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Professionals In Government: Issues In Navigating The Policy Space In Nigeria

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Toyin Falola At 70: The Reminiscing About A Scholar And Legend

By Tunji Olaopa
All across the world, the policy space has always been a critical and contested one. It is critical to the extent that it is within this space that government consolidates the social contract with the citizens through sound programmes that inform the development of the state and the well-being of the citizens. It is contested because it is a space where government no longer has the sole prerogative of determining what should constitute the specifics of governance dynamics. The policy space is traditionally reserved for bureaucrats and bureaucratic expertise. It is the public servants whose original task it is to assist the government in policy design and implementation. By the turn of the twentieth century, especially when the second World War happened, with all its attendant administrative, political and social consequences, this reality started to change.

With the emergence of the United Nations after the war, the foreign policy relationships and dynamics amongst nations became all the more significant. The UN became a structural standpoint to prevent further war. And thus, this led to the need for multilateral cum bilateral agreements and global partnerships that will facilitate the cordial relationship and collaborations between NGOs and development partners with states across the world. This brings these global partners into the policy management architecture of the states. It is however the United States’ policy management experience during and after the war that signalled the widening of the policy space beyond the remit of traditional policy imperatives. America facilitated the inclusion of scholars and intellectuals, as well as the introduction of think tanks, into the policy space. This is further accentuated by the US spoils system. This practice within the context of the US presidential system is a double-edged sword. It has the potential to both muddle the policy management space as well as strengthen it. It began as a means of allocating juicy appointments and positions to loyal party members when a president gets to power. And it eventually led to gross inefficiency until the Pendleton Federal Civil Service Act of 1883 put a stop to it. However, it still provides a solid administrative frame for injecting fresh technocratic and expert presence into the policy space.

Even though it is customary, all through public administration history, to enlist scarce skills and core expertise to bridge knowledge, information and competency gaps at different stages of the policy process, there has always been a charged relationship between the bureaucrats as the gatekeepers of the space and the technocrats and experts that are meant to complement their policy efforts. The relationship between the public servants and bureaucrats on the one hand, and the technocratic team (technical advisers, policy experts, consultants and subject specialists) on the other has been governed by the tension between two fundamental issues. On one hand, there is the need to keep all policy processes and actions within the purview of technical rationalism. This is what activates the totality of administrative governing framework, from the famous General Order (GO) to the public service rules, circulars and other legal and administrative procedures, guidelines and instruments by which the policy management processes are streamlined. However, there is also the pervasive pressure to subject bureaucrats to a general accountability control in accordance with the imperatives and demands of democratic principles and governance.

But the bureaucracy is just what it is—a turf that is guided with all sense of propriety and aggression. It is a space where the task of policy management is jealously guided from intrusion by perceived outsiders. This raises a genuine dilemma: the policy space can no longer be policed solely by the bureaucrats whose policy actions must be complemented by non-bureaucrats. And yet the bureaucratic policy space is professionally unique and cannot be arrogantly transgressed by those who think they have better expertise. This makes the policy space a very charged one. Like the larger governance space, the task of governance can no longer be left to the expertise of the bureaucrats and government officials alone. The demands of democratic governance insist that nonstate and non-governmental actors be drawn in to contribute their own perception, thoughts and expertise to the task of governing the citizenry better than the government alone is ever going to manage.

READ ALSO: Letter From A Falsely Accused Accountant-General

When managerialism made its appearance from the 1960s, the pressure to modernize policy and make it more efficient redoubled the urgent need for reforming the policy space and forcing the bureaucrats to comply. The managerial revolution was motivated by the need to transform the operational dynamics of the traditional administrative framework in line with modern technologies and administrative machineries, especially as determined by the private sector and its efficiency, capacities and competences. Managerialism asks for effectiveness, flexibility, leanness, efficiency, performance and productivity. And it compelled a lot of attention on the insularity of the public service in relation with the imperatives of the larger governance and policy space. With managerialism, the policy management space can no longer be the same. Thus, as dominant paradigm in public administration, and with its emphases on upending action and policy research, entrepreneurial culture, it contributed to the need for expanding the policy and governance space and deepening the relevance of technocratic experts and professionals from outside of the bureaucracy.

