West African ascent

Nigerian activist Cosmas Okoli tells how he’s encouraging disabled people to start fighting the attitudes to impairment, electoral fraud and inaccessibility that have delayed the development of equal rights

My childhood was tough. At the age of four I was struck by poliomyelitis, which left me paralysed from the waist down. The Nigerian civil war had just begun and everyone was busy fighting for survival. It got in the way of my rehabilitation; I could only move about by crawling on my hands and knees.

My father thought I wouldn’t be able to cope with formal education, as I still hadn’t learnt to walk by the time I was ready to start school, but I insisted on having the same life that my older brother had had when he was growing up.

Looking back I now realise why my father thought I wouldn’t be able to handle it. Other kids found it funny that I crawled to school and they’d taunt me about it. They wouldn’t let me play football with them because I had to use my hands. I fought back as much as I could; I’d refuse to help them with their homework unless they let me play and I later got my parents to buy me my own football so I could be in charge.

I was lucky, though, to have a family that treated me like any other child. Through them I developed a “can do” attitude to life, which helped in my career.

I graduated as a medical physiologist in 1988 and went on to found the Mobility Aid and Appliances Research and Development Centre, and to become founder and president of the Association for Comprehensive Empowerment of Nigerians with Disability (ASCEND).

I do various jobs but those of most importance to me are in counselling and guidance, mentoring, giving motivational speeches and providing mobility aids and appliances for the neediest. I’m also a disability activist.

I’ve worked at the Federal Ministry of Social Development, Youth and Sports as Social Development officer, the Special Sports Federation of Nigeria and the Spinal Cord Injuries Association of Nigeria.

In 2006 I was honoured with the Nigerian national award of Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON) in recognition of my work.

Politics in Nigeria has done little to improve opportunities for disabled people because disabled people don’t take much part in it and the value of their vote is discounted by the prevalence of electoral fraud. That’s one of the reasons I started ASCEND: to encourage disabled people to get more politically involved. We think we’re making progress. For the first time, in Anambra state, a gubernatorial candidate met us to find out more about our needs and offer to address them if elected.

I’ve got to a stage in my life where my public image precedes me and people relate more to what I represent than to my physical appearance. In the past, though, I’ve suffered a lot of discrimination. For instance, when I was looking for a wife, people would go out of their way to discourage the women I proposed to, even discouraging my prospective in-laws from supporting the marriage. It took a lot of effort for me to marry a woman of my choice.

It’s important to me to be a voice for disabled people in my country. Little things like being able to go to the bank here is very difficult: most have metal detector security doors that are inaccessible to most of us.

There are also no laws in Nigeria making it mandatory for public buildings to be accessible; at university I had to climb three flights of stairs to attend lectures. Even in my present job I’m constantly confronted with difficult steps leading up to entrances or indoors.

In spite of daily challenges, I hope that my positive attitude will motivate and encourage others. Disabled Nigerians suffer untold discrimination and their voices aren’t heard. I want to change that and create an enabling environment in which disabled people can live fulfilled lives in Nigeria.