After 34 Years, Women Centre Gets First Wheelchair Ramp

Kuni Tyessi in Abuja

The Maryam Babangida National Centre for Women Development has for the first time in its 34-year history gotten a wheelchair-accessible ramp, allowing persons with disabilities to enter the building independently.

The Director General of the Centre, Ms. Adedayo Benjamins-Laniyi, disclosed this on Thursday in Abuja while receiving women journalists at the Centre.

According to the DG, the intervention was not about special seats but about special interventions that give attention to what had long been ignored.

“It’s not just about money, it’s not just about special seats, it’s about special interventions,” she said.

Benjamins-Laniyi said she ordered a complete review of the Centre’s physical structure upon assumption of office and was struck by the resilience of the 34-year-old building.

“If you look around, this is an amazing, beautifully constructed resilient building. Thirty-four years and the concrete is not just concrete. When they brought in technology to slice through the concrete to recreate access, I saw terrazzo cement. What you are seeing on the floor, normally we see concrete, but this is 34 years of terrazzo mixed with cement,” she said.

She disclosed that when contractors saw her priority on accessibility, they offered to construct the ramp as Corporate Social Responsibility at no cost to the Centre.

“At no cost to the Women Centre, the company decided as CSR to give us our first wheelchair accessibility ramp,” she said.

The DG said the impact was immediate. On Wednesday, the first board member in the history of the Centre living with disability wheeled into the facility without being lifted or assisted.

“Yesterday, the honourable member who is the first board member in the history of the Centre’s boards with disability wheeled into this environment without being lifted from her chair. Ordinarily, we need a lifter to get in because it goes down different levels. All she needed was to adapt with her wheelchair and without anyone assisting her, she came in. She was overcome emotionally. She can now go everywhere without being carried,” Benjamins-Laniyi said.

She also announced plans to establish the first Disability Directorate in the Centre, to be headed by a 29-year-old visually impaired staff member who started in the ICT department.

“We are setting up a disability office. One of the first things when the board is inaugurated will be signing in our disability directorate, the first in the Maryam Babangida National Centre for Women Development. She is 29 years old, a visually impaired woman with disability that started at the most humble level in our ICT department,” she said.

According to her, the Centre already has enabling technology in its ICT unit and plans to upgrade it further in line with the principle of leaving no woman and no girl child behind.

The DG said the Centre is also working on engagements with partners including the High Commission of India to strengthen inclusion.