The Joint National Association of Persons with Disabilities (JONAPWD) has kicked against the Most Inclusive Bank Award the House Committee on Disabilities gave UBA on the weekend.
Committee Chairman Hon. Bashir Dawodu stated during the award that UBA is particularly blind-friendly in its promotion of disability inclusion in Nigeria.
Lukman Salami, the Lagos chairman of the umbrella body of all organizations of persons with disabilities, however, faulted Dawodu and his committee’s decision.
“The rationale for presenting that award is still a mystery to us,” the lawyer said.
ER has reported on how nine banks, including the first-tier ones, invested over N80 billion in ICT innovations and products in 2022. Most of these investments benefit largely persons with no disabilities—and enable the banks to mop up awards for online platforms with the most bells and whistles.
Analysing with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines by the World Wide Web Consortium, the report discovered only one bank, not even in the big league, conformed 100 percent on web accessibility and other metrics.
In their banking halls, the story is even different.
“UBA has many branches with their banking halls upstairs,” Salami said, hinting at the difficulty that poses for customers in wheelchairs. Lack of speech-enabled ATM machines, ramps, and other accessibility features in many of the bank’s branches make him worry more about its qualification for such recognition.
How the House Committee assessed the bank’s blind friendliness also puzzled Salami who doubles as the state chairman of the Nigeria Association of the Blind.
“The so called braille form Dawodu mentioned—I am not sure any of us has seen a copy since the day they launched it,” he said.
According to him, the form is just like a manual. “It is not that you can independently fill it as a blind person.”
Some of UBA’s blind customers even described it as a “scam” because nobody has even given them any braille form.
Another of ER investigations on financial inclusion also revealed the braille forms are not in use in many of the bank’s branches. Blind customers have to fill indemnity forms, and bring sighted persons to sign for a service like debit card issue.
“Whoever is in charge of the committee should make findings on how impactful a bank’s policy is before giving out awards,” he said.
The House committee has no members with lived experience of disabilities, and may never have had one. Which makes many in the disability community curious—if handing out awards on goodwill is part of the committee’s oversight function.
