Peter Gwer : A Kopa With Disability that gave Feet to 50 Cripples
By Prosper Okoye
History was made on the 5th of October, 2022, in Benue State, when a physically challenged corps member (Peter Gwer) donated fifty sets of wheelchairs to other people living with disability, and constructed ramps for them to walk freely.
In a chat, Peter says his action is driven by an intense burden to alleviate the hardship of people who cannot move around for the sake of their disability because he wears their shoe.
“Our society does not care enough for the physically challenged persons.” peter said.
He buttressed, “The physically challenged persons are the poorest in our society; not because they want to be poor. The Physically challenged persons cannot have a decent job; not because they cannot work. But all these and more hardship we suffer is because our society erroneously feels that a disability in the leg equals a disability in the human mind. And so, they deny the physically challenged persons opportunities.”
Peter said the wheelchairs donated, and the Ramp pathways he constructed at the NYSC, INEC, and Makurdi local government secretariats are what a physically challenged person needed to do everything a person with feet does.
“We don’t need your pity.” he said.
“Rather, stop your discriminations, create an enabling environment for us.
” Let us have access to all the offices and every opportunity like every other person, then watch us recreate the imbalance in the society.”
Peter is a polio survivor. “I never walked,” he said.
“I envied people that walk, but that was before I got my first wheelchair donation from a secondary school teacher in 2012. Before then, I crawled from home to school, and crawled back home under the scorching sun.”
He said, although the environment didn’t make using a wheelchair easy then, he never felt different from the others.
Peter Gwer with the State code BN/21B/1508 served with the Benue State Independent National Electoral Commission secretariat where the Wheelchairs were distributed.
He described his service year, as a privilege he would live to always remember.
Speaking at the event, the Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom, represented by the Senior Special Adviser to the governor on Disability Matters, Mr. Issac Nor, the NYSC State Coordinator, Mr. Abe Dankaro, and INEC’s Administrative Secretary, Mr. Abdulwahab, eulogized Peter for being a good example others could emulate, and added that, posterity would not forget his kind gestures.