Within the Nigerian policy space, it is the managerial imperative of enlarging the space, coupled with the fundamental development predicament of the Nigerian state after colonialism, that facilitated the entry into policy management of such experts, scholars and technocrats like Pius Okigbo, Wolfgang Stolper, Ojetunji Aboyade, Taslim Elias, Adamu Baike, Ben Nwabueze, Jibril Aminu, Claude Ake, Kalu Idika Kalu, and many others who brought skills and competences into the policy processes. And yet, the governance and policy space in Nigeria demonstrates most tragically the charged nature of the relationship between the bureaucrats and the technocrats. Indeed, the diagnostic literature in Nigeria’s administrative history regards the civil service as a significant part of the development challenge Nigeria is facing. Apart from its institutional reform issue and the need to inject critical meritocratic competence, the civil service has a reputation for being too closed up. Technocrats, professionals and experts over the years have lamented the challenge of working closely with bureaucrats on policy issues.

One critical nature of the Nigerian state and its governance dynamics has to do with the ease with which the system rewards mediocrity. Even as the bureaucracy harbours significant high-end talents, often times, mediocre, rather than the brightest and the best, find themselves at the top of the administrative and technocratic ladders where they are served by the best the Nigerian nation can afford, from the university scholars and intellectuals to top-notch professionals. Unfortunately, this technocratic best that could serve the nation are forced to look up to their mediocre bosses, especially with regard to issues and policies that shape the direction and performance metrics of the structures and institutions they oversee. And who would want to blame those who had to keep their distance from the policy space when they cannot continue to bear the brunt of mediocrity in a nation with a huge demographics of core professionals and experts of global standing? How does a nation like Nigeria that wants to be a global economic player in twenty-first century account for countless first-class graduates languishing in the unemployment market? And the agony doubles because the university teachers who are tasked with the responsibility of forming the human capital Nigeria requires to become a developmental state have been effectively pauperized!

One of the greatest challenges that the experiment of democratic governance in Nigeria faces is that of managing cross-over professionals (COPs); a term I first picked up at Patrick Okigbo’s Nextier seminar. COPs being those who, through a significant dose of patriotism and motivation, transition from private practices, diaspora, academia and civil society organisations to public service. This is even more fundamental a challenge because governments across the globe are caught in the managerial search for administrative and institutional reforms that will yield efficiency, flexibility and productivity. And the private sector provides a model for rethinking traditional bureaucracy a la managerialism. And this is all the more urgent within the context of the erosion of meritocracy and the breakdown of competency-based human resource management the Nigerian public service has witnessed. There is however a constant clash of perspective between the vision of independent expertise that stands at the heart of a depoliticized model of policymaking, and the imperative of bureaucratic control and democratic accountability that locates the Weberian policy context and its public service general order (or PSR).

READ ALSO: Practising Modern Feminism

But then, COPs transitioning into the public service in Nigeria are usually not prepared for the dynamics of what I have called bureau-pathology—the sets of structural and institutional deficiencies—that ambush their good intention of injecting new and scarce competencies into the public service. Thus, when bureaucrats protect their turfs, it is the administrative outsiders and their critical skills that are often on the receiving end of the bad deal, and the government pays the price in terms of productivity. Ultimately, the idea of COPs introduces the need to reflect on a model of bureaucrats-COP relationship that will facilitate the transformation of the public service for effective and efficient performance. And for my concern in this piece, such a model gives due credit to patriotic technocrats who are eager to cast their competences and skills into the task of nation-building and national development.

The other side of the equation is equally valid. Public administration is a profession with its own code of practice, attitudinal framework and value-system. The point there is that for any outsiders to make significant impact on the task of working together with the public servants in the policy and governance space, they must demonstrate some levels of understanding and empathy with the public service code of practice with full recognition that public administration is a profession in its own right. That learning curve becomes all the more rewarding if they demonstrate professional humility that enlists skilled bureaucrats in their technical team rather than creating private enclaves populated by outsiders as is the common practice. Coming into the public service is all by itself a daunting experience for any technocrat, without bringing along any professional arrogance that on its own has to engage with the turf war that the bureaucrats also have ready.

