On Empowering Lives Beyond Disability - A Conversation with Oghenewaire Jennifer Nikoro

Episode Transcript

Claire  00:15

Hello, and welcome to a new episode of Narratives of Purpose. My name is Claire Murigande, I am your host on this show. And my goal is to amplify social impact by bringing you inspiring individual stories of ordinary people who are making extraordinary social impact within their communities all around the world. So if you're looking for a programme that showcases unique stories of changemakers, stories of people who are contributing to make a difference in society, and at the same time you want to get inspired to take action, then this podcast is definitely for you. This week is the final episode of our inclusion series. Today I speak with Oghenewaire Jennifer, a legal practitioner and disability advocate, based in Lagos, Nigeria. Jennifer is the founder of life beyond disability Foundation, which is a nonprofit that advocates for equal rights and social inclusion for persons with disabilities in Nigeria, and extending to other parts of Africa. She's also a member of the Board of Appeal of Classification at the International Paralympic Committee. In our conversation, Jennifer shares her journey and her vision of empowering lives beyond disability. Please take a moment to rate and review our show on your preferred podcast listening app. But right now have a listen to Jennifer's story, and how her foundation is creating purposeful living among persons with disability.

 

Claire  01:57

It's a great pleasure. And thank you so much for accepting to be part of the show. Jennifer, welcome.

 

Jennifer  02:02

Thank you so much, Claire.

 

Claire  02:04

So let me start by saying this, I recently came across your foundation and started following it on the LinkedIn platform. So your foundation is called Life Beyond Disability. And I find that the awareness you create through this platform is really empowering and inspiring. But before we talk about that, more specifically, why don't you introduce yourself to our listeners and share some of your background with us?

 

Jennifer  02:31

Well, my full name is Oghenewaire Jennifer Nikoro and I'm fondly called Jennifer. I am a legal practitioner based in Lagos, Nigeria, trained in mediation and arbitration. I was born without the right four limbs, and I also run a foundation called Life Beyond Disability. This foundation encourages persons living with disability to become an active part of their community in Africa specifically. Aside from this, I'm also an advisory board member at Pharma. Pharma is a nonprofit organisation focused on 3D printing in Africa. Furthermore, I am a member of the Board of appeal or classification at the international paralympics committee, Gemini. We are aimed at classifying athletes with disabilities for the Olympics. Lastly, I'm also a board member at the African Diversity and Inclusion Centre. It's called ADIC, and it's based in Uganda. I am a legal petitioner and engage in criminal and commercial litigation, law parties. Basically, I will advocate for the rights of persons living with disability in Africa, particularly in Nigeria. I believe that I am the best ambassador for this form of advocacy because I'm a person living with disability, not just living with disability, but born with a disability. I've acquired several professional certificates in and outside my field of study. And my hope, as a person, is to see experts just like myself, who also acquired a good academic background. And we emerge from various walks of life in the disability community. So those are parts of my passion, among other things. And lastly, I'm a writer. I'm a speaker, and I'm also a disability advocate.

 

Claire  04:38

So I was speaking about your foundation and I'm curious to know, how did you start that and why did you start this foundation?

 

Jennifer  04:46

Life Beyond Disability Foundation has since been a vision that I have been brooding on, especially during my undergraduate days as a law student. As a person who was born with a disability I wanted to be a voice for those living with a disability. Because I believe I typically understand some of the discrimination that has been experienced, and that I have experienced. And I wanted to have a platform where I can create adequate advocacy, awareness, and some form of support in the society, about the rights of persons living with disability in Africa, starting with Nigeria. I believe that such a platform will be helpful for my kind of people. Also, I saw the need for empowering persons living with disability so that they can favourably survive in the workplace and in society in general.

 

Claire  05:49

So tell me, did you face any specific challenges throughout this process when you are creating this platform? And how did you overcome them?

