HOW best could one describe you; a musician, an advocate for the physically challenged or an ex-beauty queen?
What makes Grace Jerry’s life very interesting is that you can’t pin her to one thing. She is just an encapsulation of a lot of things. She is a recording artiste. What makes her an interesting recording artiste is that she uses music as a tool to create a lot of social good. So, what I do basically is a blend of music and advocacy. That is why I say Grace is an embodiment of a lot of things put together.
You mentioned music and social advocacy. Let’s talk about the social advocacy first…
Grace is a disability rights advocate. I basically work to bring the issue of disability to the forefront. I do that through workshops, music and, as I mentioned earlier, through advocacy and campaigns. Interestingly, I co-founded an organisation called Inclusive Friends. It is an organisation for and by persons with disability. We give faces and voices to people with disability and try to combat stigmatisation, marginalisation of persons with disability, and basically promote inclusion and equity for all.
These are things you took on in your adult life. How was life with you before all this?
Of course, you grow up with a lot of ambition. You want to be this and you want to be that. While growing up, I always said I wanted to be a journalist. There was this late broadcaster, Tokunbo Ajayi. I remember that whenever I watched her, I would say to myself one day, I would want to stay in front of the camera and read the news. Of course growing up, all of that got to change. I grew up in a family of singers. My mum happened to be a very strong chorister then in the Methodist Church. My auntie too. It was more of a singing family, I would say. So, singing kind of grew in me, and that is what I am doing till date.
But then, going to school, I picked up other ambitions. I remember my first time in the university, I started with a diploma in Law. I wanted psychology, but eventually I found myself doing a diploma in Law. After that, I went back to start my degree programme in English Language.
Interestingly, I am not doing anything pertaining to Law today. I am a singer and an advocate. So, along the line, I think we just pick up things; we build capacity in a lot of things. I just found myself developing my knowledge in so many areas in line with development works, talking about the rights of people , especially the constituency that I represent.
At what point did you decide that this is what you want you do?
While in the university, I sustained the car accident that affected my spine. I sustained spinal cord injury. That happened on January 7, 2002. I was already in the university. Before then, I had never known the life of someone on a wheelchair. I had never been in close contact with anyone with disability. It was all strange to me. I had to learn to leave my life all over again.
Were you a very active person before the accident?
I was very active. I was very active in the church choir and very active in school. I was very sociable too. I would be the first on the dance floor in any party. I was really bubbling with life, and suddenly there was a change. I sustained the spinal cord injury and the doctor said I would have to be on the wheelchair for the rest of my life except there was a miracle. I remember it was a terrible phase for me at that period because, first of all, nobody knew I was going to survive. When I eventually survived it, adapting to my home first and foremost became an issue, because there was a staircase and here I was on a wheelchair. You know wheelchairs and steps don’t go together.
There were also the bathrooms and so on. My environment was not just fit for the wheelchair. I remember there were lots of modifications that my parents had to carry out–knock off the steps so that my wheel chair could move freely. I had to start using one of the bathrooms in the house that was bigger, so that my chair could go through. I had to learn to put myself on and off the bed. It was not funny.
After that, I was faced with the challenge of going back to school. Here was I in a school environment that there were staircases everywhere. My lecture hall particularly was even upstairs. Also, I couldn’t go back to church, because I used to be very active in church. In fact, the day the accident happened, I was on my way back home from a choir rehearsal. So, I could not even fit into my environment so to say. My home was modified, but my environment became my greatest challenge.
I think that woke up something in me. I realised that if I didn’t draw the attention of people to accessibility challenge for persons with disability, they would never know or understand. This is because before it happened to me, I never knew, I never understood and I never bothered. So any opportunity I had… I remember my pastor had to make the church a little bit accessible for me to go in. After about a year plus, I was ready to be reintegrated back to my environment-to school, church and so on.
Before you were physically reintegrated into the society, you must have fought some psychological battles. How was it?
