By Sorie Ibrahim Fofanah
A visually-impaired law graduand from the University of Makeni (UNIMAK), Amidu Sankoh the first-ever blind law graduate in Sierra Leone has told Politico that he got his inspiration to study law to legally represent issues of disabled people.
Sankoh was speaking to Politico ahead of their convocation on Saturday 16th of March, in which he stated” that it is good” that they have their compatriots in the legal system.
“Over the years, few visually- impaired students attempted to study law but couldn’t survive,” he said.
He spoke about the deplorable condition of visually impaired persons and by extension all disabled people, and recalled how when he started his course in 2019, the university administration told him of being the first blind law student at the university and that it was a “new beginning” for them as an administration in providing the learning environment for him.
“The administration told me they won’t deny me of the right to study law. They gave me a try”, Sankoh explained.
He admitted encountering numerous challenges throughout the course before he could achieve his goal.
“Braille and laptop computers were used for taking notes and recording lectures respectively. During classes, I used my recorder to record lectures. After class, I will go home and then listen to the lectures,” he said.
There are no braille law books for students in Sierra Leone, and had to do braille transcriptions of both softcopy and hardcopy books all by himself. “That has been one of my biggest challenges,” he added.
He had to make use of YouTube to listen to tutorials many audios and a few braille writings done by him.
“The university library itself is not disabled friendly,” but said the lecturers were “very” friendly to him throughout the course.
Being among sighted students, he said was kind of tough, with his classmates sometimes leaving him alone in the classroom, which he attributed to their busy schedules. “My friends were sometimes busy in a way they even forgot about me,” Sankoh recalls, adding that he had to ask for help from other students at the Yoni campus to lead him to the hostel.
Sankoh was not born blind and it was in 2014 when he was in Senior Secondary School Two (SSS2), Science that he was struck with blindness, which marked the start of a new and difficult experience in his life. He went to live at the Milton Margai School for the Blind and encountered the tough conditions the other blind students there faced, which turned out to be a defining moment for him to study law to champion the affairs of the people facing disability in society.
Sankoh is not the first blind person to have ventured into law studies. Thomas Alie who is blind told Politico that he entered for his second degree in Law at Fourah Bah College (FBC) in 1998, but said the library was not equipped for his condition, with lecturers finding it difficult to lecture a blind law student, and eventually dropped out of the course.
He said he made an unsuccessful appeal to the then President Ahmad Tejan Kabba to be flown abroad to pursue his dream of studying law.
As a way to encourage blind persons to study law, he maintained that societal stigma ought to be discouraged and special attention given to blind education. “It is very expensive to educate a blind student,” he added.
Copyright © 2024 Politico (15/03/24)