 

Jennifer  06:01

As a person living with a disability, it wasn't easy for me to start up this platform. Because most of the NGOs and nonprofits I found, specifically my country, were nonprofits who really didn't have an executive as a person living with disability, there was no leadership position for persons living with disability. So one of the challenges I had to face was leadership responsibilities being that persons with disability in Nigeria, and I believe in Africa, broadly in Africa, we are not given leadership opportunities. Standing up as a leader was a task and a huge task for me. Secondly, another challenge I had to face was funding, which is also a major challenge I am currently facing. Starting up this nonprofit, I started up on my personal phone. In Nigeria, specifically, the government has a lot of responsibilities, and a lot of needs to cater for. So persons with disability, which is the one of the minority group, may not really be looked into. So I knew that for me to push my passion, I will have to fund myself, and probably seek funds from individuals. So Life Beyond Disability, since inception, has leveraged on the funds of individuals, my family in particular, and the funds I get as a legal practitioner from my law firm. That is where most of our funding comes from. This has also resulted in the organisation not being able to carry out bigger projects, we are only able to get grants from local and international grants and donations from private companies and even governments.

 

Claire  08:00

So you just said that you were not able to undertake bigger projects. So can you tell me what type of projects you undertake right now? And more specifically, what support are you providing to empower persons living with  disability?

 

Jennifer  08:16

Firstly, I'll say that we advocate for the rights and empowerment of persons living with disability in Africa. We also focus on nurturing those abandoned and disabled children. So we look out for young children with disabilities, motivate them, help them, educate them, sponsor them, so that they can become better in the near future. We also go with empowerment, we provide emotional support, we make them understand that we are also like them. So they are not alone in this world. We are also persons living with disability, who may have overcome some of the hurdles that go with living with disability in Africa. So we go and we provide emotional support. For those who just recently got amputated. We make them understand that they are not less human. So we fill up the gap of their emotional needs, while we also support them financially. Some of the projects that we have done within this little time of existence, we have done outreach in up to five communities in Africa, where we go and educate basically communities living with disability. We educate them, we advocate for social inclusion for persons living with disabilities in these communities. They're all found on our websites, and we also create an avenue to listen to their concerns and the concerns of these marginalised people. During one of our events on community outreach, we spent hours providing and supporting no less than 100 people living with disabilities and presented them with food items, materials, and also a medical team. Our medical team worked for us to provide medical support for persons living with disability in that community, specifically a community in Delta State, Nigeria. We reached out to more than 200 people in that community. Outside of these outreaches, we have also helped in advocacy for persons living with disability, we reconnect children who were sent out of school, because some of these schools did not have the facilities to accommodate the special needs children. Lastly, on our advocacy, we do weekly advocacy through our various social media channels. And also other platforms, we have a strong fellowship on our social media channel, especially LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube

 

Claire  11:16

It's very remarkable. What I hear from your explanation is that you have been able to impact the lives of so many people in such a short time of existence, right? It's only one year and a half. And you are really also acting as a role model for the younger generation to see that they can also become people who are part of society. So you're really advocating for social inclusion. And using the social media platform this is also how I came to connect with you, you can see that it's very powerful. Now, I wanted to know, something you started very recently, but at the same time the COVID pandemic hit exactly a year ago. So I was wondering how that affected or impacted your activities?

 

Jennifer  12:06

Some of the difficulties we experienced during COVID were the fact that persons with living with disability experience extreme poverty, we couldn't meet the needs of most people living with disabilities. All like during when there was no COVID, where I believe we could have met more needs. Usually in Africa, most persons living with disability are not educated. And because they are not educated, they really don't get well paid jobs. And most of them end up begging or soliciting arms on the streets, during COVID to a social distancing which means that most persons with disability, like every other persons will be indoors, there was no way to generate money for themselves. And the NGO, Life Beyond Disability could cater for all needs of persons with disabilities who were looking out for support from our nonprofits. I could also see the difficulties in accessing adequate health services during COVID. Persons with Disability were neglected. They were not even added to the data statistics of persons who will easily get vaccines, or should we even be treated. So they were at the risk and the fear of getting contacted with COVID, and even when they contracted COVID there was no medical support to help them. Normally, in Nigeria, where I come from, and I believe also in other parts of Africa, there is really no data statistics for persons living with disability. There is no data to say that we have 500 million or 200 million persons living with disability in Africa, because there was no data, we couldn't ascertain how many persons will have contracted COVID Or how many persons needed health care. And because of discrimination that normally goes on precedent disability. persons living with disability were at risk of dying, even more likely than those with no disability. And there'll be no statistics to show for their death rates, and the reason why they died.

