One morning in August 2010, Gbolahun Azeez woke up to discover he had lost his sight. He was 6 years old at the time and too young to understand how this loss would so profoundly affect his life.
His parents rushed him to Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, but the hospital could not say what led to his vision loss. His parents took him to two more hospitals, but doctors there could do nothing to restore his sight.
“They could not detect anything,” Mr. Azeez told America. “It was so devastating [because] there was nothing wrong with me the night before.”
Around the world, 2.2 billion people suffer from some form of vision impairment. Refractive error, extremely blurry vision, and cataracts, when cloudy patches develop on eye lenses, are the leading causes of vision loss, according to the World Health Organization. In Nigeria, a comprehensive understanding of the extent of vision impairment is hard to reach, but the available data suggests about 24 million Nigerians, or about 10 percent of the population, are living with vision loss. Worldwide, the vast majority of people suffering severe vision loss do not have access to an appropriate treatment for their condition, W.H.O. reports.
Many Nigerian children with acute vision loss are abandoned by parents. The parents’ own poverty is so extreme that they view blind or vision-impaired children as unbearable burdens. Denied eye care and an education, Nigerians with vision loss often come of age with few options in life. Many resort to begging on the street for survival.
Pacelli ‘renewed my hope’
Vision impairment can profoundly affect school performance. A combination of challenges, among them difficulty in reading and writing and struggling to keep up with sighted peers, lead to poor academic performance. This is particularly worrisome in countries like Nigeria where educational aids like books in Braille are seldom available.
After losing his sight, Mr. Azeez could no longer cope at his school, which had no specialized assistance to offer him. After struggling for two years, he left primary school. That is where the story normally ends for children who have suffered vision loss in Nigeria. Fortunately for Mr. Azeez, his parents took him to the Pacelli School for the Blind and Partially Sighted Children in 2012, an institution where visually impaired children are offered a free primary education.
Launched in 1962 by the Catholic Archdiocese of Lagos and managed by Catholic sisters—first by the Religious Sisters of Charity and now by the Congregation of the Handmaids of the Holy Child Jesus—the Pacelli School trains individuals with vision impairment in reading, writing and communication.
Before students are admitted into the boarding school, Sister Agnes Onwudiwe, principal of Pacelli, explains that they must complete a medical assessment to ensure that they do not have any contagious diseases. This is followed by an interview to ascertain the individual’s “intellectual and mental ability.”
Mr. Azeez went through this process just like other students. He was outfitted with a cane to help him walk independently and safely. He learned to read in Braille and how to use a mathematical frame, a lightweight plastic frame containing a grid of holes that helps visually impaired persons insert pegs—which represent mathematical symbols and numbers—to create mathematical equations.
The school currently hosts 142 children. There are 52 staff including seven sisters helping the students. Pacelli teachers are specially trained to work with vision-impaired students.
Michael Akinyemi has been teaching visually impaired students at Pacelli for 15 years. He said the learning materials make teaching visually impaired students little different from educating sighted individuals.
“The difference is the [learning] materials we introduced to help the visually impaired students. If these materials are not available for them, all the teaching will be a wasted effort,” Mr. Akinyemi told America. “With all these materials, Pacelli students don’t have any problem competing with sighted children.”
Mr. Akinyemi added that every student at Pacelli has access to Braille textbooks. In situations where these Braille textbooks are not available in Nigeria, Mr. Akinyemi said, the school produces them itself using a Braille embosser, a type of printer that creates Braille’s patterns of raised dots onto paper which visually impaired students read and interpret through touch.
“We get textbooks from sighted students and we ask our computer people to type and put it in the [Braille] embosser,” he explained.
After they provide this primary education, the sisters must seek outside support from individuals and organizations to sponsor the funds necessary for the secondary education of students. The primary education offered by the school would prove worthless to the students “if there are no scholarships” and “they cannot go further,” Sister Onwudiwe said. An incomplete education, she worries, can be very damaging to the future of her vision-impaired students.
“That is why we ensure we get scholarships to help them further,” Sister Onwudiwe said.
Mr. Azeez studied for seven years at Pacelli before he proceeded in 2019 to Kings College, a government boys’ school in Lagos, for his secondary education. Now the sisters are helping him continue his education at the Obafemi Awolowo University, where he hopes to study international relations.
“After becoming blind, I could no longer cope. I just thought all hope was lost,” Mr. Azeez said. “It was like the next thing was to become a beggar because most beggars I have seen are blind.”
