THERE are about one billion persons living with disabilities, representing 18 per cent of world population, a Non-Governmental Organisation, has said.

Quoting World Health Organisation (WHO) and the World Bank reports, which described the phenomenon as a global problem, Asabe Shehu Yar’Adua Foundation (ASYAF), said more than 19 million of such persons were Nigerians.

In a speech she delivered on Saturday to commemorate the 2011 edition of the day set aside by the United Nations for persons with disabilities, ASYAF founder/president, Hajiya Asabe Yar’Adua, decried the appalling condition of such persons in the country.

She said that though Nigeria signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities on March 30, 2007, available statistics indicated that most of such persons remained poor and abandoned by both the government and the general public, hence their resort to begging for alms.

According to her, the observance of the day tagged UN ENABLED, which is aimed at mobilising public support, increasing awareness and understanding of disability issues and trends, should not be turned into a jamboree but an opportunity to sincerely address the problem facing humanity frontally.

She said the privileged ones in the society “should adopt the principle of spending their leisure time with persons with physical disabilities so as to appreciate their true conditions, while those who have taken it upon themselves to give a helping hand by looking after such people need our constant assistance and generosity.”

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