By FOLASADE AKAN

Jake Epelle, Founder, The Albino Foundation (TAF), says the 2023 census will capture and give a proper data of Persons With Albinism (PWA) and Persons With Disabilities (PWDs) in the country.

Epelle said this on Thursday in Abuja, during an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).

He said The Albino Foundation (TAF) and organisations of PWDs were working with the National Population Commission (NPC) to ensure that these categories of people were not excluded and have a proper data.

He added that “inclusive census is the answer. We are working with NPC and we have created our questionnaires in response to Washington group of question, which is the global standard for disability inclusion data capturing.

“We were able to mainstream that into the national census questionnaire. We created a separate set of questions for PWAs so we will get the actual number now.

“We will get where they live, their parents, gender, children and even get to know if they have or have had skin cancer.

“It will be the most authentic data on PWA across the country, unequivocal and perfect because it will be done by the organisation responsible for getting us numbers.”

He also said that based on the level of preparation by NPC, he was certain that the commission was ready for the exercise.

On the conduct of the 2023 general elections, he said based on the level of intervention and guidelines that had been developed to guide the process, it promises to be fair, free, credible and inclusive.

“Many people don’t know some of us are working behind the scene to ensure that INEC gets the right framework. Riggers will not be able to rig the election and that’s where we are going.

“What we are concerned about which we are also trying to find a solution to is vote buying and violence.

“If we can stem that, we will have a perfect election and we will because we are putting to task the police and everybody; say look when you see anybody trying to buy, arrest the person and prosecute as a deterrent to those who will do it.”

Epelle, however, said that competence, character and capacity were the qualities of leaders that should be voted for.

He tasked political parties to repair their internal democracy as that would determine the type of leadership they would have.

“The same democracy you want at the electoral level, within your political party show that level of integrity in the way and manner

you structure your internal democracy, which must be inclusive of persons with disabilities.” (NAN)

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