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People living with disabilities have accused airline operators in the country of maltreating and perpetrating discrimination against them.
They expressed their minds at the House of Representatives investigative hearing on Tuesday, where they specifically mentioned Dana Air, Arik Air and Ibom Air as forerunners of oppressive policies against people with disabilities.
Besides,the National Commission for People With Disabilities, (NCPWD), accused the Federal Airports Authourity of Nigeria (FAAN), of blocking all efforts to make life comfortable for people with disabilities at the airports.
The stakeholders appeared before the House of Representatives Committee on Disabilities investigating alleged discrimination and violatiion of the people with disabilities prohibition Act 2019, by private airlines in the country.
They narrated their ordeals in the hands of the airlines, describing their policies against people with disabilities as wicked and unacceptable.
Almost all the complainants accused Dana Air and Ibom Air as being notorious for these obnoxious policies and discriminatory treatment.
They said part of the policies were that people with disabilities cannot travel, and if they must do, they must pay for double tickets and have an able person travel with them.
Mr Chukwuma, a Special Assistant to Governor Willie Obiano of Anambra state, who is living with blindness, said that Ibom Air prevented him severally from travelling in the airline from Enugu to Abuja, insisting that it was the airline’s policy that people with disabilities must travel with an able person to guide.
He insisted that as a lawyer who consults beyond Nigeria, he had travelled unhindered, to over 52 countries and locally all alone, before and after his encounters with Ibom Air.
Another stakeholder, Haruna, living with deafness also complained of the same discrimination and hostile practice against him by Ibom Air.
Kazim Lawal, who said he was a counsel to one Chile Ogugu, spoke on how Dana Air applied same policy against his client.
He further said that his client, in spite of paying to travel with a guide, Dana Air rescheduled his flight to night and prevented him from travelling stating that people with disabilities were not allowed to travel by night for security reasons.
In his submission, James Lalu, Executive Secretary of the NCPWD, who is living with speech defect, sad that his commission had approached FAAN to make provisions for office spaces at the airports to house workers from the commission, who would make life comfortable for people with disabilities, but the request was denied, claiming that airports were already filled up.
He said that the Commission, with willing partners were ready to engage services of able persons and interpreters, at the airports, to ease the sufferings of these Nigerians, who never chose to be disable.
Lalu admonished the operators of airlines to note that anybody could become disabled at anytime, as most of them being discriminated against today were not born with disabilities.
Chairman of the House Committee, Princes Miriam Onuoha, said that Dana Air was most notorious in all the complaints and cautioned against the hostile treatments and discrimination reported against these airlines.
She said that the Act prohibiting this discrimination was still in force and must be complied with by operators.
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