Adaoma urges govt to establish autism, dyslexia, other centres to create awareness, boost acceptance

Adaoma Nnabeze from Anambra State has a brother Wisdom Nnabeze , 20 years who has been passing through a behavioral challenges right from birth and has been struggle to attain academic status but suffered many drawbacks while seeking medical solutions until she heard of 16th Annual Guaranty Trust Holding Company Plc (GTCO), Autism Conference at the MUSIN Centre in Onikan, Lagos and came with his brother to meet the experts in autism ecosystem for solutions. Adaoma narrated her brother’s journey to the discovery that he was born as a child with Autism to the Editor Gentechnews, Anthony Nwakaegho.

 

 

 

I am Adaoma Nnabeze from Anambra State. I have a brother Wisdom Nnabeze who has been passing through a behavioral challenge right from birth. He is 20 years old and will be 21 years by September 2026.

Adaoma narrated that they noticed from childhood that her brother was slow in development. He was born premature at seven months. He was slow to talk, slow to walk and everything.

She said that when it came to academic work and was enrolled in school, he found it hard to pick up repeating alphabets and so they noticed that something was wrong.

According to her, he struggled with academics so much that they had to push him until he got to primary five.

She said that he was not understood in the classroom settings, but as an individual he was very bright and loved doing things with his hands like picking random objects and constructing something and they wondered how he picked something here and how it happened.

She noted that he cried a lot as a child and wondered why he couldn’t get anything right, adding, “we did not understand him. I used to help him with his school homework and it could be frustrating saying something up to 10 times like mentioning 1 and 2 and he doesn’t remember it.

Adaoma explained how she came across an India movie ‘Like Star on Earth’ which was an awareness movie, stressing that because her brother could not read but could write, she saw a part of her brother in that movie because she thought it was a dyslexia issue.

She asserted that when one is working on something blindly the person can’t get far, hence she started to research on this dyslexia issue until she found a dyslexia tutor, Blessing Ingyape in Abuja and they went there for a five-days session, where she noticed massive improvement in his reading.

She noted that her brother loves cartoons and animation, and so when the tutor uses cartoons to teach him, he picks up immediately.

“When you use cartoons as an incentive that if he responds I will play this for you, then he will get encouraged. Sometimes he will raise his voice and shout and refuse to do things. The teacher had a way of managing him and always taking him back and getting the reward. We wanted him to remain there but they don’t have a boarding facility in Abuja,” she said.

She added “Before we met the lady at Abuja, before we thought it was dyslexia, I tried teaching to read with the Jolly Phonics program. After we left the lady at Abuja, based on her recommendation, I began to teach him to read using the Barton Reading System while doing my Masters program. It has 10 levels. We were able to get to level 3 where he could read short phrases and sentences. I had to be in school at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He got homesick at some point, we went home for a break, and he refused to return to school with me. So, the reading lessons were broken.”

She also narrated how she engaged community dyslexia tutors and family members who could buy one and exchange it with one another in their community, so she started with level one and it worked with some improvement, but her brother found it boring.

She stated further that she saw one Africa Dyslexia Advocacy Organization, and she wanted to start a non-governmental institution- Dyslexia and the Less Privileged Children, until she came across Dyslexia Foundation in Lagos that wanted to give scholarship, but they told us that my brother issue is not a dyslexia issue, but a developmental issue.

Adaoma disclosed that it was when they went to LUTH in Lagos to start running the test that they found out that her brother’s case was Autism.

She said that it was then that a friend sent her a note  that GTCO is holding a conference on Autism in Lagos and she came to the GTCO Autism Conference from day one.

Adaoma revealed that since their arrival at the GTCO Autism Conference, they have received a lot of support from the people that she believes will help in the terms of career.

She underscored that now she has come to understand why her brother’s interest and love for gadgets, games, cartoons, animation and constructing things was laid because it was autism.

“Now, we are beginning to understand a lot of things he did in the past that we thought were stubbornness or being pretentious or deceitful. I can’t imagine how many families in the East whose children will be going through too much pain for being misunderstood, and whether there is anything like a diagnosis for people to be aware of,” she stressed.

She mentioned that she and her brother have met a few of the experts at the GTCO Autism conference like Remi Olutimayan and Sama and stressed that more awareness should be created in every state in the country.

Adaoma advocated that “It  should start with awareness before we begin to talk of diagnosis and acceptance. You can’t accept what you don’t even know exists. Government should create awareness, create Dyslexia, Autism and all those learning depresses centres with boarding facilities for them in every state, train teachers, more specialists and if possible send them abroad and bring them back. They should make more inclusive work space like career wise, even starting for school where we know that our educational system is under a rigid box.

“Teachers don’t understand, fellow students do not know instead they will see the person and insult the person till they will enter into depression, so we should make the school more adaptable to create room and mode for space not just for writing the exams on paper and when the person is autistic there is nothing special for him.

“ Now we know that when a person is blind , deaf, dumb there is already a system in place for their education inclusive, but for things like Dyslexia, Autism, Down Syndrome there is no inclusive education, no inclusive work space. So, first of all awareness, training, facilities in work spaces and educational institutions should be done for us to get it right in the country.”