight of PWD – Bukar Kime

Muhammad Bukar Kime is an inclusion activists based in Yobe State who plays a significant role to ensure the recent legislation of disability bills by Governor Mai Mala Buni. He spoke on several issues around the plights of People With Disability (PWD). LADI JOSSY brings the excerpts:

Could you tell us briefly about yourself?

My name is Muhammad Bukar Kime. I am a firm believer of social inclusion, diversity, and equity. A co-founder and Chief operating officer of Spotlight for Transparency and Accountability Initiative (ST&A). At Spotlight Initiative, our strategic focus aligns with the global priorities set by SDGs 2, 3 4, 5, 6,10, and 16. We are driven by the imperative to fostering access to quality education, as these are the cornerstones of sustainable progress. I have achieved significant impacts in rural communities in Nigeria using our groundbreaking initiative ‘Citizen-led tracking.

It was during baseline research I was conducting which saw me working in remote parts of Yobe that I got to see and know that accessing enough safe water and sanitation, education and accessing healthcare facilities is a great struggle but for those with a disability, the challenges are compounded. This moved me to my rigorous advocacy to ensure that the Disability Act is passed in the state as this will bring succor to the people deserving of help. Of recent, I am at the forefront of disability advocacy which seeks to promote the full inclusion of people with special needs in policies, programs. I always advocate for the full integration of people with special needs in achieving equal opportunities in all aspects of life. And, Glory be to God, our advocacy for the passage of the Disability Bill into law in Yobe state has come to fruition. The Yobe State Government has assented to it and appointed Alhaji Usman Bura Gabai with whom we collaborated in various government agencies for advocacy efforts, as the new Acting Chairman of the Disability Commission. The effort to advance the civil and human rights of people with disabilities through advocacy just started.

You are at the forefront to ensure inclusion, especially persons with disability that have been affected by insurgency conflict. How has the journey been so far?

Well, without mincing words, I will say that the journey isn’t a walk in a park. It was accompanied with a lot of challenges from various angles. The first challenge is from the peoples themselves who don’t believe that they are equal with disabled people and should be given equal opportunities. There are instances when we go for advocacies to MDAs, you can visibly see the pessimism of inapplicability of the domestication of the Disability Act and what is enshrined it. This goes to show you that our society is deep with challenges of social stigmas. A class within a class. Even from amongst the commoners, the abled poor person sees the disabled one as a sub-human not deserving to be included in any sphere of life. To your surprise, some of these people are hale and hearty but the 15 years old insurgency left them with one form of disability or the other. Here in my dwelling, there’s a grown-up lady whose right leg was amputated when a launched mortar hit their house leaving her mother and one of her sibling dead. Gory stories of such abound in the state. Life then becomes challenging for such people because of the infrastructural gaps, insurgency conflict, lack of essential services in our health care, education, and employment opportunities is a big challenge. From the first place, there isn’t any provision for inclusive policies, leaving many persons with disabilities without even the littlest support like making ramps in public buildings or wheelchair they would need. However, progress has been made so far. Advocacy efforts have increased about the plight of persons with special needs. Because how will you just act or say that a soldier who lost his arms or got his leg amputated doesn’t deserve pity? Or the brainy child should not continue his education because there are no special needs teachers? The creation of school for the disabled pupils, construction of blind workshops, considering disabled people in giving appointments and of recent, the assent to the Disability Bill shows a growing commitment to inclusion and waning down of stigmatisation towards people with disability as it used to be before. Cases of girls and women who experience sexual violence has drastically reduced because girls who have one form of disability are more likely to experience gender-based violence in their lifetime than those abled. Is in not in our societies that we see unmarried girls and women with mental impairments carrying babies on their backs? On the other hand, the emergence of INGos who come with protection of peoples with disability through the Humanitarian principle of ‘do not harm’ has helped shape the attitudes of our people. The media in Yobe has also been supportive to the cause of disability inclusion advocacy. In our live phone-in programs and sensitisation campaigns, we were able to get hundreds of committed youths who formed our community of practice to champion the cause of making life easier for people with disability. In so doing, we are not just doing it for them, we are preparing for our tomorrow for we don’t know what tomorrow holds. All these are efforts in ensuring we help them and ourselves live a dignified and fulfilling life. Despite the passage of the bill, I will say the journey is not yet uhuru. This is a country where laws are not fully implemented. We will continue with our advocacy and awareness creation to close the wide gap of discrimination.

