One April morning, Ngozi Ukpai-Okoro woke up with a high fever, splitting headaches and a deep sense of unease. Her vision seemed to blur as her left eye slowly closed. Before long, her right eye became affected too.
At only ten, Ukpai-Okoro was battling the early symptoms of cerebral meningitis—an illness that would radically alter her life.
Weeks prior, she had been gearing up for a maths competition. “I was to represent my school,” she recalls. As she lay at home recovering from her illness, a profound sense of grief enveloped her.
Her academic performance suffered as a result, and her father contemplated pulling her from school. But she pleaded for a one-week trial instead. With renewed determination and support from her secondary-school teachers, her grades improved and she made it through high school.
After losing her sight to meningitis and battling the “double discrimination” of gender and disability, Ukpai-Okoro transformed personal hardship into lasting change. S
Later she would pioneer the University of Lagos’s first accessible e‑library, co‑found Project Enable Africa to expand digital and educational access, and lead the Part High Initiative, empowering young women with disabilities through literacy, advocacy, and community support.
At 17, brimming with hope, Ukpai-Okoro arrived at the University of Lagos for a degree in sociology. But the hurdles were steep. She had no training in Braille or assistive technologies, and she struggled to keep pace with her lectures.
By 2012, she taught herself to use screen-reading software and type with a stylus, gaining a sense of independence she hadn’t felt in years.
Recognising the systemic barriers—lack of e-textbooks and inaccessible libraries— confronted by students like her, Ukpai-Okoro drafted a proposal to the university’s administration for an electronic library that catered to students with vision deficiencies.
Her persistence paid off. The vice-chancellor established a digital resource centre, which serves over 40 students today.
Still the road was bumpy. She recalls a painful experience during her first year. Assigned a reader during her exams, she felt reassured—until an invigilator abruptly dismissed him from the hall, questioning why he stood by her.
She was helpless for twenty minutes, unable to read the questions. She eventually failed the 4-unit course. Although the experience was heartbreaking, it fuelled a new resolve within her.
“You can’t try that with me now,” she says. “I’ll fight it. I now demand inclusive policies and proper provisions for visually impaired students to access their education.”
With a B.Sc. in Sociology and a Postgraduate Diploma in Education, Ukpai-Okoro was selected for the U.S. Consulate Youth Fellow under the Consular Youth Fellowship Initiative (CYFI) in 2014. Together with a fellow grantee, she co-founded Project Enable Africa with a vision of shifting “disability inclusion” from charity to systemic empowerment.
As a community mobiliser and specialist, she helped bridge the gap between organisations and persons with disabilities. Under her leadership, Project Enable connected beneficiaries to digital skills workshops, entrepreneurship grants, and mentorship programs.
Years afterwards, she launched an alumni network to nurture opportunities for trained beneficiaries and cultivated partnerships with institutions such as Access Bank PLC. The organisation trained hundreds in Google productivity tools, web development fundamentals, and LinkedIn optimisation, opening the door to sustainable employment and self-reliance.
In 2016, she released her debut novella, Needle’s Eye—an intimate narrative about a young girl’s loss of sight and her uphill struggle in an unaccommodating society. Endorsed by Access Bank PLC, the book became a tool for awareness.
After nearly a decade, Ukpai-Okoro stepped away from Project Enable to broaden her impact through consultancy and volunteering. In 2023, she founded the PAD Her Initiative and the Padhub Club, a support community built around books, digital literacy, health awareness, and mental wellness for women with disabilities.
She is currently completing a second manuscript centred on people with disabilities, slated for release in mid‑2025.
Today, she consults for organisations on disability inclusion, offering guidance on how to create accessible, equitable environments. She has worked with groups like Keeping It Real Foundation on inclusive program design for their Youth Employability Skills project and the Nova Diamond Foundation on accessible training modules in partnership with Alliance Insurance.
Despite her achievements, she continues to confront deeply ingrained stigma. People have told her that she “looked too normal” to be blind. During an online interview for a disability-focused training, the interviewers questioned her identity. “But your eyes look fine,” they said. The comment left her humiliated.
Even extended family members have accused her of faking. Her father, now late, often pointed out how “open” her eyes were. These moments have brought her to tears.
Ukpal-Okoro has since learnt to stop proving her impairment. She’s focused, instead, on sharing her journey through storytelling and advocacy to educate others on the many spectrums of visual impairment and to challenge the narrow, often damaging stereotypes society holds about what it means to be blind.
Her five-year vision is bold and systemic. She envisions partnership frameworks with which institutions can engage with disability communities, educational structures that embed universal design from the outset, and employer ecosystems that value diverse abilities as assets rather than liabilities.
Her parting words are as powerful as her journey: “Keep pressing on and loving yourself. Find reasons to celebrate your uniqueness, and never shy away from advocating for your own needs because no one knows your story better than you do.”
Ngozi Ukpai-Okoro, at ten years old, faced cerebral meningitis, which resulted in her losing her sight and experiencing academic setbacks. Despite these challenges, she persevered, eventually improving her academic performance with determination and support. She attended the University of Lagos without prior training in Braille and struggled initially, but taught herself screen-reading software, gaining independence. Her advocacy led to the creation of an accessible e-library at the university. Co-founding Project Enable Africa, she focused on empowering people with disabilities through digital skills, entrepreneurship, and mentorship, greatly expanding opportunities for disabled individuals.
Beyond Project Enable, Ukpai-Okoro authored a novella, "Needle’s Eye," to raise awareness about the struggles of living with disabilities. In 2023, she established the PAD Her Initiative, supporting women with disabilities in literacy and wellness. She's also working on her second manuscript centered on disability. Ukpai-Okoro consults on disability inclusion, advocating for accessible environments. Despite facing skepticism about her impairment due to societal stereotypes, she's focused on storytelling and advocacy. Her vision emphasizes systemic change in education and employment to value diverse abilities, fighting for inclusivity and recognition for those with disabilities.
