13042019 - KILLING FIELDS OF NORTH WEST:They killed my husband, our three children in my presence – Zamfara survivor

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26—Vanguard, SATURDAY, APRIL 13, 2019 The gist in town now is that prices of food and commodities in the market have reduced drastically. But many men both on and off social media say this is not reflected in their family’s cost of living as their wives have either continued to demand the same feeding allowances or more. This has raised other issues about women and how they manage the family finances, otherwise known as housekeep allowance. So, during the week, I had a discussion with a group of women and men, to find out how they manage this money. Most of the discussants say it is never enough and they always have to add their personal money to it. Some say there are germane reasons why women must keep part of the money for themselves. What do you think? For Abbah, 38, housewife, a man can only get his money’s worth. How? “House keep allowance is a man’s responsibility. Whether he has or not, he must leave something. If he earns N50.00, he must leave a part of it for the feeding of the family. That is why he is the man. That is why he is the husband and that is why he is given the status of the head of the family. By all consideration, whether religion, tradition or even morally, it is binding on the man to feed his family. That is the only way he can be a real, fulfilled man and he too can be happy with himself. It is true that most men feel that their wives have a way of short changing them through the housekeep allowance, but that should not be an excuse for not meeting up to one’s responsibilities. As long as a man is eating his money’s worth, he should not concern himself with how much has gone into its preparation. Real men must not concern themselves with such petty things. So, do you take out of the housekeep allowance for personal use? It will be foolish of any woman to spend all that her husband gives her on feeding the family. Our mothers used to say that a prudent woman will not eat with all her fingers. So it is not a crime if a woman with holds some of the money. That is the way our mothers taught us to do it. I am not working so that means I cannot have money of my own except to take out of what my husband gives me. On the other hand, I also believe that it is not all that I need that I must demand from him. I can’t imagine having to ask him for money to buy underwear or even cloths. So, what I do is to save from the feeding allowance. It is this money that I use for all these little needs in the house too. This does not include things like repairs around the house or medicines when the children are ill. It is for things like cutting or plaiting the children’s hair, buying underwears, emergency pencils and exercise books and little things like that. I take the money monthly because I can buy in bulk to save some money. Retail buying is very expensive. House keep allowance ought not to cause problems between couples, but it is just that many men are suspicious of their wives. A few years ago, I complained to my husband that the money he was giving us had become inadequate. Even though he acknowledged that the economy had worsened, he refused to increase it. His excuse was that he knew men on grade level 06 with our size of family who are living happily and eating well too. I asked if he had visited such people and seen what they were eating but he refused, insisting that his salary had not changed. So, I took my own decision, if he wants grade level 06 food, I will gladly cook it. So I did and within a few days, he began screaming. I told him that was grade level 06 food and when he realised I would not budge, he had to do the needful. Only an insensitive and wicked man will not want to feed his family well if he has the money. Such men never complain about what they Yetunde Arebi Women, how do you manage the housekeep allowance? It will be foolish of any woman to spend all that her husband gives her on feeding the family are given at home because they know what it can lead to. What I save is not even up to a quarter of my needs but because I need to keep my home I must manage. I cannot compare myself with working class women and wives of rich men. You must know your limits”. Shade, 32, trader and student, keeps an account book for the family expenses. “My husband gives me feeding allowance every week. The feeding allowance is just to make stew. He buys every other thing by himself. I only buy pepper and what to cook it with. As a student and trader, I have some money of my own but it is not enough to meet my needs. He is responsible for my schooling as well as our son’s. It is not that we are rich, but he tries his best. My husband is a man that loves to be in charge. He believes that it is his responsibility to take care of his family and that even if I have money, it is for me and whatever I wish to spend it on. I have come to understand him and so we do not quarrel. So, what do you do with your own money? It is a little bit complex but it has worked for us so far. I have a book I record every kobo I spend on the house or on myself and our son. At the end of each week, I sum it up and he refunds it with the soup money. It is like I am borrowing him the money. Sometimes he may not have it at the end of the week, so we roll it over and he gives me eventually. I have a younger brother living with us and he is my responsibility, but every other thing is my husband’s responsibility. I think the arrangement is good for us because sometimes, even before I ask, he would tell me to bring my books and pay me off. I thank God for my husband because I know that there are men who are naturally stingy with their money, especially when they know that their wife has some form of income too. They will always try to give what they know is inadequate so that the woman will always be forced to add her own money. Such marriages may eventually have problems. In fact, I know an aunt whose husband never leaves money for food once they have a quarrel. You know there is a way you can communicate even if there is a quarrel. You may drop the money on the table or give it to the children to give to their mother. But my aunt’s Twitter: @yetundearebi yetty5050@yahoo.co.uk 