Quite unfortunately, and despite the best reform intentions and efforts of successive Nigerian government and bureaucratic leadership, the Nigeria’s administrative system still operates a one-size-fits-all codes of administrative operations usually activated by circulars and a whole range of governance codes which civil servants are experts in. This is so because many of the key reforms since 1974 have not gained ground or are far-between. Many of these standard operating systems are sadly not embedded by new and efficient management innovation, procedures and technologies at the rapidly growing frontiers of policy and project management techniques. They therefore tend to be annoyingly rigid, unimaginative and even stifling of any innovative possibilities. This procedural matter is further compounded by the civil service structure of authority, which embeds positions and persons in manners that could be dysfunctional especially where occupants of posts do not have the skills, knowledge and competence that performance and productivity require. This dynamic is aggravated by the weight that the civil service put on seniority and hierarchy at the expense of knowledge, competence, administrative discretion and team work. It is therefore no surprise that the entire system, outside of the best objectives of managerialism, is heavily oriented towards input and process at the expense of output and results.

READ ALSO: Prof. A. D. Yahaya In The Annals Of Public Administration Scholarship In Nigeria

Thus, within this context of dysfunctionality and professional/technocratic arrogance and ignorance, the stage is set for collaborative conflict founded on an adversarial model that precludes any form of agreement between the bureaucrats and the technocrats on the resolution of the problems of policy management. It is this conflict-ridden model, rather than the collaborative one that facilitates consensus and mutual respect, that had led to the humiliation of many well-meaning and patriotic cross-over professionals and technocrats who had made the bold move to serve the Nigerian state and make better and functional the policy and governance space for the betterment of Nigerians.

I particularly cannot forget the sad experience of a full-bodied and world class scholar, Prof. Adenike Grange, the former minister of health, and her tragic story within the policy space. Like many significant others, she was embroiled, in the course of her national service, in issues that led to an unwarranted and most annoying persecution and resignation in ways that could have tarnished the reputation she has spent a significant part of her life accumulating. For daring to stick her neck out, she paid a huge price simply for offering herself selflessly to render patriotic service to her country. But this is what I suspect—if these technocrats are invited again to national service, they just might overlook the wrongs done them. Patriotism seems to cover a multitude of sin.

If we are agreed that the enlarged space of policy management is required to transform democratic governance in Nigeria, then we need to explore the reform possibilities that will enable the bureaucrats and technocrats to work together and bring the full weight of their skills and competences to bear on the challenges of modernizing the space into a flexible, performing and productive enterprise. There is for instance a policy gap in the public service, MDAs without strategic plans; poor policy analysis due to non-professionalization of departments of planning, research and statistics; lack of action/policy research work that harnesses policy-research and global knowledge networks to strengthen strategic policy intelligence and for problem-solving as part of contingency planning; poor data culture; poor monitoring and evaluation (M&E) as well as project management capabilities.

READ ALSO: New Thinking In Public Service And Administration

There is therefore an urgent need to modernize the policy architecture in ways that allow policymaking to facilitate the transformation of the lives of Nigerians. The changes involved in modernising the policy making process would include: (i) designing policies around outcomes; (ii) making sure policies are inclusive, fair and evidence-based; (iii) avoiding unnecessary burdens on businesses; (iv) involving others in policy-making; (v) becoming more forward and outward-looking; and (vi) learning from experience. And this transformation of the policy management space will require the joint effort of both the Nigerian government, the bureaucrats and bureaucratic leadership and the team of technocrats, policy advisers and professional experts that could be taken as significant stakeholders to the policy process.

The essence of the collaborative partnership is to be able to transform the policy space into a significant recipient of productivity, which emanates from an administrative reform of the civil service. What is required to make the civil service a world class source of fundamental policymaking effort that orient good governance are not far-fetched: instituting competency-based HR practices; installing performance management accountability culture; injection of deep policy implementation techniques and project management praxis; changes in wage and incentive structure that attracts and retains high-end scarce skills and core competences; enabling a talent management system that enables only the very best to get to administrative leadership positions to cure subsisting menace of inbreeding; and establishing the best practices in the SES to beef up services’ IQ of the top administrative leadership cadre as the lead motivator of performance in the civil service system.

. Olaopa is a retired Federal Permanent Secretary, and Professor, National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies
(NIPSS), Kuru, Jos .
tolaopa2003@gmail.com

 

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Opinion

Death At Dawn, Rebirth At Dusk 

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Dele Jegede In Conversation With Prince Yemisi Shyllon
Prof. Toyin Falola

By Toyin Falola

 

I

Death

Twilight-zone, Afterlife, What-Mays, and Whatnots;

Questions that transcend mortal thoughts.

Uncertainties plucked by the hands of certainty

pondering life beyond the galaxy.

 

Philosophies, religions, and sciences; 

Ancient lenses to dissect and ponder.

