LAGOS – A basketball player, Mr Adoki Tamunosiki, on Thursday urged government, corporate organisations and individuals to invest in sports events designed for People Living With Disabilities (PWD).
Tamunosiki, who is also the Technical Director, Nigeria Wheelchair Basketball Federation, made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.
He also urged the authorities to expand the participation base of such athletes to accommodate more PWDs in order to discourage many of them from taking to the streets.
“We have seen that over the years, athletes with disability have made Nigeria proud, mostly in Olympics, at the Commonwealth Games, at the All African Games and all of that.
“If that is the situation, we also need to ask ourselves, what are we doing to encourage people with disabilities.
“So, for disability sports, we must bring ourselves to a point where we are investing, not only in those sports that we think that are producing the medals.
“We also need to keep a lot of them out of the streets if we are going to do it through sports, then we must expand the participation base of people with disabilities.
“As more of them come into sports, less of them will be on the streets.
“And what the government needs to do, what our society need to do, what our corporate bodies need to do is to align themselves with programmes that will bring the best out of them.
“That will take them out of the streets and never make them return there. “
The basketball player said that the government had the responsibility of enacting laws that would fully integrate people with disabilities into the society.
According to him, such laws will give PWDs ample opportunities just like other people in the society.
“The government has a great part to play in this.
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“They need to enact the enabling laws in order for people with disabilities to take their rightful place in our society in order to give them a level playing ground with people with abilities and to integrate them into the society.
“We must have at the back of our mind to give them certain portions of our government service; we must also be able to give them certain portions of our corporative services.
“That goes a long way to make us disability friendly, both for the government and for our corporate bodies.’’
(NAN)
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