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By: Wakilat Kikelomo Zakariyau
Meet Anifat Sadu, a trailblazing disability rights advocate, public speaker, and postgraduate student of psychology at the University of Lagos (UNILAG). Living with cerebral palsy, Anifat has navigated the challenges of accessibility and stigma, emerging as a powerful voice for inclusive practices in Nigeria.
Through her inspiring story, Anifat sheds light on the importance of empathy, accessibility, and equal opportunities for individuals with disabilities. In this interview with Wakilat Zakariyau. Anifat shares her experiences, highlighting the need for systemic change, innovative solutions, and collective action to promote disability inclusion. Excerpts below:
Wakilat Zakariyau: Can I meet you?
Anifat Sadu: My name is Anifa Sadu. I am a postgraduate student at UNILAG, studying psychology. I live with a disability called cerebral palsy. I am also a public speaker and disability rights advocate. I had my first degree from Bowen University, where I studied Microbiology.
Wakilat: How has your disability shaped your perspectives or experiences?
Anifat: It has shaped my experience in that it has made me more empathetic, right, because it is easy to sit down and judge someone else’s experiences if you are not in their shoes. But having a disability myself has made me realize that people are going through a lot and if a person can be going through or might have another disability or another issue that I have not experienced before, I still need to be empathetic towards that person because it can be painful. Just as I have cerebral palsy and some people just speak without trying to understand where I’m coming from.
So generally it has made me more empathetic and it has made me realize that people are going through a lot.
Maybe if I didn’t have cerebral palsy, I wouldn’t know that over 47,000 children are diagnosed with cerebral palsy every year in Nigeria. If I didn’t have cerebral palsy, maybe I wouldn’t know that there are so many kids that are still at home just because they have a disability. They are denied access to education. So if I didn’t have a disability, maybe I wouldn’t know that. Nigeria’s health system is really, really not as good as it should be. It’s not catering for the masses. It’s not catering for a lot of people with disabilities.
So it has made me more empathetic. It has informed me better on the things that are going on in the disability space, and the challenges.
Wakilat: Could you highlight how it has shaped your work, your disability work as a disability advocate?
Anifat: It has shaped me in sharing my story. When I share my story and I tell especially parents of children living with disabilities that oh, I live with a disability and I graduated, I earned my first degree at age 19, it allows them to do more for their children. Not just parents, even people without disabilities, even young people living with one disability or the other, they’ll be like, okay, if Anifat can do it, I can also do it. So it has given me the ability to do more for myself, regardless of the disability. It has given me that opportunity to do more in the disability space and inspire more people.
Wakilat: So, have you ever faced discrimination or stigma and if yes, how did you address it?
Anifat: Well, discrimination, I wouldn’t say I’m someone that has faced a lot of discrimination. I have, but the love and the compassion, I would say have been more than the discrimination, but I have had my own fair share of discrimination as well especially when I was a kid. An example is when my peers would want to participate in extracurricular sports, games or debates or one thing or the other, brownies, or any extracurricular activities.
But I couldn’t sit at one place, I couldn’t do anything. So I would have preferred it if they sort of made me feel among my peers. If they created something for me even if it’s just chess in order for me to just feel like there’s something I can also do.
So I think that’s one of the discriminations I faced. But as a child then, how would I have managed this? I didn’t know how to. They were like my parents in school. I had little or no power and I just did anything I was told to do.
Another experience that I wouldn’t really call it discrimination, I would just say a fault in the system in my undergraduate degree when I used to struggle to write and complete my exams. So I would have preferred it if I just had an easier way to put down whatever I wanted to write, maybe typing my answers or oral examinations but that never happened.
I struggled to write so what another person will write in 10 minutes, it may take me one hour to write it with a lot of pain of course and discomfort and even the handwriting won’t be clear and it will be very scattered. And to get to a point where you just lose that energy to keep writing.
So education shouldn’t be so difficult that just because you have a disability and you know what you are doing, you are cognitively sound but just because they want to prove that this is the system, you must adapt to it. I feel like there’s a lot of discrimination.
I wish I had that opportunity, but thank God, now in UNILAG, I fought against that. I started with my first semester PGD using my laptop to type my exams and it feels very good. I’ve never been that happy before in my life because for once I’m given the opportunity to write down all I know through typing on my computer. So it was a long difficult journey. It got to a point they were acting like they were doing me a favour and they were sending me to one another. I’ll go and meet this, go and meet that, I’ll go there, they will say go and meet them back. So it was a very difficult process but all in all, at last I was given the chance to.
So I think that’s how I’ve faced discrimination, and I feel like that will also set a pace for other students with similar disabilities because I know that in UNILAG, attention is paid more to the blind students. In fact, the blind students enjoy it. They give them that extra attention. But disabilities such as cerebral palsy is still kind of new. So, they don’t even know what to do with you because they’ve not seen your case before. So, that was it for me. They didn’t know what to do but then I felt like I would set a pace for other postgraduate students coming behind. So, that’s how I did it. It was a long journey, but a long painful one, full of tears, but I got it done at the end of the day.
