My journey

I might not have lived if left in the hands of my father. I grew up with my grandmother in a remote village in Delta State. She took me up to relife my mother who has been left to cater for me since my father denied responsibility for my conception claiming the doctor told him he had low sperm count.

My mother who became a single mother faced several discriminatory acts by ther local church.

I became journalist after a training at the Nigerian Institute of Journalism however my journalistic training does not end with reporting what others have are doing rather it starts with shaping the world, setting the agenda that will include everyone in development process.

Marrying a blind person exposed me to the understanding of how disability affects me as a non-disabled person.

I am affected by the discrimination, inaccessibility, stigmatization pervalent in the society. I recieve different messages orally and visually when I am introduced as a blind person's wife: some are pity (eya!!) surprise (woow!!) disgust (kai!!!) etc. All these did not make me comfortable, Most women in my country married to PWDs experience such. I have decided to raise my voice and change the perception people have of persons with disabilities.

Most of the time a lot of the women seldom have the time to develop themselves in their careers or vocation due to amount of time spent with their spouses and children.

The barriers created by infrastructural inaccessibility and negative attitude towards persons with disabilities affects not only pwds who consist of about 15% of the worlds population but also affect parents, spouses, sibling and other caregivers who serve as accessibility bridge. This raises the number of persons affected by disability to over 40% of the population.

I decided to tackle this problem by building a network of other women married to people with disability who share in my experiences to become advocates for an inclusive policies and practices in all aspects of the society.

The network is also helping other women married to pwds share eperience on how they live a fulfilled live to guide younger women.

I am also tackling the problem by building partnerships to increase disability awareness in Africa.

Through my organisation "Disability Awareness and Development Initiative (DADI)" I am supporting PWDs by building their capacity to engage policy makers and "influencers", I am also promoting the teachig of sign language in primary and secondary schools to break communication barriers between the deaf and other members of the society.

Another problem pervalent among women in my community is low ICT literacy. I live in Ikorodu a sub-urban settlement in Lagos State where most women are traders. Most of them can't access funding opportunities because of low ICT literacy level. In addressing this challenge: I organize free computer training classes for women in my local church. Through this training they learn to browse the internet, type letters/proposals and send emails.

In the process of my intervention I have been mentored by other women like Dotun Akande who have led innovative strategies by establishing the first speech and Language center for children with autism.

In other to continue successfully, I need to increase my knowledge on building community resilience, policy advocacy and finance mobilization.

My expertise include media relations, ICT/assistive technology skill, teaching, writing and entrepreneurship skills.

I will not quit until my community becomes conscious of diversity and make inclusion-of-all a priority.