Beliefs, opinions, and standpoints in their multiplicities;

Scalpels that open the heart of certain death

Blazing free the skins of uncertainty.

 

Science, a nobility I revere,

But it stammers answering to the afterlife.

For science is knowledge and knowledge from experience 

But the dead neither speak, nor take records.

 

Their journeys, ordeals, triumphs or woes?

No one bears witness.

But as dead, we must all be witnesses;

witnesses that testify not.

So, for now, we survive the knowledge of death.

 

II

On my Agbàlàgbà head lies my Ọ́kpụ́ Ágwụ́

With eagle feathers, rare and honorable

Adorning it for three scores, a decade, and some more days.

I had flipped my Kente given by the Gaa

And danced to crescendos from Gàngàn drums

 

I have been celebrated and celebrating 

For the miracles, I have worked with pen, paper, keyboard, and brain

I have taken the tales we tell in my village square beyond the Atlantic

Changed the songs that disdain us into appraisals

I have called my brothers not to point to our fathers’ house with their left hands

 

I have honed Africa and beyond

To answer the calls of the people’s need

I have reached the thinkable and done the unthinkable

So, I danced and keep dancing. 

 

Suddenly, I felt a touch on my host?

Electrifying my hand, leg, brain, and my whole

Telling me that my jur from the Dinka people awaits me.

That my hourglass tells of crossing the bar.

 

I thought I knew what it was like,

But my grasping convictions of approaching jur were perceptions

Just surviving the death of the knowledge of death

So, arms wide open ready to abound

 

What was there to fear?

No catacomb of secrets

No palm oil-drenched white garments

I have taken many to my gourmet

To feast and to see.

 

What was there not to fear?

With medicine men and women,

Syringes, lights, water, ECG, Oximeters, voices, and touches

Hovering around me like a sacred etutu

Making conversations with me and beyond

 

I was thrown into a pool of reminiscence

one leg and a part of me were already in the boat

It beckoned but I heard another. 

 

A loud voice like my mother’s.

Who takes a journey without locking his home?

Who takes the jur with unpatched palm fronds on his hut?

While the thunder rages up the sky?

The walls are broken and Balogun journeys?

So, I left the sea to clear the cobwebs and light up the night lamb.

 

The past few weeks have opened new lights of understanding to me. I now see the world from different hills and have helped to reach new resolutions. I know I have written about “transitioning to nothingness,” but my emphasis was on the “nothingness” with lesser attention on “transitioning.” I think we need to continue to ask questions. Philosophies, religion, sociology, psychology, science, and other ramifications are mere perceptions and we are uncertain. The transitioning occurs when death becomes an angel to hug not a beast to fear. We do not know what it entails but one must always endeavor to go with clean hands. 

My recovery from an illness may have offered me a fresh opportunity to shout some more, point to societal needs, and settle unfinished businesses. No, not those caused by my personal undoing, but rather those of the people who would be left unguided, and for matters untold about life, society, and individuals. I can say I have passed through the lessons of tantra transfiguration, to use an elegant phrase that I recently came across, to move from secular to sacred activism. No one survives death because of its finality, but when it seems that you did, it is a renewed quest, offering a new purpose.

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Opinion

Professors On INEC’s Will (3)

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Readers’ Showers Of Encouragement
Prof. Tony Afejuku

By Tony Afejuku

The debate has progressed well so far. Our professors, whose strokes have centred on their fellow professor’s manned INEC have tried as best as they could not to confine their impressions solely to the prism of subjectivity. Even when their impressions seem to be subjective, they still make allowance for contrary views, for opposing views. This obviously gives clarity, objectivity and logic to the subject at hand. Is the will of INEC of a professor minder and mincer of words’ control the will of the people or of the masses? On whose side are the Professors who are as concerned as almost everybody is with what is going – or with what has gone on – primarily about our Presidential 2023 elections? Our Professors who are debating the subject constitute the courageous and prophetic Nigerian voices of our day. Their authentic and responsible thoughts are not restricted to the local or regional. They are also not confined to electoral duties and responsibilities expected of the umpire and the will that belongs elsewhere. The truth about the quality of leadership about our country and elsewhere is also told in the debate of the literati.