08054700825 husband uses it as an opportunity not to give anybody money, even his children cannot get anything from him at that time. To make matters worse, he does it ever so often”. Gladys, 45, accountant, says, sometimes, there are genuine reasons to take from the feeding allowance “I don’t gain from feeding allowance, instead, I add my own to it. You see, I don’t enjoy cooking at all. Maybe I should be married to a very rich man but destiny dumped me where I am. I hate having to go to the kitchen all the time. It takes up too much of my time and leave me too tired to do some other important things. So, what I do is to cook in excess of what we need and store in the freezer. To do such large cooking, I have to add my own money to whatever my husband gives me. I don’t ask for refund. I believe this is part of my contribution to the success of the union. Sometimes, he gives me more than enough and I spend it on something else in the house or on the children. If I really want him to buy something for me, I ask him and he will buy it. So, there is really no need to spend feeding allowance on something else. It is a joint project and each of us must contribute to make it a success. The problem is that many women love to copy each other. When they see someone doing something, they want to do it also. It is not bad to desire something good but not when the thing is not compulsory or you know you and your husband cannot afford it. That is where many of these problems comes from. Women must realise that besides feeding, men are responsible for shelter, planning for the future of the family and taking care of the extended family amongst other things. So, diverting feeding allowance to other things is like contributing to keep the man down perpetually. Unless a woman has genuine reason to believe her man is spending the family’s resources in ways detrimental to the wellbeing and success of the family, feeding allowance should not be a big deal. She has to learn to manage whatever is available. There is a season for everything and so there is a time to make sacrifices, especially in the early years of the marriage. So, what would these genuine reason be? If a man is obviously not responsible, I see no reason why a woman must help to put food on the table for him to eat. She should just take care of her children until he comes to his senses. A man that does not leave enough money for his family but is spending on other women, cannot expect that wife to be cooperating with him with her own earnings. Some men go clubbing and visit beer palours and mama ‘point and kill’ to enjoy themselves without leaving enough at home. Some men don’t have girlfriends because they are too stingy but they will spend on their own personal needs and never for the needs of their spouses. Such men will only give just enough or even not enough and expect everything to be normal. For me, these are genuine reasons for a woman to watch out for her interest and that of her children”. More respondents speak next Saturday. Do have a wonderful weekend!!
SATURDAY Vanguard, APRIL 13, 2019 — 27 I ventured into Waste Recycling to create jobs for vulnerable women, keep environment clean —Olamide Ayeni-Balogun, Founder Pearl Recycling By Destiny Ezeaga Mrs. Olamide Ayeni- Babajide is the founder of Pearl Recycling, a social enterprise in Nigeria engaged in the recycling of solid waste into sustainable and eco-friendly products. The social entrepreneur, motivational speaker and environmentalist explained why she started Pearl Recycling in 2016, a passion she enjoy doing, raising young entrepreneurs and transforming the life of vulnerable women in the societies. Excerpt What inspires you to go into Waste Recycling? My first inspiration came from the fact that every morning on my way to work I see a lot of women who are unemployed begging for alms to survive. It became a huge problem for me to give them alms and at the same time I realized that they will definitely come back to continue begging. Secondly, I see wastes everywhere and the impacts on the environment are enormous which is a big concern for me. So, in 2012, I traveled to United Arab Emirates, UAE, for an official assignment. It was at that point, I bought a wall décor from a store and discovered that the wall decor was made from waste which actually caught my fancy. From that moment I began to think of what to do with the wastes we generates in this Nigeria, how to empower these women, build a product from waste of international standard and keep the environment clean. That inspired me; seeing two different problems including the problem of waste and empowering vulnerable women who I know are ready to learn. So, in 2014, I started waste recycling business before I ventured into it fully in 2016 ...From waste recycling, challenges and achievements? We have done quite a lot as a small company in Nigeria. It is a known fact that businesses like ours is not likely to survive at inception. But, we have survived and today, we trained over 250 women with vocational skills on how to turn waste into beautiful products. We are currently donating 400 chairs to 20 public schools in Lagos made from waste. We are training 800 students from public schools on waste management. The idea is to train 40 students in each school and have about 85 students joining the recycling club. Also we have been able to change the mindset of more than 2 million people who follow us on our social media platform on wastes. As an organization we are happy seeing those people. We have orientation on waste management. The environment is becoming better and people are empowered to give back to their community. For instance, one of Olamide Ayeni-Balogun our students based in Ibadan created forty playgrounds in forty public schools using waste that is a huge impact for the students and the community. Looking at our challenges, the ease of doing business in Nigeria is poor; you have to struggle to survive every day. If the government laws are not choking you, the taxes will be choking you. It is hard to survive in an environment like that. The environment is not friendly for you to build on your ideas and vision. We also have a problem of perception of people on waste, a lot people see waste as waste because that is how they grew up. So telling