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Prince Charles Dickson Ph.D
There is an old story of a lawyer who sold his well to a teacher, then returned demanding payment for the water in it. The teacher smiled. If the water still belonged to the lawyer, he replied, perhaps the lawyer would have to remove it or pay rent to store it in someone else’s well. Suddenly the lawyer remembered that he was only joking.
It’s funny until we recognize ourselves as lawyers.
We tell people with disabilities that public spaces belong to everyone. We then ask for an additional price to include them. We give them citizenship, but we make them pay for the ramp. We promise education, but we make the classroom unattainable. We proclaim equal opportunity, then build the door too narrow for their wheelchair.
That contradiction came to mind when Grace shared her story with me, she captioned it Report on the accessibility of public places for inclusion. It contained no sentimental charm. He simply insisted that public places should allow everyone to enter, move, communicate, receive services and participate independently, safely and with dignity.
I listened to him in his voice once as a report. Then I reread it as an indictment.
Behind every line was someone’s ordinary day made needlessly difficult. A mother arrives at the hospital, already scared for her baby, to discover that the entrance has steps but no ramp. A young man carefully preparing for an interview, only to find his opportunity waiting upstairs with no elevator. An elderly woman facing a curb and having forgotten her legs can no longer move as quickly as she once did.
These are imaginary scenes, but the barriers Grace identifies are painfully real. Poorly enforced building standards. Excluding toilets. Transport that humiliate. Signs that people can’t read. Public information that people cannot hear. Structures built without consulting those who will need to use them.
Grace’s intervention was important because it did not reduce accessibility to a construction problem. His story and his experience understood something profound: every inaccessible entrance is also a message. Sometimes he says, “We didn’t think of you.” Sometimes, more cruelly, he says: “We thought of you, but you weren’t worth the cost.”
What does that message do to a child’s heart?
Imagine a girl with cerebral palsy watching other children run around in a school assembly while waiting outside for someone to carry her over the steps. Imagine learning, year after year, that she should be grateful for help rather than entitled to access. Imagine how discreetly a society can teach someone to apologize for existing.
On 3 October 2026, at the GlowingStar Empowerment Initiative and Development Commemoration of World Cerebral Palsy Day in Bukuru, I delivered a keynote speech titled Beyond therapy: seeing the whole person, not just their condition. His central argument was simple: a person has cerebral palsy; cerebral palsy does not have the person.
A diagnosis is information, not identity. Therapy is necessary, valuable, and sometimes life-changing. But therapy should be a bridge to life, not the entire landscape of life. Beyond treatment there are friendships, classrooms, jobs, ambitions, relationships, leadership, laughter, choices, and dreams that deserve room to breathe.
We can celebrate a child’s progress in therapy while disappointing that same child at school entry. We can praise a parent’s devotion while exhausting them with unaffordable transportation, expensive care, and the endless work of explaining why their child deserves a chance. We can call ourselves compassionate while our architecture remains indifferent. At the memorial, parents spoke of stigma, expensive therapies and limited support. Their courage was unmistakable, but courage should not be the currency families must spend to secure ordinary human rights.
This is why I argued that admission is not inclusion. Allowing a child through the gate means little if the classroom, teaching methods, bathroom, playground or attitudes inside still suggest that child remain on the sidelines.
And communication should never be confused with intelligence. When someone speaks differently or needs more time, our responsibility is neither impatience nor pity. Ask. Then wait. Listen without finishing sentences. A human voice does not lose its authority because it travels along an unknown path.
I returned to Grace’s story and noticed how practical her requests were: sensible ramps and handrails, usable toilets, safe routes, accessible transport, clear signage, Braille, captions, audio information and regular checks. He asked architects, officials and contractors to understand universal design, and for people with disabilities themselves to help plan and evaluate the spaces they use.
Nothing about us without us. This principle is not decorative conference language. It’s what stops a well-intentioned official from installing a ramp that’s too steep or declaring a school inclusive without requiring students to walk its hallways.
Nigeria has legal commitments against discrimination against disabled people. However, a law that cannot travel from statute to bus stop, hospital, workplace or classroom remains a promise stranded on paper. Rights should not require influential relatives, public sympathy, or a viral photograph before someone will honor them.
Sometimes, as I said in that keynote, society needs therapy. Our buildings need rehabilitation. Our policies need rehabilitation. Our assumptions, professional habits and careless language need rehabilitation. We need to stop asking just how a person can adapt to a hostile environment and start asking why we made that environment hostile.
I keep thinking about Grace, my new friend. While he shared the recommendations, their moral weight was greater than the suggestions themselves. It reminded me that inclusion often begins when someone refuses to look away from what everyone else has learned to bypass. It begins with the uncomfortable decision to measure progress not by the elegance of our speeches, but by who can actually enter the room.
The lawyer in the story wanted to sell the well while holding its water hostage. Too often our society offers people with disabilities belonging without access, opportunity without accommodation, dignity without choice. Then he recalls every concession to generosity.
But the water was never ours to hold.
Every child deserves more than just survival. Every caregiver deserves better than exhaustion. Every adult with a disability deserves the freedom to work, love, contribute, and belong without demonstrating gratitude for the rights they already have. The point of inclusion is not to make people feel lucky to be tolerated. It’s about building a country where no one has to ask to be considered human.
So, Grace, thank you for disturbing our comfort with something as unromantic and life-changing as sharing your story with me. We can respond with budgets, redesigned spaces, applied standards and authentic listening. May the next child who approaches a public door find no argument waiting for him there, but only an opening.
Regardless of politics and all the drama of the nation, let’s remember that we sold them well. It’s time to stop charging for water: may Nigeria win
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