Olaide Moruf: Disability not an excuse to beg

Being handicapped is not an excuse to beg, says Dr Oluwatele Olaide Moruf, a blind man and founder of Competent Handicapped Industry and Vocational Training Centre (CHIVTC).

“I founded CHIVTC to help my fellow handicapped,” he explains. “Begging is not good and being handicapped is not an excuse to beg. Though I can understand why some of us would want to beg, because we are in a country that doesn’t encourage us, but rather discourages us, yet I believe we shouldn’t beg to survive,” he reaffirmed.

In a tone of voice seeping with displeasure, he said, “Anyone who has travelled out of Nigeria will know that Nigeria is not a country that handicapped should be in. We are not recognized. We are treated equally with able-bodied people, and it shouldn’t be so. We are not saying we should be treated with discriminatory preference, but at the same time, we deserve our own special laws guarding our special existence.

“For instance, in America, buildings are not approved unless they have handicapped facilities, regardless of if handicapped will live in them or not. Likewise toilets in public places. They should have special features that can make blind handicapped like me use them easily.

“Transportation as well. If you’re handicapped in the developed world, the transporters assist you very well. But here, they expect you to board and alight from commercial buses in the same manner as normal people. Frankly, I just feel that something is wrong with our government; that is why they don’t really care about us.”

Luckily for Moruf, he is not your average handicapped. He practices what he preaches. He doesn’t beg neither does he allow his handicap to weigh him down. He actually employs able-bodied people and is into empowering handicapped through his vocational skills acquisition centre while also manufacturing general goods and running a transportation business.

Narrating the story of how he became the entrepreneur cum handicapped advocate that he is today, he said, “I became blind in sudden inexplicable circumstances. My parents tried their best to get the root of the problem but they were unsuccessful. Before I had been blind long, someone adviced me to come to Lagos to Oshodi where I would make N500 weekly as a beggar.”

That was back in the eighties. Luckily for him though, fate had a different plan for him. When he arrived in Lagos from Ijebu Ode, a Good Samaritan came his way.

“God sent an angel to me in the guise of Mrs Mojisola Abdul. She told me about the Federal School for the Blind, Oshodi Centre. I went there and learnt basket weaving and Mrs Abdul, God bless her, gave me money to rent a shop at Sasha Road in Akowonjo and so my life began finally.”

But it wasn’t easy; in fact it was very rough. “After I opened my shop, I sought out other visually-impaired people to help me in my basket trade. We sold our baskets at the beach and during festivals like Christmas, Ileya, etc.

“More handicapped joined us and we had about seven trainees who became independent once they had learnt the trade. But since it is good to have multiple streams of income, we soon diversified into making soap, petroleum jelly and chalk.

“And that was when we really had our most trying time. We were making good products but people did not trust in them. They weren’t willing to patronise us. So we had to start giving them out free so people would know their worth. That ruse eventually paid off for us.”

Moruf has been handicapped for such a long time now that he knows a lot about disabilities. He is therefore in a position to say which handicap is the most challenging.

“Definitely, blindness s the most difficult of all handicaps,” he disclosed without a moment’s thought. “Even the government knows that. A simple way to make you understand is education. If you want to educate someone who is crippled, he will go to school with normal people. But a blind man can’t go to just any school.

“He has to go to a special school. Teaching materials are much more expensive for blind people. A writing frame for a blind person is N100,000 while a physically handicapped will use just a biro. Walking sticks for blind people are also very expensive. They start from N15,000 up to N30,000 and if you want to purchase the talking walking stick that will keep telling you what’s in front of you, how you should move, you can only buy that in hard dollars.”

Moruf is however not letting the Nigerian situation mitigating against handicapped to dampen his spirit. He has more plans to help his fellow handicapped. “I want to get a special bus for handicapped people. I’ve already written to the American Company for Transport of the Handicapped about it. I also plan to acquire a very big expanse of land where all handicapped people will be able to live and work.”

Already, apart from training as many handicapped people as possible with vocational skills, Moruf also helps them through his transportation business.

“Competent Handicapped presently has about 50 commercial buses in Lagos. These buses are easily recognizable by the CH painted on them. All our drivers already know that they can’t collect transport fares from handicapped that are affiliated to us. Also, whenever any of our handicapped want to go and do something somewhere, maybe take goods from one location to another, we assign a bus to go and help him do that.”

Talking about the problems of the handicapped, he said, “Employment is our biggest problem. Once you are handicapped, people believe that you are useless. And this is not so. We can work, we are intelligent, but people are reluctant to employ us, even government, so how can you really blame the private organisations?

“Access to medical treatment is our second biggest problem. Even though we handicapped don’t fall sick a lot, when we do, we find it difficult to get medical help. My advice to the government is that they should encourage people to buy medicines and give to hospitals for handicapped in need of healthcare.”