Category: New Woman

Zainab Jaji is an entrepreneur who has tested many waters. From trading to drum-making and poultry, she knows where it hurts and where to turn to for the mega bucks. In this interview with YETUNDE OLADEINDE, Jaji, who is the current National President of The African Women Entrepreneur Programme (AWEP), an initiative of Hilary Clinton, talks about her passion, helping women to achieve their goals and more. 

HOW did you get into AWEP? I was invited to come and join AWEP as an entrepreneur who had a past experience in the export market and it is a US government imitative that started in order to help build the African woman, in order to make sure that her business grows. The initiative came up under AGOA (African Growth and Opportunity Act) because women were not participating enough. It started under Hilary Clinton; she wanted African women who had at least certain level of education to be able to have access to finance without lots of collateral.

She believed Africa had a large number of educated women, who should be brought forward to help their communities. If you have exposure, naturally your community would grow. You would have access to better healthcare and your quality of life would definitely improve. It was a way of dismantling the odds and giving women the opportunities available. There was also the need to get rid of the view that poverty is a woman’s thing.

It is aimed to develop businesses owned by women and make sure that your business meets best practices and standards. This is the Nigerian chapter of AWEP and it is an outreach, an educational initiative that targets African women to promote their business growth, whether we are doing it locally, regionally or internationally.

Our relationship with the US State Department in Abuja gives women the opportunity to be called up for a programme called the IVLP. It’s quite an honour to be an IVLP and you meet people that are relevant to your sector.

 We find out that when they come back, the feedback they give to AWEP is quite outstanding to help other ladies. As a body, we are no longer looking at only agriculture and we are bringing everything together to make a difference. So we do three things basically, and these include trying to build partnerships, increasing the number of women gaining access to finance, as well as helping to drive the markets. By building capacity, we are working with a lot of agencies. We would be doing a lot of training and a lot of exhibitions.

How did the passion to empower women begin?

I joined AWEP in 2012. The experience has been very good and the networking is second to none. In the past four years that I have been involved with AWEP, I have seen quite a landmark of growth, our first president, Yemisi Iranloye, was one of the first set that visited Washington. AWEP was then borne out of that visit. She is one of the biggest starch manufacturers in Nigeria and AWEP is part of the capacity building for women.

The trainings you get and capacity building is added to this and the access to knowledge. You see some of the participants today are doing well; the information is there and there is funding if you know what to do. Again, we reemphasise that your business must have a structure, you must have good documentation. Even if you are running a very small business, make sure that you are registered. In addition, do not go and register the business in a name and then you are using your personal bank account for your transactions. These are the things that we are trying to make women avoid. When you want funding and you go a microfinance bank with your document, the bank would support you. The board of AWEP stood as guarantors for some of our members and so far everything is going well.

In terms of structure, we have the national president and the national executive and six zonal vice presidents and state coordinators who work hand in hand with the grassroots. I used to be the vice president for the North East.

Personally, how has AWEP helped your business?

You know, it has helped me grow as a person. It has helped me to have better contacts, it has helped me to know that there is help out there for me and I have tapped into contacts. It makes it easy, you have something available and you know that you can reach out to someone out there.

How easy were these lines of business?

Not easy! Poultry farming is very difficult but it really depends on what you make of it and how good your staff are. The truth of the matter is that you ought to do a business that you understand and you are passionate about. I used to be a manufacturer in Lagos. I was manufacturing drums, candle making and was running a poultry farm in Oko-Oba in Lagos.

What would you say made it easy for you?

I come from a business background. My father was a businessman and we grew up with him doing business. So, it was natural for me and easy to manage.

Did you study Agriculture?

No, I didn’t study Agriculture. I am from the sciences, I studied in the UK.

How has it been juggling family life with business?

It’s not easy. As a woman, you have a lot of challenge and its tough balancing all. You always have to give up something for something. As a woman, you have your work, children, husband and other family obligations. But by the grace of God, everybody is managing. There is no point complaining about this, just do what you can for that day and continue when you wake up the next day.

Is there something or someone that inspired you to do the things that you do?

Oh yes! My husband inspires me every day, he encourages me. He never says don’t do it, he tells me to try. In addition, my father is an incredible support to me. I am lucky.