When the accident happened, at first when I was on admission at the hospital, I kept telling myself that in the next few days, I would be back on my feet. Three months on admission, nothing was happening. I was still lying down completely. They had to teach me to sit down. When I could sit down, they asked my parents to come with a wheelchair and my dad brought one. I started learning to sit on the wheelchair, to use the wheel chair and to move around the hospital environment. After three months, I was discharged to go home.
I kept telling myself in the next one, two or three months, I would be back on my feet. One month turned into three months, one year, I just could not understand. The period of me being home, having to recover, a lot of my friends stopped visiting. I had a lot of friends in school. All of a sudden, they stopped visiting. I found that I was all alone most of the time. Friends from church too didn’t have time. So, I would always be home alone with my mum and dad.
I remember it was so depressing, because I thought I had friends who cared. But all of a sudden, they were nowhere to be found. From morning till afternoon, I was all alone. I remember it was so depressing that I was venting it out on everyone around me. I became very violent and very rude. I would cry at the slightest provocation. I was so depressed to the point that I lost so much weight and my hair started falling off. It was terrible. However, I remember, I call it a reality talk that I had with my elder brother. He said to me, ‘Grace, if you are going to survive this, you need to make up your mind and survive. Nobody else will make up your mind for you. And if you want to rest, maybe you should make up your mind and die peacefully.’
Because what I was doing was affecting everyone around me. People around me were not happy because I was not happy. Because for the first time after a long while, I had to think and I told myself that I was either going to allow disability define me or I define disability for what it is. That was a turning point in my life, because I made up my mind that I was going to be happy regardless of what had happened. I was going to get over this as quickly as possible, and I was going to use this a s a platform to talk about the challenges affecting people with disability.
Immediately I did that, I went back to church. Any opportunity I had to hold the microphone, I would tell people that if they had houses that had staircases or public places that had steps, they should tell those in charge to create rams so that people that are physically challenged should fit into the society. So I started using the platform of the church to advocate for people with disability until I had the opportunity of a bigger platform; that was the first ever Miss Wheelchair beauty pageant that was to take place here in Nigeria.
What they were looking for was a spokeswoman who would advocate for the rights of persons with disability. That was for about 22.2 million Nigerians as at 2010. They wanted a woman that would go round, influence policies, structures until the rights of persons with disability are captured. So, when this platform came, I knew that this would even give the opportunity to advocate on a bigger level for my voice to be heard. And that was it. I seized the opportunity.
Was it just because you needed a bigger platform or you wanted to also keep yourself occupied?
For me, it was an opportunity, because the only stage I had was the church. Then here was a national event that would give me a national platform to talk about these issues and it would reach faster. Because I had the boldness to speak, I was like, why not speak out for that woman or for that man, or for this group of people who are not as bold as I am? So, I seized that stage to become the voice for the millions of people with disabilities.
Tell me about the experience.
So, we came over to Lagos for the pageant. We had women with disabilities from parts of the country, including the FCT. We were about 40 women with disabilities who came to contest the position of Miss Wheelchair Nigeria. I remember we were put in a hostel and here I was with 39 other women with disabilities from all over the country, who were very intelligent. It was interesting for me because every one of them had big, articulated dreams to change the cause of people with disabilities. These were women that were professionals, and just listening to each of their stories made me even forget why I was there.
The main pageant then came. We went through the various stages and we were asked questions on what we would do to change the cause of people with disabilities. To cut the long story short, I emerged the winner and became the first ever Miss Wheelchair Queen here in Nigeria.
You were picked as one of the YALI young African leaders for a training in the United States where you met President Barack Obama. How was that?
The United States Department of States gives opportunity to young African leaders who are already change makers in their communities through mentoring, volunteering, and generally created one form of social good or the other. The opportunity is provided every year. It is an initiative of President Obama, and we were placed in top institutes in the United States. We had an intense programme at the University of Virginia. The experience was amazing. I saw firsthand what access means to a person with disability. I stayed in the United States for eight weeks and I did not see the need to ask anyone to assist me to do anything. My room, my environment were all accessible. Nobody was staring at me; I was one with everybody. I couldn’t wait to get back home to begin to talk about it, say it the way it is and push for it. This does not cost much to modify.
