Good Morning well meaning Nigerians, we are bringing this to your notice that the public may know and be informed about the plight of visually impaired students in King's College Lagos. The current status of the educational aspect of the visually impaired students in King's College Lagos is nothing to write home about and the management have deliberately failed to do the right thing to correct this poor state.
Several attempts have been made by the special students of this school but all they get is no response of the management. The resource center in the school is currently dilapidated, no facilities to show that it is a resource center. The place is not condusive enough for the students, even when the students try to make attempts on their own, all these are turned down by the school management. Due to the lack of quality facilities for the the students, it is very difficult for the special students to offer subjects like Mathematics, Economics and other science subjects. This year, six special students sat for the WAEC examination and they were unable to perform well in mathematics. As a result of this, they were all denied admission into the university. The school have failed to understand, that managing of special students have to do with having the necessary facilities on ground in other for them to excel excellently like their sighted counterparts. The school has made the special students in the college look so dull that they feel they are only relevant when it comes to music. As i said earlier, the students have written series of letters to the past and present management of the school and they have always been jettisoned. A copy of this letter can be found below couple of the pictures of the resource center of the school.


[center] King’s College,
Lagos.
19th July, 2016.
The Principal,
King’s College,
Lagos.
Dear Sir,
REQUEST FOR REHABILITATION OF FACILITIES
The special students of King’s College would like to humbly request the overhauling of school facilities to enable us live well in the boarding house and compete favorably with our counterparts.
Some of these facilities are already in place such as the resource room. However most of these facilities are not in place.
We would like for the school to purchase equipment such as:
1. Packet braillers
2. Braille embossers: For brailling voluminous content
3. Spar wheels / Drawing boards
4. Maths frame and figures
5. Talking dictionary
6. Screen readers (JAWS-Jobs Access With Speech)
7. Scientific talking calculators
8. Sporting facilities
9. Refresh able Braille device amongst others.
10. Talking Bible
These are to enable us showcase our abilities academically. We would also like the resource room to be renovated.
Also, another challenge we would like to let you know about is our inaccessibility to computers, which implies that we are left behind during computer practical sessions. We had earlier requested for at least three computers which would have screen readers installed in them by our resource teacher, Mr. Olufemi, for free. He has also volunteered to handle the practical sessions. Hence, we intend to make the best of the competent resource teacher we currently have. Meanwhile, the company, Nigerwives, last year, donated desktop computers to the school. But, because a room had not been provided for the housing of these computers at the annex, they were not released for use. Thankfully, the Management has provided a room and we are grateful for their gracious action. We however, wish to observe that the room has not been connected to power supply. Also, there are no fans, tables and chairs.
Sir, we honestly cannot do what is unspectacular and expect a spectacular result. Doing what is wrong and expecting a good result is not possible. From the time of our admission to date, the manner in which special students in King’s College are managed is not befitting enough compared to our other sister schools. In terms of conscious planning and provision of facilities for visually impaired students, we feel the school has not done enough. That is why special students in King’s College will sit for the WAEC, Mathematics examination, along with other students from different schools and not replicate the successes of their counterparts in these schools where the needs of Special students are given heavy priority.
We hereby appeal for swift collection of the gadgets by the school so that the necessary applications can be installed for optimum use of the computers. We understand that the cost of these requested materials are exorbitant. To ease the financial burden on the school, we suggest that the school delves into partnership with sponsors and well-meaning Nigerians because many people are willing to help if given the opportunity of an enabling atmosphere.
We also wish for the approval of more electronic gadgets apart from the tape recorders such as laptops to augment our possibilities, especially with drawing tables where it is nearly impossible to do so with just Braille. Some of our peers in other schools like F.G.C Ijanikin, and Queen’s College are already benefiting from this privilege.
If these equipments and facilities are provided, our performance academically and behaviorally would encourage our teachers to carry us along in the class. We also appeal to the school to write to the Federal Ministry of Education for the provision of at least three more Resource Teachers with two being specialists in Mathematics and another who is knowledgeable in the field of Information Technology for the students at the annex campus. This is not to say that the Mathematics/Computer department has not tried its best in giving us quality tutelage in these subject areas. We are indeed grateful to the Management for their efforts in this regard. However, at present, there are just two resource teachers for King’s College and that is clearly insufficient.
In as much as we are not angels, we believe that our character is not the worst of characters exhibited by students in general. Hence, we strongly believe that the way issues relating to special students are handled should not be handled in satanic ways. In the same vein, special students should not be treated as inferior humans in comparison to our sighted counterparts.
We sincerely await a positive approval to our requests.
Yours faithfully,
The Special Students, King’s College.
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This is not to bring the name of the school into disrepute but its to let the mind of the students known to the whole world on how they are being treated as sub-humans to their sighted counterparts in the college and how we want this nonsense to be put to an end.