A couple of years ago, my Mom opened a bedding showroom on a popular street in Ijebu-Ode, Ogun state. The showroom was beside the only MTN Walk-in center in the town i.e, many people walk in to fix their network operational issues and many more.
As a local guide, I’m pretty inquisitive about details and locations so I checked the center on Maps to see how they’re represented. I answered a couple of questions about the center amongst which was “Is this place wheelchair accessible?” I checked the entrance and my answer was “no”.
A couple of months later, after I had a better rapport with our neighbor store, I had a decent conversation with one of their staff. We spoke about many things and I chipped the question on “wheelchair accessibility” of her workplace. “14m of about 180m people in Nigeria are disabled. That’s as simple as cutting off over 12% of your market when you can easily integrate with a more accessible walkway”, I added. Apparently, she (and her colleagues) never thought of this. The discussion ended a couple minutes after that.
In less than a week, the center made their entrance walkway more accessible especially for wheelchair. I was sure that discussion made an impact. A couple of months later, during my holiday, I grinned hard when I saw a disabled person driving into the center. I couldn’t capture the moment but I captured the entrance again and contributed on Google maps.
I was happy I contributed to social growth especially in a semi-urban area with countless minorities.