Professor (Mrs.) Razinatu Mohamed in her submission, in her salvo-cum-explosion actually, drew attention to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo’s explosive explosion in the presidency. If Professor Osinbajo had provided the right vice-presidential leadership there would not have been the need for him to explode as he did as per a viral video Professor Razinatu Mohamed referred her fellow debaters to. “What has he been doing in the eight years of their administration? Irritated my foot; he is complicit.” Not done, Professor Razinatu drew attention to the kind of leaders that Nigeria and Africa need: “Leaders that understand the rudiments of modern socio-economic development and systems; Leaders that understand the crux of requirements for economic growth. Leaders that could demonstrate to the rest of the world that just as the world needs Africa, African countries need the world in a symbiotic relationship and partnership context where assistance becomes a dual role…..” 

Razinata’s concern is clear. Nothing in Nigeria will climb out of its hollow hole. In fact, the will of the people will remain hollow so long as a hollow mincer and minder is in charge of its electoral affairs. 

Professor Da Sylva perhaps responds better to Professor Razinatu Mohamed’s algebraic stroke. “Unfortunately, Nigeria’s democracy is trapped in its primordial self-made ethnic and religious sentiments and so, standards, merit, competence and pedigrees are measured by their curious divides of religion and ethnic inclinations. Until we all come to realize that heavens help those who help themselves, Nigeria ain’t going no-where – meeen!” 

    But below is Professor Da Sylva’s sledge hammer response to Professor Razinatu Mohamed’s Osinbajo hammer blow:

“Prof Osinbajo’s office demands he does what he did. Besides, it shows maturity and spirit of sportsmanship on his part. Every loser in a game “healthily” contested, is naturally expected to do the same. The only difference which again shows Osinbajo’s magnanimity is that in this context, the contest under reference was neither healthy nor just. The umpire seemed compromised and merely worked to a prepared answer. Yet the gentleman did the needful. I guess, brothers and sisters, that we should put all that behind us, and work for our common good, and the wellbeing of the country, provided the mythical Aso cabal will let the President-elect be, and let the masses be, and as such, they should not create any cause for us to think otherwise, lest they provoke our sense of patriotism to take appropriate action! I guess that those were the reading or feelings of the dirty-minded Aso Villa cabal. People that kill with sword never wish that any folk should pass a sword over their heads, a wise saying goes in Yoruba. The human principalities simply suspected that should they allow PMB to give the VP the intended latitude, they might not be able to control him. I remember on his return from London, he commended the efforts of his VP while he was away. He said he would still continue acting while he would still have some more rest at home. The following day everything changed, PMB decided to take charge as the President. I suspected some back door politics was playing out. My co-debaters, quite naturally, you’ll agree with me that, it is not over-ambition or sheer opportunism as you might insinuate for any deputy in an office to aspire to the next higher office, in a legitimate manner, there is nothing really unusual about it, and it would amount to killing a mosquito with a sledge hammer, should Oshinbajo be crucified for that, if at all. And as for his wishing Buhari’s non-recovery, I think that, again, like my Sister R, is a little unkind and not fair to the gentleman who I know to be a servant of God. He knows as much as I do, by our true Christian orientation and Biblical injunctions that, should he ever wish Buhari’s death or wish him any form of misfortune in those trying periods of the President, God Almighty who we serve would deal mercilessly and ruthlessly with him. That is what Psalm 41:1-13 is all about. So rule that out, because it is not, and could never be in his character. I can vouch for him. Rather, I saw him in those times that he acted for his principal, as someone zealous and appreciative of the trust his principal invested in him, and as such he tried to do his very best to merit the trust and the opportunity! I know and I am also sure that this is what an IBK, or a Razinat, would have done too had they found themselves in a similar situation! It does not amount to wishing one’s principal any evil, not at all. Not everyone can be like Chief Obafemi Awolowo who resigned his position under Gowon when the regime became financially reckless shortly after the civil war. Awolowo also gave very profound argumentation to justify convincingly his actions. He also turned down some other appointments including the “49 Wise Men of the Constitution Drafting Committee.” Oshinbajo couldn’t have resigned, normally, and naturally his principal, PMB should have supported him as a capable successor, but again, the President’s ethnic and religious bigotry took the better part of the President. Besides, PMB’s mind was long poisoned against his VP, a clean job by the Aso Villa cabal. IBK, Lady R, until the faceless cabal is permanently silenced the wheel of Nigeria might continue to go round in a circle, and to nowhere in particular”.

