Airtel Tackles Disability in Episode 8 of Touching Lives

Sunday Okobi

Nigerian telecommunications giant, Airtel, in its coming episode of Touching Lives, the corporate social responsibility programme, will spotlight the plight of Nigerians living with disability.

According to Airtel at a briefing yesterday in Lagos, the eighth episode of season three, which will be broadcast today on television networks across Africa, will feature stories from a couple of beneficiaries who lost their limbs in two different kinds of accidents.

The first part of the show will revisit a case from the philanthropic show’s second season.

Founder of the Centre of Citizens with Disabilities (CCD), whose two hands were cut off by rebels in Freetown, Sierra Leone, during the country’s civil war, David Anyaele, will narrate how the Airtel aid he received in 2016 has helped his non-governmental organization (NGO).

It could be recalled that in January 1999, while Anyaele was in the West African country for business, the militant Revolutionary United Front captured the city and its denizens. Accompanied by child soldiers wielding AK47’s, the fighters chopped off the limbs of their prisoners.

After cutting off his two hands, “they told me to show my condition to the Nigerian government,” Anyaele recalled, adding however that, when he returned to Nigeria, he formed the CCD to assist other disabled people.

In the other segment, teenager and secondary school graduate, Emmanuel Onyeka, will show how a motorcycle accident has drastically changed the lives of everyone in his family, Airtel said.

“A motorcycle accident on his way to school eventually cost him his right leg. Apart from the emotional cost of losing a leg, however, the financial weight of his surgery and treatment has slowed down his siblings’ education,” the telcoms firm stated.

“The money that was meant for food and my sister’s education was put towards the medical expensed for my leg. Personally, I see myself as a burden to my family because of the money that has been spent on my medical bills. My sister had to drop out of the university due to lack of funds,” Onyeka said.

Yet, the leg still requires more treatment.

Airtel has vowed to offer relief to Onyeka and his parents. The details of that assistance will be aired in the next installment of Touching Lives.

“Living with disability does not mean you are disabled; it is quite the opposite,” host of the Airtel sponsored Touching Lives, a philanthropic show airing on international television every week, Wana Udobang, stated.

Airtel Touching Lives will be broadcast, as usual, on Saturday on Africa Magic Urban at 6:30p.m. and on Africa Magic Family at 7p.m. Later, the same episode will be on RaveTV at 9p.m., while on Sunday, it is scheduled to be aired on Africa Magic World at 6p.m., NTA Network at6:00p.m. and ArewaTV at 7p.m.