Eleven days after threatening to crush a blind lady she held hostage, and send her out of Abuja, and about a week after Equality Reporters sought and waited for her side of the story, Grace Jerry, with her disability NGO’s board of trustees, has found her voice.
But the motivation, as their April 12 rebuttal revealed, is the fear of funders’ reactions to the report ER published a day earlier. It may also have to do with the protest PWDs sympathizing with Mayowa Eleanora Boyo threaten to take to the funders still—if they miss the report.
In a rebuttal Inclusive Friends Association’s chairman Bartholomew Suwa signed, the BoT vacillated between distancing themselves from Jerry’s act and reaffirming their loyalty to her—the founder/executive director who also doubles as the secretary to the board.
According to Eleanora, Jerry, before two witnesses, verbally and psychologically abused her while detaining her and her friend against their wishes.
“I will crush you Eleanora… I have what it takes to crush you and send you out of Abuja… Just know it is finished for you,” Jerry had been quoted to have said. She also ordered police officers, one of them armed, to lock the gate against Eleanora and the truck moving her belongings out of Jerry’s compound.
Every attempt Eleanora made to protest the violent language annoyed Jerry the more, and escalated the disability advocate’s show of power.
Yet IFA’s board of trustees claimed Jerry’s lived experience as a PWD has given her a bleeding heart for others with disabilities.
Those ER interviewed for the report, including a lawyer and a NAPTIP officer, explained the detention and the police harassment are constitutional matters of legal consequences. The Violence Against Person Prohibition Act also frowns at them.
Again, Chairman Suwa and IFA board dismissed these provisions.
They came short of blaming Eleanora, describing the account of this event she narrated to ER as “intended to create an atmosphere of unimaginable victimhood”.
Jerry had about a week to deny it after ER asked, but she refused.
Suwa and the board didn’t know—or pretended not to know—how much Jerry, without admitting what she did, had tried to move Eleanoras relatives to bury the report. (ER has the audio record.)
In their rebuttal, IFA board emphasized their condemnation of the report, and tagged funders, including Ford Foundation, Disability Rights Fund, Sightsavers, and JONAPWD. But neither Jerry nor the chairman has faulted Eleanora’s account of what they considered a private affair but of impact on IFA.
With all their denial and victim blaming, IFA’s board (Jerry, Suwa, a member, and three others without designations on its website) has further divided the Nigeria’s disability community they claim they serve.