“But Pacelli changed that mentality,” he said. “They renewed my hope. I was transformed. Now I can read and write [in a way] people will understand. Pacelli laid the foundation and I am confident I can cope anywhere.”
Chinedu Nkwocha, 25, said that Pacelli contributed significantly to making his education journey possible and seamless.
“Before I came to Pacelli at the age of 14, I could not speak English,” Mr. Nkwocha said. “Now I can express myself [in English].” He had been pulled out of school by his family in 2012 after losing his vision to cataracts. “Pacelli brought out the gift and talent in me,” he said.
Besides his primary education, Mr. Nkwocha said, the sisters helped him know God better through the various spiritual activities introduced to students. He was born into a Catholic home, but Mr. Nkwocha had his baptism and received his first Holy Communion at Pacelli. He served as lector at Mass at the school.
Being able to participate actively at Mass as one of the ministers has given him the confidence to believe he can similarly contribute to Nigerian society now, he said.
But Pacelli treats all students equally, regardless of their religion. Mr. Azeez, for example, is a Muslim.
“No discrimination at Pacelli,” Mr. Azeez told America. His faith was accommodated at the school, he said, and he reports that like other Muslim students, he did not object to being required to join the other students at Mass when it was celebrated at school.
Making a change
The sisters teach their students how to play various musical instruments, and Pacelli students also receive vocational training, learning baking, soap-making and bead-making skills. Sister Onwudiwe said the aim is to help students to become as independent as possible when they eventually leave Pacelli.
“They do well in the skills they learn,” Sister Onwudiwe said, adding that students who excel at playing saxophone, piano and clarinet not only play at Mass but perform at occasions outside the school. “People invite us and the students play for them at wedding ceremonies, birthday celebrations and anniversaries,” she said.
Sister Onwudiwe said some of the students lack parental care and support. They may have lost both parents as a child or were abandoned by their parents when their vision impairment began.
“Some of them were abandoned and people brought them to Pacelli.” Many of the students say Pacelli is their home because “they don’t have a father and mother,” she said.
Pacelli relies heavily on donations from individuals and corporations to meet the basic needs of the students in its care. Sister Onwudiwe needs more support to purchase learning materials and to maintain the school buildings, which she said are old. (The school’s roof is beginning to rot.) Inadequate funding prevents the congregation from building an on-site secondary school for the students, a long-term goal that will mean no longer struggling to find ways for students to continue their education after primary level.
Another challenge has been annual flooding that has inundated the school. Lagos, where the institution is located, is in a low-lying coastal area, which makes the most populous city in Africa vulnerable to flooding during heavy seasonal rains. The flooding situation is particularly challenging for the visually impaired students who are at risk of drowning.
Since no permanent solution has been implemented, Sister Onwudiwe said, they help the students to adapt during periods when flooding occurs.
“If the flood is too much, we ask the students to remain in their [dormitory] and we take their classes and food to them until the floodwater recedes,” Sister Onwudiwe said.
Outside Pacelli, Mr. Nkwocha said, visually impaired students frequently face discrimination. Many of their sighted peers worry that “blindness is contagious,” he said. “We were taught at Pacelli how to manage such situations…. We [humble] ourselves and get closer to them more so we could play with them properly. This helps to fight the discrimination.”
Discrimination faced by people with visual impairments is largely cultural in Nigeria, as it is a common belief that blind children must be cursed or are being punished for their past misconduct or the misconduct of a family member. Many experience disrespect, rejection and exclusion from public institutions. Vision-impaired students learn to live with social stigma and isolation.
Mr. Azeez believes the training at Pacelli shaped him to be positive and hardworking. His hope one day is to be a diplomat and policymaker.
“I want to contribute to global peace, development and diplomacy,” Mr. Azeez said. “I want to work with international organizations like the U.N., [the Economic Community of West African States] and big [nongovernment organizations] where I will be able to shape policies and promote peace.”
It is not a vain hope. In fact, many of the school’s former students have moved on to important roles in Nigerian society as lawyers, journalists and teachers. Cobhams Asuquo was born visually impaired and received his primary education at Pacelli. Today, he is a singer, music producer and songwriter. John Adoyi also attended Pacelli and now works as a journalist at TechCabal.
Pacelli alumni formed a group called the Old Students Association of Pacelli School. During its reunion last December, the group organized a fundraising event to support Pacelli and also made donations that included food items such as rice and beans for the students.
Mr. Azeez finds the group’s fundraising event inspiring. He believes the group has set an example worth following.
“Like the alumni, I will return to Pacelli one day to support the students with food items and learning materials,” he said.
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