 

Claire  14:23

This is really insightful and this is information you barely hear about. I realised that for people with disabilities even this pandemic has made them even more marginalised. And this is really disheartening to hear, so I see in your answer that you speak about statistics that you say that in Africa, we don't have statistics about people with disability, especially now in the COVID times and how to support them with health care. Do you see other needs or other major gaps in either Nigeria or in Africa at large that needs to be addressed in order to foster more social inclusions of people who are differently abled.

 

Jennifer  15:09

One of the few challenges I will talk about is the unemployment rate among persons with disability. The employment rate among persons with disability is almost double of the general population. I believe in Africa. Yes, double of the general population in each country in Africa. There are many barriers that persons with disabilities face. And because of those barriers, they are unable to break through, some of these barriers are mobility related barriers, technology and even physical barriers like lack of accessibility in the workplace, you see a building that is built with just staircases and there is no mobility for persons with wheelchairs. By that you are quickly becoming a community or a society that is marginalising persons living with disability and making them believe that they are not needed, and that they shouldn't be included. I've also seen discrimination such as employers negative attitude, this also goes with unemployment - employers negative attitude, and I will use myself as a case study. When I finished law school, and I started practising as a lawyer, one of the jobs I went for, one of the recruiters who called me for an interview, an email was sent to me as a young law graduate. And I went to the organisation, the law firm, and I could vividly remember some of the questions that were put out to me when they saw me on site were "Were you sent an email?" "Are you a lawyer?" "Are you sure?" These questions were questions that contended, or rather, there were questions that were demeaning to me. And I wasn't the only one in that interview room, who was sent such emails. And of course, you can guess what happened at the end. I wasn't given any employment. For me, I feel that the discrimination started from my physical appearance. And another thing I saw that day was, I was the only one with a disability in that interview room. So of course, you would go for someone with a non disability, believing that I am less able, because of my physical disability. And that is not right. Another scenario I want to point out with respect to unemployment. Was in another interview I went for in my early days as a lawyer graduate. And when I sat in the interview room, the interviewer was staring at my hand, which is my right four limbs. I have earlier said that I was born without the right four limbs, and he was staring at my hand. And some of the questions that came out from him, which I think was I believe on that day was "Can you type?" "Are you proficient with Microsoft Word Microsoft Excel?" "Are you sure you can do this job?" "Are you strong enough to carry out at this capacity?" And I was affirmative, I told them yes. But even at that, it still ended up unproductive. This, of course, will go down psychologically to my main thought of thinking that I'm not accepted and I'm not included. But these are some of the hurdles I've overcome as a lawyer, and other challenges I think that persons with disabilities have encountered or we are encountering, also as an organisation and as a person living with disability is policy making of governments. Most countries really don't have a legislation that portrays the inclusion of persons living with disability. It is important that government officials, policymakers, decision makers are aware of the importance of disability as a development issue, and they enhance the data collection on disability. Although in Nigeria, we have an act called Discrimination Against Persons with Disability Prohibition Act, which was enacted in 2018. But as I've been alerted, in 2018, they saw a great gap in implementing these policies. And I believe that there are so many African countries who don't even have policies, they don't even have acts or legislations for persons living with disability. And this, I believe the government should be looking out for enacting legislations, putting policies in place for the rights and inclusion of persons living with disability. Most governments in Africa have not palletized such such policies, and few who palletize such policies have not implemented those policies. So it's more like a law that has been passed, but is not living.

