Dr Jumai Ahmadu, the founder of Helpline Foundation For The Needy in Abuja, spoke with TAOFEEK LAWAL about the plight of vulnerable in the society, need for streams of income for women and women in leadership positions among others.
Some believe that women should only be seen and not heard, do you think it is time for women to take leadership roles?
Women being seen and not heard is no longer tenable because the society has developed to the point that even the men are looking for how they can get assistance in the house. If you want your wife only to be seen, how is she going to support you. The burden these days is becoming overwhelming and thank God government has been encouraging women to take leadership positions.
Women are also making sure that their voices are heard. If President Muhammadu Buhari can go to Adamawa State, a predominantly Northern Islamic state to say that they should vote for a woman, Aishatu Binani, we are having a paradigm shift from the past; from the orthodox way of saying that women should not aspire to be anything but be in their houses to become a woman that is canvassing for votes for herself. It is a good development and people are beginning to see the reason why women have to be given the opportunity to be empowered financially because the husband can die. If you are only seen but not heard and empowered, how are you going to look after you children when your husband die? We know statistically that more men are dying and leaving widows because this is one of the work that we do. So, women should not only be seen, they should be empowered to be able to face any situation that nature may present to them.
There is this notion that women don’t support themselves and this is why they cannot collectively fight for their rights. What do you think about this?
That is absolutely correct because we pay lip service to our women empowerment advocacies. Because if this is not so, why dont we have more women after the parties’ primaries that took place last year. Why are we having women fighting themselves; the pull her down syndrome. Until we as women realise and stop this lip service, that is when we will make headway. I always say at any fora I find myself that we should stop this lip service approach to women agenda. Let’s genuinely love one another and until we get over it, we’ll always be where we are. So women not supporting themselves is lip service for the media and that is why we are where we are today. For me, I don’t do lip service and I believe most women don’t do it. But the number of women who are not just making this noise for media coverages are low. If we love ourselves, we have the numbers and we shouldn’t be begging. If I see a woman contesting with my husband and I see that she has the capacity, will I honestly vote for her? Will I be able to sacrifice my first lady office for a woman? It is difficult and until we get to that point, we are just making noise.
Can women be good leaders?
Of course, yes. Women can be very good leaders. We have had quite a number of them in Nigeria and they did creditably well. Before Professor Dora Akunyili of blessed memory became NAFDAC Director General, we never knew what NAFDAC was doing in Nigeria. But she came and raised the bar. We also have the likes of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and she’s doing very well at the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Mrs Amina Mohammed is there at the United Nations as the deputy Secretary General.
In Nigeria, we have had good women that have held leadership positions. But conspiracy from the men and their female counterparts made them not to leave the offices gloriously. If a woman is doing very well, you find her being conspired against by men who are envious of her position and ensure that she is out of that place. You will remember what happened to the first and the only female House of Representatives Speaker we have in Nigeria, Rt Hon Olubunmi Etteh. The offences she allegedly committed cannot be compared to what others who are men committed. But because she is a woman, it was easy for them to just conspire against her and she left. Women are the best leaders because if we can manage our home very well, we can manage the country. Every good leader that you see today are being supported or guided by women and they instil the leadership qualities in him. The best form of leadership we can get in this country is a woman based on the natural gift as the one who raises a child from cradle to adulthood and who becomes a governor and whatever he wants to become. Women are perfect examples of leaders you can get anywhere. The former German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is a woman and she did very well.
What is Helpline Foundation about?
It is a foundation set up to cater for the well-being of vulnerable widows, children and young people to ensure that they are given the opportunity to get the best out of life and not to be defined by the circumstances that they found themselves. The foundation is set up to put smiles on the faces of these aforementioned people and with the philosophy that nobody is too poor to give and nothing is too small to give. The foundation was founded in 2003 to ensure that we contribute our quota to the well-being of the vulnerable in our midst.
What have been able to do for women in particular?
Quite a number of projects that we have initiated. Chiefly among them is the nonprofit-revolving-loan-scheme that women have been benefitting from. We put them in clusters and ensure that they are able to get small capital with which they can start business. It’s a revolving loan because as a woman is paying every month, another woman is getting. We also develop their skills in terms of capacity building in any vocation they feel they can prosper in. We also make them to identify the needs in their immediate environment so that whatever they are producing they can have easy market within their environment to avoid the issue of transporting the goods outside their community. For the girls, we have the ‘Girls Realise Their Potentials Project’ that we do annually. We bring them together through the Voice of The Girl Parliament to talk about topical issues that affects girls. And whatever resolutions the parliamentarians come up with are forwarded to relevant government agencies for actions. We also have project for the boys because you cannot empower the Girl-child to become a responsible adult without thinking about the person she is going to marry which is the boy. The project for the boys is to ensure that they are responsible enough, empowered and understands all it takes to be a responsible husband to the girls. Because if we neglect the boys, the girls will have problems when they grow up because they will not have responsible men to be their husbands, partners, colleagues in the office.
Do you think women should have multiple streams of income?
It is part of what we are also telling our women. They should not rely on men for everything. From making soap for example, learn something else and outside that, you can also join a cooperative society.
Like I said, our non revolving loan scheme is for them to have the ability to save. The challenges we have with these women is that they don’t have saving culture. Some of them will go and collect loans from the loan shylock and every week, she is paying these loan shylocks money that she could have ordinarily saved in her account which is what our non-profit revolving loan scheme have been able to achieve. Instead of them paying these loan shylocks profit every week, they can have something to save for themselves through us. There was a woman we rescued from these shylocks and we discovered that the N20,000 she collected she has paid more than N30,000 in profit. Our loan enables to save and exit without us getting any profit.
Through the communal gathering of these women every month, they were able to know that outside my soap making, I can also engage in bead making, go into farming with my colleagues and have the multiple streams of income that you talked about. We also have people that teach them financial discipline as well. Those are the things that we do.
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