Clerics task government on physically challenged persons

The General Secretary, Bible Society of Nigeria, (BSN), Dr. Dare Ajiboye, has called on the government to create more opportunities for the physically-challenged persons through employment quotas, skills acquisition programmes, educational scholarships, and grants for those willing to be self-employed.

He stated this during the maiden edition of the Deaf Bible Quiz, which brought together many public and private schools for the deaf in Lagos.

“By employing these set of Nigerians, we would be able to encourage them because many of them who struggled to go to school despite their challenges are unemployed. For instance, when we started the translation of the Bible into sign language, we employed seven deaf persons who are still on our pay roll till date, contributing to the work of the translation, which cost about N160 million because it costs four times more translating one ordinary language Bible with the cost of N40 million,” he said.

Ajiboye said the Bible quiz was held because when translation into sign language began in 2014, some of the books of the Bible translated were given to them and the quiz served as a way to know whether they just received the translation and kept them.

Chairman of the occasion, General Director, Scripture Union (Nigeria), Odelana Philips, called on the government to be more interested in the plight of the physically challenged in the country.