Gabriel Ogbechie advocates for more public special needs schools

…as the Brace Foundation is launched

Gabriel Ogbechie, the group executive director at Rainoil Limited has advocated for public special schools that will exclusively cater to special needs children in Nigeria, as the private ones are too costly for many parents.

Ogbechie, who is also the chairman of Brace Foundation made the call during the official launch and one-day special needs empowerment workshop held in Lagos recently when he said that Nigeria needs to provide special schools that cater to special needs children.

“What we have seen in Nigeria is normal schools that say that they cater for special needs children, but the truth is that they’re normal schools who just bend backwards to tolerate these children, and not cater to them.

“So we look forward to having full-blown schools that do nothing but just cater for special needs children,” he said.

Speaking on the motivation for establishing Brace Foundation, Ogbechie said; “The motivation is to add value to children with special needs. We’ve seen children with special needs struggle in school, and to integrate themselves into society.

“So we looked at that space and we felt that that’s a space where we can bring in resources and help these children live a better life, integrate themselves better into the society, and be able to live a fulfilling life for themselves.”

The renowned business expert said there is a need for awareness and education to help curb the challenges faced by children with special needs.

“Growing up in the village those days, we saw children with special needs that we didn’t understand were special needs, and these children were maltreated by society.

So education has made us understand that what these children had was special needs and nothing else.

“Unfortunately, those discriminations, as it were, have not entirely gone away. So the government, the society, and those who are well endowed in the society need to bring in their resources to create more awareness.  For me, I think awareness is most important,” he said.

He said the foundation intends to get the awareness drive to the rural areas but had to start cascading the information in the urban areas where there are more schools and resources.

“We also intend as much as possible to get to the rural areas, to reach out to as many people as we can, to support as many children with special needs as we can, to the best of our resources,” he noted.

The theme of the one-day special needs empowerment workshop is, “Special Needs: Effective Living”.

Godrey Ogbechie, the vice chairperson at Brace Foundation in her address at the unveiling of the foundation and workshop, said the aim is to enhance the life of those with special needs in Nigeria.

She said the theme of the workshop is not just a phrase but embodies a collective goal to empower those with special needs by making society a much more inclusive and safer place where they can thrive and live a qualitative life.

“It’s not because they don’t require special attention, but when we look at them as people that have additional needs, it makes it easier for us to come up with supporting mechanisms to help them thrive.

“And every human being has additional needs, even the ones we term normal, everyone has additional needs, their needs are just different. So some children come with additional needs, their needs are not special in a way that we now ostracise them, or become irritated with them,” she noted.

Buttressing the point that there is a need for more public special schools to cater to special needs children, she said, “I know that there are people who cannot afford to send their children to private special needs schools. They keep them at home because the regular schools don’t have facilities.

“In any case, a school, a classroom that has 60 children, they cannot even take care of the ones who are walking, not to talk of those who require additional support.”

Soibi Godwin-Clark, the executive director at Brace Foundation said the foundation is set up to cater for children with special needs.

“We’re focused on the education of children with special needs, education involves a lot of things, because with special needs, it’s not just going into the classroom and reading a book or learning.

“So, education is holistic, it involves their education, academic, behavioral, and occupational education. It also involves sports and social interaction education. The Brace Foundation is set up for this,” she said.

Godwin-Clark said the significance of the workshop is the ability to bring together what she called a closed community.

“Anywhere in the world, the first contact for a child with special needs is usually the parents. After the parents, comes the caretaker, depending on the means of the child.

“When they’re old enough to go to school, they have contact with the school, the educators, among others. That’s the vicious circle brought together to interact with a special needs child,” she explained.

In addition, she said; “What we have done is to call a body of teachers, representatives of the body of therapists. We have consultants from the federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital, the police, the disability commission, and the Red Cross.”