 

Claire  20:15

This observation that you share is really impressive. And as we were mentioning before, people with disability are actually the same as people who don't have a disability, right, it's a human right to be included in society. And for me, I'm taking out two things from what you just said. The first is at the policy making level, that either you need to enforce laws to make sure that everybody can be included in society, but also for those countries who have those laws, they need to implement them. And that is also a big challenge. And the second thing I also take out is that we also need to foster a change of mindset. And I really hope that you sharing your story today here on the podcast is also going to contribute to raising some more awareness, and to show that this is for most people discriminatory behaviour. And you've shown that really with some examples of what you went through. And I can only commend you for being resilient and persistent in overcoming the hurdles you had to overcome to be where you are today and to become a role model and, and support others who need more empowerment to also live their life fully. Perhaps the last question on your foundation, what are the next steps for you? Do you have some specific initiatives or some examples of things you want to achieve? That you could share at this point?

 

Jennifer  21:47

What we hope to do is that we want to see how we can carry along influential stakeholders in society that would help us to bring to the fore the issues affecting persons living with disability, we also hope to take our campaigns to schools, giving them disability awareness from childhood, so that disability inclusion will be palletized. I believe that if you can teach the younger generation about normalising disability, they will have a positive mindset, while growing up and becoming an adult when they see or when they are in positions to help or to support or to speak out for persons living with disability, I believe with such the rate of discrimination will be reduced. We also want to empower persons living with disability with skills and sponsoring those who are exceptional, just like myself, sponsoring them spotting out their potential, sponsoring them academically, and in all legitimate means possible. So our aim is campaign awareness, stakeholder mapping, and empowerment of persons living with disability in Africa.

 

Claire  23:14

Thank you so much for being such a role model and having created this platform, I think you're helping a lot of people. And I think that we'll be able to help even more people in the long term. So at the end of my show, what I usually like to do is I ask the three same questions to all my guests, because I like to find out what type of music they listen to, or what books they're reading. So my first question is, do you have a book that you're reading right now, or a specific music that you listen to very often at the moment?

 

Jennifer  23:46

I have a book I am currently reading. It's one of my religious books I read as a Christian, and it's called "Alone with God," how to have intimacy with God or with the Holy Spirit, because I'm a Christian and beyond religion, that is the book I'm reading right now.

 

Claire  24:02

And the second question is, is there perhaps a book or even music or a song that was special for you at some specific time in your life, something that you really remember fondly?

 

Jennifer  24:15

Well, I'm not good at music. But I am good at scripture reading of the Bible. And there's just one verse that I really liked from the Bible. It's in Jeremiah 1:5, I believe, and he talks about how "before He formed us, he knew us and before we were conceived in our mother's womb, He has destined us to be special. He has destined for something great" and that is one verse I always meditate on that I am special and right from my mother's womb, I was never a mistake.

 

Claire  24:53

That is really beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that piece. And my last question is, do you have a book or something that you absolutely loved perhaps, and you would recommend for people to read as well?

 

Jennifer  25:05

The book that I so love is the Bible and recommend that for anybody to read.

 

Claire  25:11

Thank you. Thank you so much, Jennifer. It has been really a pleasure talking to you. I am so grateful that you took the time to join me today and to share, you know your whole journey in what you're doing with life beyond disability. And I truly believe that you are a role model, and you have a long way to go. So thank you so much for sharing your time with me today.

 

Jennifer  25:32

Thank you, Claire.

 

Claire  25:38

That was episode 21. A Conversation with Oghenewaire Jennifer Nikoro. Through her foundation, Jennifer is truly making an impact by being a voice for persons with disability and by empowering them to play a significant role in society despite their disability. This is so remarkable, and I really admire the work she's accomplishing with her team. If you wish to support the life beyond disability foundation, you can make a donation online, please check their website at LBDfoundation.org. You will also find the link in the show notes. Thank you so much for tuning in today and listening to this new episode. This concludes our summer special series. Join me again for the bi weekly episodes in October to talk about health care and research. If you like our show, do share it within your network and leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. Make sure you also sign up for our newsletter so you can stay informed about all our activities. And don't forget to follow the show on social media. Check us out on Facebook at Narratives of Purpose on Instagram had narrativesofpurpose_podcast and on LinkedIn at Narratives of Purpose Podcast. Until the next episode, take care of yourself, stay well and stay inspired.