If you had to advise Nigerian women, especially those at the grassroots, what would you tell them?

At the grassroots, I would earnestly tell them to be dedicated and determined. A lot of women at the grassroots have small businesses, I would tell them to continue with the business and come together to grow. That is the only way to survive; you can’t do it alone. They should come together to form stronger cooperatives and once they do these things, it would get better.

Is there something you consider as a memorable moment in your business?

Yes, especially when you have worked so hard and you win a large contract and it benefits your community. It is things like that which inspire and motivate me.

As an entertainment consultant, CEO of Qtaby Events and Entertainment, Victoria Nkong, has been around the world practising her craft. However, she says life’s turns eventually led her to showing her humane side by setting up the Jegede Paul Foundation and an orphanage home, all by the age of 25. The former Personal Assistant to President of KORA Mr. Ernest Adjovi, speaks with Ovwe Medeme on her journey so far.

HOW did you get here? I started out with a degree in Modern Languages, so I speak French and Spanish. That linked me to my first major job which was with KORA Africa Music Awards as a PA to the KORA President. From there, I became a bilingual presenter for KORA Awards. Then, eventually, I got trained as a line producer. I produced for the main KORA Awards and a couple of other events that ran under KORA for a while. At some point, I had to come back home. There was an event in my life that was a turning point for me. I lost an elder sister. It sort of turned my family around and my parents were no longer comfortable with the idea of having me jump off and on a plane every day, heading to several destinations for events. I also lost a bit of interest in life generally, so I decided to come back home and start a charity, something that I felt had a humane side that would give me a better meaning to life. So I got back to Nigeria and went into Human Resources Consulting. But on the other hand, I decided to set up life fountain orphanage home and the Jegede Paul Foundation. One or two years after the charity was running, I got the drive to get back to business because even to run a charity, you need funds. So I went back to what I know how to do best, which is entertainment. We just finished producing the last controversial Headies 2015. We were able to also ensure that while we were running that huge production, the orphanage home did not suffer. The foundation activities as well did not suffer.

How were you able to fit into the Nigerian scene, given obvious differences?

In sincerity, I won’t mince words, it was difficult. It was difficult because it was like going through a different school entirely. The first major project we did was for a dinner for the Italian Navy on their aircraft carrier ship that berthed in Nigeria. They did a tour of like 24 countries, so when they were coming to Nigeria, our South African partners immediately referred us to them because they worked with us outside Nigeria and they know how we work. But then, when we had to hire technical hands locally. We had to make people understand what they meant. For us, it’s always been important for the clients to get more than they pay you for. But then, when you are working with a team locally and you’re trying to marshal things the way you are used to, it was a different ball game. There’s lateness to contend with. There’s trying to make people see the vision of excellence of delivery around here; trying to make people understand that as a client, your word is supposed to be law. It was quite hectic. In the end, I needed like nine lives to pull that event through and it wasn’t an event you want to also mess with because referrals came all the way from Cape Town South Africa. Also, it was like a diplomatic event. We had the Italian ambassador; we had a couple of ambassadors from the Italian embassies. That’s also difficult because we come from a place where we give you exact figures for what we need to deliver and we deliver it.

When did you take the decision to return back to the entertainment scene?

I made that call sometime in 2013, towards the end of the year when I felt that I had finished setting up the orphanage and it could run itself. I then needed to go out there and continue making money to assist with funding the place.

How would you appraise the Nigerian entertainment scene?

It’s big business in Nigeria, if you ask me. Aside the oil boom, the next thing that has had a serious boom in Nigeria is the entertainment, whether it is music or acting. But then again, we have people who have been in this industry for quite a while, who have not seen the need to professionalise it. So, we have people still seeing entertainers as unserious people. It’s not true; we work really hard in this industry. We work twice as hard as the people in the bank, but again, we haven’t done ourselves the right service. We don’t have proper insurance, though a couple of people are trying to start that now. We have artistes whose talents have proven that they should be at an international level. They are earning money but they don’t have the right team to take them to that next level, to give them that kind of respect. They don’t have the right team to ensure that even the brands they are affiliated with get the desired privileges attached to getting an artiste and as an ambassador. There’s still a lot we need to put in place for the Nigerian entertainment industry.