What do you mean by society is deep with challenges of social stigmas and a class within a class; explain, please?

Today, more than ever before, there is an increasing convergence of division and polarisation in the country. A new stratification of class came in from amongst the downtrodden class. Instead of uniting to fight the scourge of circulating governing elites, the masses are fighting themselves. You always see them fanning the embers of hatred and beating war drums. They have turned the country to an ethnocratic nation courtesy of their identity politics. Their focus is not about ideas on how to come up with policies and engage the legislature.

When you are sensitising the government on the Humanitarian, Development and Peace Practitioners nexus which strives to enhance the coordination, collaboration and coherence of humanitarian, development and peace actions in the beleaguered regions of Nigeria, you hear them discussing about the new aphrodisiac in town. From the other side, just when you are working to support the government to be more innovative, knowledgeable and data driven including in its budgeting processes and issues of national interest, the political class seem not to bother matter or show interest.

The country’s political class and system is its own enemy. This has led to the pervasive insecurity of lives and property, as evidence by the spate of armed robbery attacks, assassinations, ethnic and religious conflicts and the farmers/herders clashes which is trying to bring the country to its knees. So, conflicts act as a catalyst for hatred and division and intensify hostilities. The moment you reach to your phone, you are bound to come across hate speeches based on religion, race, and ethnicity and group affiliations in digital spaces.

Coming back to stigma, the level of stigmatisation is very high. People stigmatise people with disability to the extent that some of these stigmatised people have suicidal thoughts.

Some avoid going to social gatherings to avoid being discriminated. The stereotypes added salt to injury for it leaves the person already with disability in distress and disorders. These prejudices and discrimination even prevent people with disability from accessing healthcare services. The rather die with their pains than be left with wound in their heart from public and structural stigmas. It is the same stigma which people with HIV-AIDs live with up till this moment. And even from among the HIV-AIDS stigmatization, women face the most of discrimination and even rejected by their own families. The isolation adds to her already intersectional discrimination of being a woman. How painful!

You did mention that Yobe State governments signed disability bills into law weeks ago. Are there any mechanisms putting in place to ensure the disability bills not only pass but have budgetary allocation in Yobe State?

The passage of the Disability Bill was signed just 3 three days after His Excellency, Mai Mala Buni signed the 2025 Appropriation Bill into law. What this means is that the Yobe State Disability Commission is taking off with no budgetary allocation since it wasn’t part of the MDAs that was in the budget process. From my own little knowledge of Budgeting, this means the Commission will get its staff from State Civil Service pool to commence work. It will be doing skeletal works from now till it gets its own allocation in 2026. Getting resources to provide recurrent expenditures would not be a major challenge as this can be done through virement. By next year, it is hoped that the Commission will have its budget, get approval to employ its staff and begin the process of getting the most disability friendly office edifice for itself for this is where the whole example of having architectural designs with 100% easy access to disabled people because this is their home. I believe they will set a pace for others to follow on how water points, toilets and other facilities should be done to accommodate people with physical disabilities. I am saying this because the building they will rent in the state will hardly have 15% disability accessibility. The passage of the bill shows the there’s a political will and passion from the side of the Governor. We hope and anticipate the Commission will be fully funded to carry out its activities. The recent State strategic plan where MTSS is fully taken into consideration will give the disability Commission to come up with MTSS budget to achieve its goals and objectives. While not neglecting the current financial realities of envisaging MDAs to boost their IGR. Most of our buildings were designed with no plans to accommodate people with disability. Our advocacy will still continue to ensure public buildings and automobiles accessible and usable for people with disabilities. The Nigerian Institute of Architects and Nigerian Society of Engineers have a great role to play in reminding governments and individuals the need of building structures that will be accessible to PWDs.

