If one had told Damilare two years ago, that by this time, his life would experience a downward slide; that hunger would be a major problem other than discrimination, he would probably have rejected it.
However, he faces a difficult reality, courtesy of the outbreak of COVID-19.
Damilare has lived with a congenital deformity for two decades. Under normal circumstances, and unlike other persons with disability who see begging as a means of survival, he gets his livelihood by attending programmes on advocacy, sensitisation and sometimes empowering other persons with disabilities (PwDs).
Since the compulsory lockdown took effect to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, his life has only grown from bad to worse as such programmes no longer hold.
“I now stay indoor 24/7 without going for programmes and events. Even the little business I ventured into has stopped yielding any returns for the past weeks. Life is halted,” he complained.
Despite his disability, the Ekiti State-born Damilare has never lacked food, but with his source of income depleted by government measures to contain the spread, he now finds it difficult to feed as prices of foodstuff have ballooned beyond proportion.
“I feed with the little income I have saved over time together with my parents and siblings,” he said. “Soon, if this ban is not lifted, maybe I will go on debt or credit. And if caution is not taken, hunger, starvation and eventually death will set in. I struggle to get two square meals per day now,” he further lamented.
Lagos State is estimated to have two million persons with disabilities (PWDs), who in the normal setting, are discriminated against. PWDs are not considered in normal day settings and the pandemic situation has only worsened their plight and further promotes inequality.
Damilare bitterly complained about the lockdown, saying that it is doing more harm than good as the governors and the president restrict movements without making any provision for the vulnerable and PwDs in the states.
“It is so unfortunate,” he said.
In a phone interview, David Anyaele, founder of Centre for Citizens with Disabilities (CCD), said the lockdown has exposed this vulnerable group to hardship and hunger by reason of their inability to fend for themselves.
He said even those that normally beg to feed cannot beg, those that depend on their family members, and friends to support them cannot because their family members are also struggling to feed.
“And we’re told we should not move around. An average person with a disability needs to move around. If you’re on a wheelchair, people support you to push your wheelchair. If you are blind, somebody helps you to move around. So, it becomes extremely difficult to live in this starvation,” Anyaele said.
Citizens living with disability fall under the vulnerable people category who, according to Lagos State officials, that would be on the priority list during the distribution of the palliatives the state introduced for their sustenance as the lockdown progresses.
Sources said the distribution method was faulty and PWDs were not getting anything contrary to the promise by the state, leading to the exclusion of many people.
“Initially, they contacted all the disabled people through the LASRRA data by sending them SMS that they should confirm if their addresses are still valid that they would bring food to those addresses. That, they did not do.
“I don’t know how many they claim to have done, but for my own cluster, I’m not sure we got up to 120 food packs for registered members of about 300, and unregistered members of about 500,” a source told BDSUNDAY.
Speaking on the distribution process, Anyaele said many disabled Nigerians were unattended to because the framing process of the response did not prioritise disabled fellows despite the law stating that they should be prioritised in a situation of emergency.
He said PWDs were not part of the expected outcomes in the distribution of relief materials by Lagos State government, adding that what the state ought to have done was to earmark a portion of the materials specifically to the disabled community.
In a statement released two weeks ago, the Coalition of Persons with Disabilities Groups Against Persons with Disabilities Marginalisation demanded that The Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 presented a clear-cut plan on how to provide palliatives for persons with disabilities at this time, urging them to start immediately on the claims that persons with disabilities are the most vulnerable among other social groups.
They threatened to revolt, defy all lockdown orders, and disrupt daily briefings by the PTF if their demands were ignored.
“We resolved to defy all government orders to stay at home and risk our lives to disrupt the daily Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 Briefing on Monday, April 6, 2020. The same shall be carried out at state and ward levels in states that have no plans for PWDs. After all, what is a life worth living in a terrible nation as ours? Everyone must die someday,” they said.
But what later followed was a flop in the distribution both at the national and state levels leading to more exclusion.
The overwhelming calls
Therefore, with the lockdown in place, shutting down all centres where PWDs go to beg for help, their leaders are bearing the brunt as they mount pressure on them for food.
Tunde Mohammad, chairman of the National Association for the Blind, Lagos Chapter, said he gets calls every hour by hungry members, an overwhelming situation for someone who is also affected by the lockdown.
“Before your call came in, one of them called just to say, ‘chairman, have you heard anything? At times, I feel sad in my soul because what do I want to tell this person because for this person to be calling you, he’s hungry or she’s hungry and a lot of calls like that”, he decried.
Mohammad told BDSUNDAY that he receives over 50 calls per day—that is, over 50 disabled Nigerians calling to request for food or money daily, and the calls could come in at any time of the day.
“You’ll pity me for the kind of calls I receive,” he said. “People telling me they need money, they need food and I don’t blame them. It’s me they know. They don’t know who to call again. I claim to be their chairman, so they have always asked me for one thing or the other. So, when things like this come, they don’t know that I don’t have any power. Nobody has given anything,” he said.
Mohammad added that, “They don’t care if it’s 12 midnight or 5 a.m. For them, it’s the earlier the better, or the later the better.”
Looking inwards for survival
From the trajectory of Covid-19 events, especially with a possible national lockdown proposed by the 36 states governors, their predicament seems to be just beginning. As a result, Mohammad said they are now looking inwards and coming up with “in-house means to survive” the harsh condition they find themselves.
“Some of our members are helping one another. I had to help a lot of people initially when the thing started. So, I had to give money, some of the other blind people too did the same things,” he said.
Apart from helping themselves in-house, he said they also receive help from NGOs, philanthropic Nigerians, and institutions like the Institute of National Transformation, which gave 35 packs of food to their members in Alimosho, as well as, a women’s group, which donated N7, 500 to five members.
At CCD, awareness is being raised and calling the attention of the public to the lingering excruciations in the community. They are also looking at alternative means to do fundraising, as organisations and different groups are also raising funds to support their members.
The Centre is also partnering with other groups that are also supporting vulnerable people to draw their attention and ensure that their materials target them, BDSUNDAY was told.
Anyaele said PWDs are poor people, less than two percent of PWDs have meaningful jobs. And the cost of living with disabilities is even very high under normal circumstances, let alone this pandemic situation. They struggle to save because all his resources go back to taking care of himself if he has something doing.
Those that do not have something doing rely on their neighbours, on their friends and those that are close to them for support, the founder reckons.
“So, looking inwards to support themselves means that they have to activate their network by looking for philanthropists around them to see how they can support them to support others. Those of them that have social capital are also trying to activate it to support people with disabilities,” he said.
