The University has brought a big relief to physically-challenged students in the institution, in ensuring they enjoy equal access to facilities and services like their able-bodied counterparts.
A specially designed School Van with facility for wheel-chair was recently procured by the Management to conveniently transport physically-challenged students.
The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Oluwafemi Olaiya Balogun, disclosed this fact during the inauguration of the Committee on National Institutional Ranking (CONIREX), in the University’s Senate Chamber, recently.
According to the Vice-Chancellor, the special needs of physically-challenged people in the University must be considered and that they should be assisted in having easy access to facilities, like their other contemporaries.
Professor Balogun said, “we now have many of them with us and as such, we must start considering their interests in all that we do, particularly in the construction of Lecture Hall and auditorium”.
The Vice-Chancellor added that he had instructed the Physical Planning Unit to “look into the possibility of restructuring existing facilities”, with a view of putting access ramps in place, for wheel-chair passage.
He has equally directed the Health Centre to provide wheel-chair shuttle service for the physically-challenged, in order to move them across Lecture Halls, to ease the hardship they experience in the exercise.
While demonstrating the features of the van to UNAAB BULLETIN, the Dean, Student Affairs, Prof. Samuel Oluwalana, praised the magnanimity and vision of the Vice-Chancellor in acceding to the request to cater for the needs of the physically-challenged. The Dean said the University had blazed another trail in pioneering deliberate efforts to specially cater for the plight of the physically-challenged, noting that the van will assist tremendously in reducing “the usual stress that they undergo to acquire education and measure-up with their able-bodied colleagues”.
In an interview, a 400-Level student, Mr. Soetan Abayomi, who is physically-challenged, was full of praise for the University Management, for the humane gesture, believing he would no longer be sidelined by his handicap in participating in all academic exercises.
Mr. Soetan said it was practically impossible for him to attend all lectures, despite waking up by 4.00am and getting to the Campus by 7.00am on each school day. He said, “because of my situation, I cannot rush for bus, so I have to wake early to get to school on time.
“Despite this, I strategically place myself between Lecture Halls and always sit at the back of the class, to quickly move out at the end of the lecture, before the crowd begins to surge”.
An elated Mr. Soetan advised the University to conduct a proper census of students that are physically-challenged in order to adequately cater for them.
