I will give my blind children good education – Farmer

Malam Adamu Audu lives with two wives and 16 children in a house located at Piko-Panda village in Bwari Area Council of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). Three of his children: Shehu, 17, Amina, 11 and Musa, 7, were born with blindness. At first Audu thought the kids contracted an infection that led to their […]

Malam Adamu Audu lives with two wives and 16 children in a house located at Piko-Panda village in Bwari Area Council of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
Three of his children: Shehu, 17, Amina, 11 and Musa, 7, were born with blindness. At first Audu thought the kids contracted an infection that led to their condition; hence he made concerted efforts to get cure for them. Unfortunately, cure did not come their way and they became permanently blind.
Though a farmer who did not have the opportunity to acquire western education, Malam Audu is determined to give his children the best education, including the blind ones.
 The blind kids are in the FCT School for the Blind, Jabi in Abuja Municipal Area Council. He said he would give them the necessary help to ensure they acquire university degrees, work and participate fully in the society. He added that the children would become responsible citizens, their condition notwithstanding.
Shehu, Amina and Musa can now read and write with stunning ability, according to their teachers, who classified them as very intelligent. All of them now dream of becoming teachers in the future.
 “When I discovered that my three children were blind, I took them to various traditional healers for cure. A man from Igu village came to my help and took the children to various hospitals. But at the end of all these efforts, the doctors confirmed that they would not be cured because the blindness is natural,” Malam Audu recalled, adding that he was thereafter advised to take them to a school in Abuja to find consolation for their predicament.
“The man advised me to enroll them in school, but I argued with him on the possibility of a blind person learning to read and write. The man insisted that we should enroll them in a school for the blind in Abuja. That was how we took them to school in the FCT,” he added.
Shehu, who is the eldest of them, is in Junior Secondary (JS) 1, while Amina is in Primary 3, just as Musa is in Primary 1. It was learnt that all the three kids are extremely brilliant and hardworking.
“They are high achievers,’’ one their teachers said.
Audu noted that he had never allowed his blind children to beg for alms in the street as that would weaken their determination to survive.
 Speaking to our reporter, Shehu said though they were born with blindness, with appropriate learning opportunities they would achieve their dreams. He said his ambition was to become a teacher for the blind, and called on parents whose children face such challenges to send them to the special school.
He added that blind people were very intelligent, saying they could achieve exceptional success in life.
The chief of Panda community, Amadu Indagi, commended the teachers of FCT School for the Blind for their contributions towards helping blind children achieve their aims in life.
 A social worker at the Catholic Church, Igu, Mr. Augustine N. Nwaodo, said he was able to convince Malam Audu to send his children to school after doctors told him that the children would not be cured.
“I am a social worker at the Catholic Church in Igu community in Bwari Area Council. My job is to locate people with disabilities and help them. I discovered Malam Adamu at Piko-Panda village with his three children. After I took them to various hospitals, the doctors said they were born like that and they can never see. Then I decided to advise him to take them to school. But he argued that they would never read and write. After long debate, he agreed and we took them to the FCT School for the Blind,” Mr. Nwaodo recalled.
When contacted, the head teacher of the FCT School for the Blind, Mrs. Regina Dung, said the children were lucky to be in the school. She said they were performing above average, especially in Mathematics and sciences.
However, she said the students were facing the challenge of inadequate learning materials.
 “These children are many in this school. They are very intelligent, but they need help. They need learning materials to enable them concentrate on their studies,” she said.