---

---

Nigeria: An Ambitious Blind Newscaster

Nuruddeen M. Abdallah

27 April 2008

---

Salisu Ibrahim lost his sight at the age of seven. But he is now a Mass Communication graduate and newscaster with FRCN Kaduna. He believes that his deficiency won't abort his dream of working for the BBC radio. Sunday Trust examines this tall ambition propelled by commitment and hard work.

It was embarrassing when the admission officer told me that 'you are in the wrong place.' Explaining further that as a blind person I should go for special education meant for physically- challenged like me, not Mass Communication department."

This was Salisu Ibrahim narrating his ordeal during a registration exercise in Kaduna Polytechnic's Mass Communication department. This, according to the blind journalist, was only one of the several cases of embarrassment he was subjected to because of his deficiency.

He nearly faced the same treatment in Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria [FRCN] Kaduna when he was sent there from school for industrial attachment-ITF-SIWES in December 2002.

"The then comptroller program, now a GM of a federal FM station in a north central state was very angry when I was posted to his department telling me 'what business has a blind man got here in ban da rigima.' He warned me also that, he won't hesitate to send me back to school if I perform poorly within two weeks."

Despite these daunting challenges, the young Salisu was not deterred as he surmounted them and gained a Higher National Diploma in Mass Communication. He is also now a permanent staff in FRCN, Kaduna's news department.

He attributed his successes to his perseverance saying "I am someone who loves challenges. I accept any embarrassment or discrimination meted against me as a result of my blindness as a challenge. I also remain resolute in vigorously pursuing my target goals," the newscaster said.

The 29-year-old journalist who is currently in the orientation camp for his National Youth Service Corp [NYSC] added that "it is my life time resolution not to allow anything to serve as a barrier between me and my aspirations. It is my conviction that with hard work and determination, God would surely crown my efforts with success."

Salisu was born healthy and hearty like every normal child on December 31, 1979 in Kankarofi quarters, Kano city. As fate will have it, his chemistry of life was changed at the age of seven after a nine-day long eye ailment locally known as Apollo which claimed his eyes rendering him blind.

"My parents spent almost three years visiting several hospitals and traditional medicine practitioners to restore my vision, but without success," said Salisu. This, he added, was responsible for the delay in his enrolment into primary school.

"As I told you earlier, my parents were preoccupied with finding cure for my ailment. In fact the idea of enrolling me into school only came about in 1989 when I was almost 10-years old. It was a nurse in one of the hospital we visited in Kaduna who suggested to my father that he should take me to a special school in either Gindiri, Plateau state or Katsina," he recalled.

Salisu could neither be taken to Gindiri nor Katsina because of his tender age as well as the distance of the two places. Saying "my father couldn't afford sending me to distant areas like Gindiri and Katsina because of my age then. He instead conducted a search within Kano and luckily he found a special school in Tudun Maliki, Kano city."

He got enrolled into the Tudun Maliki special school in 1989 where he successfully completed his primary and junior secondary school in 1997."With the successful completion of my JSCE, the school authority then decided to send me and another student to Government Secondary School, Gwale for our senior secondary education.

And unlike the special school in Tudun Maliki which was meant for the blind and deaf, Salisu was confronted with a new challenge in GSS Gwale, where only him and his colleague from Tudun Maliki who later dropped out, are blind.

He narrated to Sunday Trust how he coped with the daunting situation in the conventional school thus: "as the only blind student in the school I choose to study arts out of science and commerce. Already we were thought how to use Braille and typewriter in primary school.

"I offered all the arts courses like other students. I usually used Braille to write notes for my personal consumption and typewriter for my teachers during tests, assignments and examinations. I applied the same method even when I was given admission to study Mass Communication in Kaduna Polytechnic."

The blind journalist told Sunday Trust that he was never given an extra time during exams or tests reiterating that "I mostly finish my exams or tests within the stipulated time."

Explaining how he took notes during lectures, the newscaster said: "It is indeed very challenging as even during my days in Gwale only one teacher [agric science] dictated notes to us, while all the rest wrote it on the black board. In Kaduna Polytechnic, most lecturers dictated which I copy with Braille while some gave hand outs."

He added that he relied mostly on his classmates and colleagues who normally dictated notes to him. "I copy direct if the teacher dictates. But I relied on classmates to dictate to me after classes," he added.

Salisu was among the first nine physically -challenged persons to be trained by the American-based Community Resource Centre in Kaduna on computer where he obtained a certificate on basic computer and internet appreciation and application.

He obtained his reading materials mostly from some foreign organisations on request since 1995. "I depend usually on radio for information on current affairs and the literary materials from foreign bodies that send me on request," he explained.

Though the books are not on specific courses, the ambitious young journalist stated that they nevertheless helped him a lot as he hardly found any within the country.

He lamented the lackluster attitude of government towards the plight of the physically-challenged, a situation he said is "forcing several of them into the booming begging industry." He recalled when he wrote to Kano state government soliciting for educational assistance three years ago but "up till now no response."

It is Salisu's fervent belief that he would one day work for the British Broadcasting Corporation [BBC]. As a translator in FRCN, Kaduna, he reads news bulletins that include Barka da yau, Duniya labari, Takaitattun labarai among several other news-related programmes.

Read comments. Write your own.

---