An advocacy group, Hope Inspired Foundation for Women and Youths with Disabilities (HIFWYD), has launched the Local Government Disability Framework in Oyo State.

The Disability Framework is designed to provide local government councils in Nigeria with appropriate institutional capacity on strategies for achieving disability inclusion in all aspects of their operations, programmes, and interventions.

The launch, which took place in Ibadan, was supported by Disability Rights Fund.

The Secretary of the group, Rosiline Oniyide, said the programme is for the people living with disabilities in Oyo State to experience a transformation that is beyond imagination.

“At the local government level, we need this kind of framework to enable us to work, so that we will not be stressing our people to lodge complaints or ask for their rights in long distances, like the state secretariat. But when all these frameworks are executed at the local government level, it will be easier to access freedom and rights,” Oniyide said.

“So, we want to implore our SAs at the local government level to do this work with commitment . You are there to represent people with disabilities and this is one of the assignments you are to do for us”, Oniyide said.

The Team Lead, Oluchi Nwite, harped on the need for commitment in ensuring that communities become disability sensitive, and people with disabilities are allowed to contribute meaningfully to activities in their respective communities.

The Chairman of Advocacy Cluster Group, Mr. Yusuff Olatunji, stressed the need for more inclusion for the PWDs.

On her part, the Oyo State Commissioner for Women Affairs and Social Inclusion, Mrs. Oluwatoyin Balogun; the Executive Assistant to Oyo State Governor on Disability Matters, Timothy Femi; and the representative of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) Kingsley Soremi, and others said the launch was fundamental to the inclusion of PWDs in the scheme of things at the local government level.

The commissioner was represented by the Director of Rehabilitation in the ministry, Mr. Taiwo Ibilade, said, ”We are all disabled in one way or the other. It is only the degree of disability that is different. But it does not make you redundant.”

The Director-General, Oyo State Agency for Persons With Disabilities, Ayodele Adekanmbi, who was represented by the Executive Assistant to the Governor on Disability Matters, Mr. Timothy Femi, said Governor Seyi Makinde would continue to include PWDs in governance in the state.