The Centre for Infrastructural and Technological Advancement for the Blind (CITAB) has condemned the recently launched National Special and Inclusive Basic Education Minimum Standards, Implementation Guidelines, and Functional Difficulty Early Identification Tool by the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), describing them as another round of beautifully written documents that do nothing to end the daily exclusion of children with disabilities from Nigeria’s classrooms.
This was contained in a press release issued today in Lagos by Comrade Jolomi George Fenemigho, Executive Chairman of CITAB.
CITAB stated that while UBEC has presented the new standards as a landmark victory for children with disabilities, a framework that relies on voluntary compliance and weak supervision cannot deliver inclusive education. The organisation warned that without binding obligations, inspections, and penalties, the standards will remain a public relations achievement in Abuja while disabled children are locked out of schools across the federation.
Fenemigho noted that Nigeria’s crisis has never been a shortage of policy documents but a chronic absence of enforcement, accountability, and political will. He stressed that setting guidelines from the capital while public and private schools continue to refuse admission, deny reasonable accommodation, or push disabled learners into isolation rooms is unacceptable and unlawful.
According to him, “Nigeria has never suffered from a scarcity of beautifully written policy documents. What we suffer from is an absolute lack of enforcement, accountability, and political will. Setting voluntary guidelines in Abuja while schools across Nigeria lock out disabled children is unacceptable. We need legally binding standards across both public and private sectors, backed by relentless annual inspections and severe penalties.”
CITAB further highlighted critical structural flaws in the new UBEC framework, including:
• The lack of a single, enforceable national accessibility standard for all schools;
• The continued bottleneck created by State Universal Basic Education Boards (SUBEBs) that fail to pay counterpart funds, trapping resources meant for special and inclusive education;
• The decision to equip teachers with early identification tools without creating a guaranteed supply pipeline for Braille materials, tactile aids, screen readers, mobility canes, and other essential assistive technologies.
The organisation also raised concern over what it described as internal supervision without independence—where UBEC oversees SUBEBs, who oversee local authorities—warning that such closed bureaucratic loops invite systemic cover-ups instead of exposing non-compliance. CITAB insisted that Organisations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs) must be given a formal, independent role in monitoring schools and verifying progress on inclusion.
Beyond these flaws, Fenemigho faulted UBEC for failing to describe or guarantee what genuine inclusion should look like in real classrooms. He said that inclusive education must mean disabled learners share the same classrooms as their peers, are taught by trained teachers, have accessible textbooks and digital materials from the first day of school, and can move through ramps, accessible toilets, and safe transport systems, rather than being counted in statistics while remaining excluded in practice.
Fenemigho added saying, “Identifying a visually impaired child without supplying Braille, audio, and digital tools merely logs their disability, it does not educate them. Equipping teachers with checklists while classrooms remain physically inaccessible and teachers are untrained is not inclusion; it is bureaucracy. Until accessibility guidelines carry the force of law, with immediate suspension awaiting any school that fails our children, these standards will remain paper promises.”
CITAB called on the Federal Ministry of Education, UBEC, and State Ministries of Education to immediately establish a single, non-negotiable national accessibility standard for all public and private basic schools; to mandate comprehensive annual inspections conducted jointly by government education inspectors and OPDs; and to suspend the licenses or approvals of schools that fail basic accessibility and inclusion checks until all required modifications are completed.
CITAB further demanded that states ring-fence funding for disability inclusion and face sanctions when they fail to draw down matching funds; that teacher training institutions and in-service programmes be required to mainstream disability inclusion and assistive technology; and that UBEC publish annual disability-disaggregated data on enrollment, retention, and learning outcomes with clear timelines for full compliance.
In conclusion, the CITAB boss stressed that independent, disability-led groups including CITAB must be included in monitoring inclusive education standards nationwide, insisting that “Nothing About Us Without Us” must be enforced across Nigeria as a binding principle, not performed as a slogan.