Just as his efforts in efforts of securing a World Bank loan to solve the problems of Girls Child Education, inclusion activists are hopeful that the Mai Mala Buni will come with a disability project which aims to work on disability inclusive education for our more than 20% population with disabilities.

With the upcoming 5th Lake Chad Basin Governors Forum here in Yobe which the State Government will host, it’s our hope that this year’s theme will give focus to disabled people by clearly stating it in the list of vulnerable groups. All eyes are here to see how the summit will look into issues around farmer/herders clashes which is taking another wave of insecurity and the recent resurgence of insurgent attacks in the North-East region which poses a threat to the country and the Lake Chad Basin States.

What mechanisms do you think both national and sub-national need to put in place to ensure efficiency and effectiveness of this commission?

Since the Disability law is new to Nigerians at both the National and State levels, with some states yet to domesticate it, the first mechanism at first is to make enough sensitisations and enlightenment campaigns. The Commission at both the National and State levels can infuse enlightenment audio drama series and skits in its efforts to effectively educate and enlighten citizens on the disability law. The use of creative communication as innovative drive is very important as theatre is increasingly becoming predominant for mobilisation and sensitisation of communities. This sensitisation will involve all faith-based organisations, CSOs, traditional rulers, Associations, and other relevant stakeholders.

Another important strategy is to translate the bill itself into local languages to ensure easy comprehension of the law. First, even at the National level, the law gave 5years memorarium for old buildings and transportations to transition to make their structures accessible to people with physical disability. It is after the 5 years transition period that fines and penalties follow. And people need to know that the fines and convictions are different when the convictions are made at individual and corporate levels. So, MDAs and firms need to educate their staff that committing offences which contravenes the disability act attracts huge amount of money.

The second enforcement comes at the building plan. Here, there is need to know that a government agency or individual who approves structures not in conformity with Disability law commits an offence and is liable on conviction to a fine or imprisonment.

However, considering our unwillingness and slowness to adopt new changes, we need to thread carefully and know that policy resistance is normal and expected. This can be seen in how the Freedom of Information Act that was passed since 2011 is being violated and treated with disregard by government agencies by refusing to provide public records on requests despite being mandated by the law to honour such requests as long as it doesn’t pose a threat to National Security.

Be that as it may, these are normal in growing democracies. We are optimistic that we wouldn’t have to go to the legal tussle option. Our advocacies to staff of government institutions like the Yobe State Ministry of Housing and Urban planning and Development and other relevant stakeholders has gone far and they have shown readiness to help public buildings disability friendly. It is after exhausting the diplomatic means that the stick approach should come.

What is your advice to the Yobe State government in terms of better coordination?

It is imperative that the state government engage in participatory and all-inclusive governance to ensure that development policies are people-centered. The state government should continue its training and retraining of civil servants by providing digital education. There is an observed lack of digital skills among staffers in the State, and this deficiency has been identified as a key barrier to digital transformation.

The government should continue to work closely with industry bodies and support the digital skill initiatives of the fast-changing world to ensure efficient service delivery. The State should introduce Departments of Special Needs Education in our Universities, Polytechnics, and Colleges of Education. For a long time, the State government has been contracting individuals with special needs education qualifications from other states to teach because we lack institutions offering this specialty within the State.

The State Governor should continue the ongoing reforms in the healthcare sector. We have observed improvements and the sustained 15% Abuja Declaration allocation to health. Recently, the State clinched the National Primary Health Leadership Challenge Award, along with an Award of Excellence for governance reforms in public finance management.

Furthermore, the State received the SFTAS Transparency and Accountability Award and, more recently, secured the first position in the Subnational Audit Efficacy rankings by PLSI. When the same collaboration and coordination among health sector partners is replicated in the Disability inclusion ecosystem, I assure you we will become the first Disability friendly and compliant state across the federation.