them to change and accept new orientation on waste management becomes difficult. We also have problem of mentors, and being a creative industry there are dearth of mentors who understand what we do. So most time when we are face with challenges, we hardly find mentors we can count on and who understand us deeply and can proffer solution. ...Tell us about your organisation. Pearl Recycling is an organization that was established for profit. As we T h e environment is becoming better and people are empowered to give back to their community moved on we saw the need to change a lot of thing in our structure. We realized that we need to give back to the community as part of our corporate social responsibility. In doing so, we cannot tell the community to pay us for the impacts, so we became a hybrid organization. This means that, we channel 30 percent of our profit to impact the community, making us a profit and at the same time non-profit organization. But we are registered as a profit organization, a limited liability company. On funding, we generate revenue and from our revenue we make profit which we used to run and sustain the business. When we started this business, we got few grants from Tony Elumelu Foundation and WIMBIZ which help us in getting an office space and scale up our operations Apart from grants from Tony Elumelu Foundation and WiMBIZ, do you have any Government supports? Pearl Recycling did not get any support from the government that is just the truth. As a matter of fact, we have more support from the international organizations than the Nigeria government. Most of the supports came from the America government and organizations inclduing the Ford Foundation, the US Embassy Abuja through Department of State. We are looking at other companies to invest and support us. What is the criteria for selecting those women for training programme? We focus more on unemployed women, vulnerable women, widows, single mothers, jobless individuals and unemployed youths who are poised on engaging themselves. Through our social media platform and website we announce an opening for them to apply. The training is not free, but fortunately, last year, the training we conducted was free because Ford Foundation paid for 100 people. There is criteria for selecting people, We select people without jobs and help. Is the fee for the training affordable? It is affordable. And we have training for the downtrodden. We give them 50 percent discount for undergoing our training. Our fees are affordable because we look at so many other things. The fact remains that when you start this business and you are serious about it, you will definitely recoup in one month after the training. The raw materials are everywhere which is wastes. So we look at all these things. We see skills acquisition centers everywhere which are quite more expensive than what we charge, and we also understand the fact that something that does not cost much may really not make sense. So when the training is made free, a beneficiary may decide to forget about it and go back to his or her normal business but if it costs them something they will appreciate it more. So these are other things we are looking at. What is the response after training. Is there a mechanism for follow-up or mentoring? As a matter of fact I do not abandon them. I created a group on Instagram and Facebook to continue the conversation. In fact, I do not capitalise on vocational skills, I also teach them on how to access international grants because I understand the place of funding and capital in business startups. That is why my training is different from other trainings. I help my trainees get TEF scholarship, a lot of international grants and local grants. I teach them the rudiment of accessing this grants beyond learning skills and I also let them know that they have to also balance their smartness with hard work. You really can not depend on 100 percent hard work alone. I do not abandon them rather I place priorities on communities of women who are empowering each other and lifting each other up everyday ...And the competitive market? The waste industry is a lucrative industry depending on the sectors. For me, it is about understanidng your market and implore a unique market strategy. We have competitors but we do not focus on them because we have our focus on our rules and principles of where we want to be. Although, I appreciate lots of people and firms that are joining the business, if nothing else, just to solve the problem of wastes in our communities. ...Would you say, this business is a blessing? Well waste is not a blessing even though it serves as our raw material but the truth of the matter is that there will be waste. It could have been control waste; control waste in the sense that in the developed world they have organizations that are taking waste and people pay to throw their waste. At the same time, there are places designated for people like us go to and pick what we want out the waste. According to the UN an average human will generate at least 1.6kg of waste daily, now imagine the number of people on earth and in Nigeria 180 million people. The problem is seeing waste on the streets, drainages, among others which becomes an eyesore and of course not a blessing for us. That is why one of the things we do at Pearl Recycling is partnering with people we know that generates waste. Now for tyre wastes, we partner with vulcanizers. We pay them stipend to have these tyres because we really do not want these liters on the street. However, waste is a blessing because it is a raw materials but waste on the street is a curse because it causes sickness, diseases, among others. ...Your future plans as an environmentalist? I am looking at creating an academy, a hub for creative environmentalists like us for innovation and ideas. I want to create that opportunity for schools to bring in their pupils to learn. I also want to create an eco-friendly furniture mart in Nigeria, like an alternative furniture mart cheaper than the conventional furniture and more beautiful.
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13042019 - KILLING FIELDS OF NORTH WEST:They killed my husband, our three children in my presence – Zamfara survivor

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