PHOTO: (L-R) UL Disabled Students Association Pres. Perkins Boye and NLA DG Nagbe and students with disabilities at the ceremony
By Kelvin Gonlah, gonlahkelvin88@gmail.com
The National Lottery Authority (NLA) has launched the first financial aid program to benefit 20 students with disability attending the state-owned University of Liberia.
The well-attended ceremony was held at the UL Fendell campus on Thursday, with Chairpersons of departments at the Dr. Amos C. Sawyer College of Science and Humanities and the Dean Josephus Gray also in attendance.
The National Lottery Authority was created by an act of legislature in December 2014 as an autonomous agency of the government of Liberia with its full responsibility to raise money from gaming institutions like casinos, sports betting, scratch-and-win, promotional competitions, and others.
Though the National Lottery Authority was established in 2014, it has just launched its first financial aid to UL physically challenged students.
According to the NLA Director General Reginald Kpan Nagbe, the support to the UL disabled students include payment of their registration fees, US$25 for transportation.
Speaking at the program, the Director General of the National Lottery Authority (NLA) Reginald Kpan Nagbe said the primary objective of the NLA is to conduct lotteries in Liberia, adding that before 2014, Lottery was already created in the world in 1993.
Giving a brief history of the National Lottery Authority, DG Nagbe explained that the world needed to have a regulatory body to regulate all gaming activities such as sports betting, scratch-and-win, raffle draw, and slot machines which created the World Lottery Association (WLA) and Africa Lottery Association (ALA). In a few years, West Africa joined.
“In 2014, because we are part of the global village, Liberia went and amended the act that created the cooperation to an authority. So in 2014, in the wisdom of the legislature and the President then Madam Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, they created the National Lottery Authority which is (NLA). The co-function of this authority is to help increase the government’s revenue, help people living with disability, orphans, old age, Zogos/At-Risk youths, a disaster which will allow us to intervene,” the NLA boss informed the gathering.
For his part as President of the University of Liberia Students Association with disability, Perkins T. Boye described the event as a munimentum undertaking by the National Lottery Authority (NLA) to grant students living with disability at the University of Liberia; the organization has timely intervened in their quest.
“We have reached this far by faith, and like said, we are forever great and we will remain forever great to the magnanimity of the Director General of the National Lottery Authority, Director Nagbe for his farsightedness. This man has been elevated and he has improved the work of National Lottery Authority since his ascendancy to the institution,” the President of the Association of UL students with disabilities told me at the gathering.
Mr. Boye said that disabled students believe that the monthly stipends and semester registration provided by the NLA will hugely impact their educational sojourn at the University of Liberia and will give them more courage to compete with those who are not physically challenged.
“Quite recently, last month, we had the privilege for our leadership to meet with the President of the University of Liberia Dr. Julius Nelson Sarwolo Nelson and he also expressed and made a commitment and promised to us that in the coming months, for the first time in his office, a disability unit will be created to work with persons with disability,” Mr. Perkins T.E. Boye lamented.
In remarks at the event, the Dean of the College of Amos Sawyer College of Social Science and Humanities, Dr. Josephus Gray described the day as special in the history of their college and the student population.
He said it was special because those who are associated with this occasion, are people who are very important to society, the growth of the Liberian society, especially the community for which they find themselves a community of intellectuals.
“This is my first time in the last 5 years to be recognized. I repeat this is the first time in the last 5 years to be recognized and receive a paper that you are working hard and appreciating me. So you can imagine the courage, the joy, and the appreciation; I always told people disability is a situation that we all should expect, it can happen any hour, any minute, and any second some are born with it, and the majority who are disabled today are people because of their activities on earth have placed them in a position and that’s why we should treat them very important,” Dr. Gray added.
Hailing the courage of students with disability, Dean Gray reflected their minds about the world’s greatest leaders who were living with disabilities, former U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt who led the American people in a wheelchair.
Despite his conditions, President Roosevelt made a great impact on American history, the UL Dean said.
“So today, the role you continue to play is very important in the University of Liberia and that is why we applaud everyone, from student affairs, our faculties, and those in an administration that continue to give you support. I continue to say on Earth, when you’re a task to perform, lift someone, you need not occupy the office; you should be ready to help people that’s why we continue to work with you,” Dr. Gray asserted.
The Dean of the Sawyer College then the UL students for the certificate presented to him, adding that it’s not just a single paper, it’s a message that he will work live with forever.
In his concluding statement, Dr. Gray pledged to give LRD$ 50.000.00 to the disabled student’s association of the University of Liberia.