Wakilat: As a Disability Champion, what inspired you to advocate for disability rights/inclusive practices?
Anifat: One, I would say that myself. Number two, I’ve met amazing people with disabilities that are lawyers, engineers, physiotherapists, and occupational therapists, so many doing wonderful things for themselves and their community, and the society at large. So I wonder, if they didn’t give this person access to education, so we’ll be losing out on this talent, we’ll be losing out on this gift? So that is one thing that pushes me to keep playing my own part just give that child access to education, give that child an inclusive environment, for the child to thrive. Lack of motor skills, lack of movement doesn’t equate lack of cognitive abilities. A person can’t write, a person can’t walk, a person can’t speak well doesn’t mean that they are useless in every other thing.
And overall, it’s coming to harm the society if we don’t cater for this group. This is contributing more chaos to our country. The money that we are supposed to be spending on other useful projects, we are spending it on other things. Rape cases, poverty, children or adults with disabilities who can’t do anything for themselves are still going to be liabilities to the society, to their family and even to themselves. So I think those are the things that just push me to keep playing my own part even if it’s just to speak or to counsel the parents and so on.
Wakilat: So, how do you think government and private organizations can better support employees or students like you with disabilities?
Anifat: First of all, whatever you are giving youth or students without disabilities give us that, give us that opportunity also. Whatever opportunities, skills, grants that you are giving to people or youth without disabilities, give us the opportunity to also access those things. Like I said before, just because a person is in a wheelchair or impaired physically, doesn’t mean that they are completely useless.
So I think that’s one way, that’s the first thing I would say. Give us that opportunity to access those things that you give youth and students without disabilities, ranging from grants to employment opportunities to skillset, just try to give us, even in the educational sector. Make things easier for us. So that’s one thing I would first say to the government and other private bodies.
For something like policy, I would say that there are so many things that the government have put in place but it’s as if it’s just there and it’s not active. Like you would you would hear people say under the constitution section this,?people with disability rights under Nigeria law, so those things are there but we are not practicing them. They are not effective so if the government can come up with other ways that these things can be affected, other ways that they can be practical enough for people to see and other implementation techniques that people will actually know that it is there and we are doing it. We do not just want to be a contributor, we just have laws and it’s just for camouflage.
Wakilat: Final question before we get to your touch points and other comments. What innovative solutions would you implement to improve accessibility?
Anifat: In the educational sector and buildings, so many buildings in Nigeria especially schools use stairs and inaccessible infrastructure. It’s almost as if everywhere is built not for people with disabilities. The structures are just shouting or screaming. It’s not meant for you if you have a disability. So I feel like if there’s a way that almost our buildings or our facilities or our structures can be built in such a that it is accessible for everybody, including those with disabilities, those that are blind, those wheelchair users.
I mean, it’s not so expensive, right? It can be just be a wheel for wheelchair users. It can be just making little things in place for more people to access your buildings. For example, in UNILAG postgraduate school, there are a lot of stairs there, a lot of stairs. So, I think I was there last semester for registration and I was wondering, okay, so if someone is on the wheelchair, how do they expect the person to register or go to school? And it’s the same in almost every department.
So I feel like those are those are some things that can be restructured or that can be amended so to speak, that’s one thing I would love to implement. Another one is the educational sector, like I said should just try to make things easier for all students. If I have cerebral palsy, I shouldn’t be depressed or anxious that I’m going to school that I want to do have a master’s degree because I know that I would be able to and I’ll be assessed by my own capacity. If I don’t have a hand or I can’t speak, I should also be able to get some modalities to prove what I know or tell you what I know or get assessed based on what I know.
So, educational sector and our building structures. So, those are some of the things I would love to see in place and I would love to be a part of.
Wakilat: And before we wrap up, would you like to give us other touch points that the focus of this interview might not cover, based upon the subject matter that you may want to say and any other parting words.
Anifat: I’ll just say that in a bid to, improve quality of life for people living with disabilities, everybody has a role to play. You have a disability, you have a role to play. You do not have a disability, you have a role to play in government sector, stakeholder, anything you are, even if you are just a father to someone out there, you have a role to play. Just look around you and you’ll see something that you can do to improve things.
It can be just donating to a child with a disability school fees or you can just be speaking up against violence or discrimination to people with disabilities. It can be anything. Just everybody has a role to play. You can be using your social media and making the comments, sharing something, putting a smile on someone’s face, smiling at that child on the wheelchair, making the other person feel heard or feel among or feel like they belong to a part of something.
So that’s it.
Like I would say, anybody can become disabled at any time. You don’t choose not to have a disability. I did not choose to have cerebral palsy. The child that you see on the road on the wheelchair didn’t choose it so you could have been that person. It’s not like you are better, so just try to be empathetic because it could have been you.