And Professor IBK takes the floor: “Prof. DAO, yours is a powerfully convincing submission, at least in a large measure. Now I am willing to hold a slightly different opinion about Osinbajo. Yet, I cannot fathom why he chose to run against Tinubu, days or weeks after the latter had begun his campaign in the party primaries. There’s much we don’t know about why OSBJ decided to run against BAT. Nothing is wrong with that politically but a little problematic from an Ethical or, at least Moral, point of view. Osinbajo did a poor job of it and came out a distant 4th in the primaries. I think he didn’t read the situation correctly and was probably misled by some cabal of sorts. Either way Osinbajo made a politically fatal error in this regard. Perhaps he must have sensed, or was told, that BAT was not the anointed candidate, or that BAT would be crippled by some ill-health or a medical condition. I remember the party’s screening committee publicly recommending that only younger contestants would be recommended to the NWC or such. Clearly there was an attempt to sideline BAT. Whatever the explanation, Osinbajo make the error in his campaign of promising to be more Buhari than Buhari. A man despised by whole sections of the northern population, a man whose reputation for laziness and incompetence was on the ascendant. Anyway, all is now history and Osinbajo has not given a good account of himself in this particular case. Prof DAO, I think your concept of the Trickster should account for Osinbajo’s situation here. FULL DISCLOSURE: a very close family member of mine was drafted to head Osinbajo’s campaign effort in Kano. We discussed extensively about Osinbajo’s pledge to carry on with Buhari’s policies. There was bewilderment and shock within the members. A week later half of the membership resigned on account of Osinbajo’s increasing identification with Buhari’s policies. Many mistakenly thought that Osinbajo was Buhari’s anointed one! I could go on…”

Interestingly interesting and intriguingly intriguing, dear, dearly dear readers: this debate.

To be terminated by the columnist-terminator and terminator-columnist next week after Professor Olu Obafemi’s summation of the debate he presided over.

Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.

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Opinion

With Us, Not For US

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Barrister Ijeoma Fynecountry

By Ijeoma Fynecountry

The 21st of March of every year is international day for the celebration of persons living with down syndrome. The advocacy and push for communal and political recognition of the basic fundamental rights for persons living with various types of disabilities, particularly intellectual disability, just as enjoyed by their peers who do not have any form of challenge – physical or intellectual has recorded a substantial success around the globe, especially in more developed climes. 

While the same cannot be said of the situation in Africa and Nigeria in particular, scanty breakthroughs have also been seen over the years, with the consistent and dogged efforts by some specialized organizations such as Down syndrome Foundation, Nigeria (DSFN).

The theme for this year’s celebration is “With us, Not for us”. This theme is apt particularly in the current era where the push for inclusion has taken a center stage in the campaign worldwide. While it is comforting to know that people, government and communities alike are now becoming more empathetic to the plight of persons living with disability, it is also necessary and most important that their rights as human beings deserving of not just empathy but actual concrete benefits accruable to other citizens without disability, is massively taken into consideration and actually provided for.

Therefore, it is not enough for the government to map out and create as in Lagos state and few other states, sections in the public schools to admit children or persons with intellectual disability, it is necessary to adequately equip these special schools with the needed “specialized” manpower, infrastructural and educational aids to attain the targeted educational goals for these persons. Likewise in the provision of better healthcare, economic, social needs of persons with disability etc.

Persons with intellectual disability do not just need to be specifically educated in accordance with his or her type of disability, but MUST also necessarily be able to aspire to or expect to be employed according to his or her learned ability. That way, a full right, befitting of a person, be him a person with disability or not, is assured. For what is the need of going through a learning process, acquiring a specialized knowledge about a craft or handiwork and eventually still not being given the opportunity of gaining employment as supposed, not due to lack of knowledge but for having a disability? No human being should be subjected to such. Our government should do better. The society at large should do better.

The theme for this year is enjoining all stakeholders – the government, communities, corporate organizations, religious bodies/organizations, individuals to open up their hearts, and recognize the very urgent and important need to help in the actualization of these basic human needs, rights of persons living with intellectual disability as we are all human. No human rights or needs should be prioritized over the other no matter the state of their health, mental and physical capacity. Stand with us by taking actual intentional steps towards uplifting and elevating the humanness of persons living with disability. It is not enough to say that you are for persons living with disability, your specific, intentional, targeted actions toward ensuring the practical applicability of these rights matters.

Fynecontryis a Lagos-based legal practitioner and the legal resource person for the Down Syndrome Foundation Nigeria.

 

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