One of the high points of the trip was your meeting with President Obama…
The music side of me actually gave me that opportunity, which I didn’t even expect.
How did it come about that out of about 500 young Africans, you were given the honour?
When I got the call from the White House…
You were called from the White House?
We had an opportunity for community engagement and we were going to perform either in songs or in poetry. We were to showcase whatever talent that God gave us. Before I went to the Unites States, I did a song celebrating Nigeria. When I went to the US and there was an opportunity to sing, I decided that I was going to change the Nigeria in the song to Africa since we went there to represent Africa. I did the song on stage for a small community. It blew the minds of everyone that was there. The song was recorded in video, put on Youtube and in less than 24 hours it had over 100,000 hits. We came together with the people from the presidency on how we could make that even bigger and it would become the official YALI tribute. So, we came together, shot the video in the home of one America’s past presidents, Madison, and it went on Youtube again. That was what attracted the attention of the White House.
Seven weeks into the programme, we were going to hold the town hall meeting with President Obama, then I got the call. That was at the end of our six weeks programme. The seventh week was for the town hall. That was the week I got the call. The first thing they said was that we’ve heard your song. That was how I knew that it was the song that first caught their attention.
How did you know it was really the White House?
I knew it was the White House because the school knew the call was coming and they got me ready. But at that moment, it still came as a surprise. But they already knew. I was the only one that was not in the picture of what was about to happen. That was it. When they called, we were about to move from Virginia to Washington DC and they were ready to take it up from there.
As soon as we got to Washington DC, one of the ladies that was attached to President Obama from theWhite House and people from the US Department of States rallied round me and made sure I put my speech together. They looked at it and made sure it was okay.
Did you need any special preparation?
Of course I was going to introduce the President of the World, so to say. It needed to be good. There were lots of preparations around it. What made it interesting was that they made sure I wrote my speech myself. I would read it to them and they would say okay, this place should be this, what if you put it like this? They would play some of his videos, the things he said, but they made sure they put together my speech and made sure I was very comfortable to deliver my speech and say it naturally.
On the day of the town hall meeting, before the main event started, I had the opportunity to meet him (Obama) backstage. We had our own little interaction before the main event. He was fun to be with. He was like oh, Gracie!
He already knew your name?
He already knew my my name and knew what I was doing back here in Nigeria. He was in the picture of almost everything.
He had done the back ground check?
Yes, I was meeting him for the first time and he had already known everything Grace Jerry was doing. He was very nice. He told me, I heard you are the one introducing me today. I can’t wait to hear you do that. He was basically commending my work here in Nigeria. The interaction was centred around my work for persons with disabilities. He wished me well and I left and went up stage to introduce him. That moment for me was difficult to describe but it was just wonderful. When I think about it, it is like a dream. I was wonderful. I shone on that stage. I did my introduction and for the first time, the community of persons with disability all over the world felt so much pride. A friend of mine said now inclusion is on the global map, for a person with disability to be on that stage and introduce the strongest man in our world and in our time, it was so much joy for the community.
Looking back to when you had the accident that changed your life, did you ever think it was a twist of fate that could propel you to this height?
I am a believer and I hold on to this scripture that says ‘All things work together for good to them that love the Lord and are called according to His purpose.’ That scripture makes sense to me every day that I encounter something in my life. What the enemy meant for evil, God has turned it around for good.
Sometimes when things happen, and people would say this is bad, this is terrible, I would tell them you just watch it, God is about to use that experience to give something that you have never ever imagined.
When I had the accident, I thought God had actually left me. I asked, ‘God, what did I do wrong? I have always served you and I have been a believer all my life. Why did you allow this to happen?’ I did not know that what was meant to crush me was what was going to be a stepping stone to bring visibility to the work of disability and to make Grace Jerry a big brand. I use my story to encourage people. I tell them whatever happens and you don’t understand, just trust God. He will take that thing that looks seemingly evil and make something beautiful out of it.