As a lady, how would you describe life behind the scene?

I think it’s a decision. My life is actually in two aspects. As an event producer, you really need to learn to stay behind the scene. If you do not learn to discipline yourself, you will get carried away and the job will not be done. So, I tell everyone on my team never try to struggle the stardom with the stars. We are supposed to be the star makers, so I try to keep it at that. You can’t come to an event and see me glamorously dressed. I do that on purpose. As an artiste manager, at times, it is also inevitable to get seen but that’s a different angle entirely. I now know how to balance keeping the star makers. It was something I learnt when I was producing KORA, suddenly I had to deal with celebrities I had seen on TV.

What pushed you to setting up a foundation?

The first rule of my life is to be different. I’ve always been different from the norm. From the charity angle, I see it as an assignment I had from childhood. I grew up happy putting a smile on other people’s faces. I grew up giving my elder sister my lunch money in school and staying hungry just to ensure she’s happy. I grew up finding out that I cannot sing to save my life. I hardly have any other aspect I can handle well in church so I went on a soul searching at some point in my life to know what I could also do and it was clear to me that it was charity. So I gave myself an age deadline. I told myself that by the time I’m 25, I would love to have started something in that direction. I didn’t know how I was going to achieve that, but each day I went out on the streets and I saw a child begging or a child hawking, I bled. I came from a background where I was lucky to have my bills paid for all through my growing up age but I didn’t choose that. I might as well have been that child on the road hawking bananas or plantain. And then something remarkable changed my life when I was leaving secondary school. We went on an excursion to an orphanage home. There were these pretty little children all in their cots and seemingly at peace. Now I made the move to pick up one of the babies and she wouldn’t let me put her down again. She kept crying. So my heart reached out to that girl and then I told myself that the only way to go would be to have an orphanage home where I can try to set up something as close as possible to a family setting for children. When I lost my sister eventually, I knew that was the halting time. Luckily, for me, I met with the CEO of Jabo Oil. I had some savings but not enough to put up the dream I had. And he, with a very large heart, keyed into the vision immediately and has always kept his part of the bargain to do 85% financing and also be a father to the kids at the home. We also embark on a lot of projects for the foundation, empowerment projects for slums and for widows and he has always gone the nine mile with me.

So you had a soft landing?

Almost, but finance is still not everything because when you are planning, it looks easier than when you get into it actually. When I had my first five children, I realised what challenges could be; both emotional challenges, financial challenges. Right now, we have 17 children. We’ve had up to 25 kids in the past but some of them got adopted, some found their parents.

How do you get the kids for your homes?

For regulatory reasons, we are registered with the Lagos State Government Ministry of Youth and Social Development. So every child we get comes from the government. Even when we see a child in a vulnerable situation, we alert the person in charge in Alausa. They go and do the rescue and then hand the child over to us. We do that to protect ourselves as well as the child. We don’t want a situation where they come and accuse us of being a baby-making factory. If we ever go to rescue a child ourselves, it would have been that we received a call from the government to pick the child up.

What has been your most emotional moment running the foundation?

There are several of them. There is a particular child who came in a very critical condition. I was called at about 11:30 at night that the child was almost dying at the orphanage. I was in my house in Lekki. I drove down by midnight alone through the Third Mainland Bridge to pick up the child, took him to the hospital. Within the same night, we did four trips to the hospital and back. The doctor kept trying but he didn’t tell me it was beyond him. He suggested that we should go see a consultant at LASUTH. Now, my driver wasn’t available at that time of the night. I had to drive myself and the child to LASUTH. We were kept for about two hours and we were eventually told that the hospital was full and we needed to go somewhere else. They referred us to LUTH. This was about 2:30am. Long story short, we found a private paediatrician who finally stabilised the child at about 5pm the next day. So between 2am and 5pm we were battling with the child. I missed my MBA exam trying to get the child stable. After that time, I had to nurture that child for a full year. He came to us at three years old and when he was getting to a year and five months, we found his biological father. I had become so attached to the child, so when the father took him back, I had to lock myself up and I cried throughout the night. I felt like I was losing my own baby.