By Ozumi Abdul
As the world mark this year’s World Poetry Day, which has the “Empowering People With Special Needs” the Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) in collaboration with All Poets Network International (APNI) on Saturday 25 March, organized a 1-day workshop for 30 selected people with special needs in Kano state.
While speaking, the CITAD’s Coordinator for Persons with Disabilities, Sagiru Ado Abubakar noted that CITAD has always had special projects for PWDs, hence its reason for partnering with APNI to train train them on the need to arm them with poetry skills to amplify their voices.
According to Ado, the program is geared towards equipping the PWDs to pursue, press home their demands and needs with poetry especially in the areas accountability and inclusion.
“The program aims at helping the people with special needs to pursue their needs and demands, especially on the issue of accountability and inclusion”.
He also added that the workshop will expose the people to the rudiments of writing Hausa poetry so that they can be able to send their messages to the people IB appropriate quarters for consideration, especially during political activities.
On his part, the Curator and Founder of All Poets Network International, Khalid Imam explained that World Poetry Day is an annual ritual but a debut one for People with Disabilities in Kano.
He noted that it is imperative to facilitate the promotion of poetry within and beyond the Nigerian borders, adding that poetry as a driving force of communication, will endear the participants at the end of the day to utilize the knowledge they derive from the training towards pressing homes their demands from the appropriate quarters until they are met.
“As group facilitator, the promotion of poetry within and beyond Nigerian borders, we collaborated we CITAD to gather the participants while we give the training to them,” he said.
He also hinted that several exercises have been earmarked to evaluate the performances of the trainees at the bend of the training that at the end of the training.
