- Says some Nigerians reject offer of help for dying loved ones
Ologbenla Babatunde Smith is an entrepreneur, philanthropist and Chief Executive Officer of Givers Supportive Foundation (GSF), a non-governmental organisation that supports people in need, particularly individuals who have challenges settling their medical bills. The GSF also distributes food items to vulnerable people in rural communities. Ologbenla spoke with GBENGA ADERANTI about the hidden challenges in operating foundations in Nigeria, why many Nigerians are not receptive to supporting foundations in the country and why he chose this particular path.
At what point did you decide to start a foundation? And why a foundation when you can spend your time doing something else?
I have always been someone who loves to give to the less privileged. I love giving to people when I was young. After going to Offa, Kwara State to serve, the passion for me to give to the less privileged and to show more love and support to the poor started growing, plus the fact that I had the zeal to do that when I was young. Officially, I started around August 2018.
What were the initial hiccups?
To run a foundation, there are lots of challenges you must face. The number one is financial challenge, because you need money to support others. Number two, you need to get sponsors; those that would say take this money, go and support so, so and so people.
As an up and coming NGO, for people to know you along that line, there are lots of challenges you will face. First is financial challenge. Second is sponsors. Another challenge we do face is fraudulent people because a whole lot of people paint any form of NGO as scam because in Nigeria now we have a whole lot of foundation running under scam.
People are always scared and afraid to even say let me drop the money and see how you will use it. It is very difficult for people to do.
In one of the stories I read about you, you mentioned integrity as essential for charity organisations to survive. Is this not an admission that some of your colleagues are fraudulent?
In every organisation, the first priority is dignity, transparency, the way you are going to handle your own foundation. Every foundation has aims and objectives. Our primary aim as a foundation is not to embezzle money from anybody. You can go and check, in any foundation, non- governmental organization or charity organisation, everybody has one or two similar goals and one or two of the similar goals is to have peaceful community, to support people in the community, put smiles on the faces of the less privileged.
You don’t need to have much. So, whenever someone gives you money and say go and support this people and you decided to keep the money for yourself, definitely you know the consequences yourself. And that is what some foundations are doing right now. Some don’t even know what a foundation is all about. Some don’t even know what humanity is. Some, when they start making small, small money, they will slash the money into two, keep half for themselves and use the other half to do the work. At the end of the day, they are not even reaching the people they are expected to reach.
Unlike what obtains in Europe and the United States, it seems difficult for rich people to put their money into foundations in Nigeria. Why?
Rich people in Nigeria, we have some of them that are doing it while some are not doing it. A few of them are doing it. Some decide to be anonymous while some say I want to give so, so and so. Some of the millionaires do their charity; they don’t want to communicate with any charity organization. But some of them are doing this for show off so that people can see that they are doing it. They are not doing anything from their hearts, which is why it is very difficult to see someone in Nigeria that will just approach you and say take this, I want you to do this, I want you to do this, I want you to do that.
If we have 20 billionaires and we see only one or two people doing it, we begin to ask what are the rest doing? Some of them believe that if you give the money to a foundation, the foundation will embezzle it. Some prefer to spend the money on themselves, while some of them feel like let me do this myself so that people will know that I’m the one doing it.
At the same time, some of them are doing it anonymously. They will give you money and say go and use this money to support people.
Someone, like me, I have more people in the Diaspora that support me than people in Nigeria.
The sponsors that I have, maybe when I post a case or go for an outreach programme, I only see more people from the Diaspora. They will say, ‘Hello GSF, can you help us do this? We saw a post on your page, the post moved us much and we want to support.’ Most of these people are not even in Nigeria, only few of them.
For me, I don’t know about other foundations. I have more sponsors from people outside Nigeria than people in Nigeria.
Talking about Nigerians in the Diaspora, have you had any bitter experience with them regarding raising funds?
Yes, there was a particular case we did one time like that. The person in the Diaspora said he wanted to see the person. I had to tell the person that this particular person you wanted to see was in a very far place and there is no network there. I don’t know how you are going to do it. The only thing you can do is for us to send you the video of the person, and probably after the surgery is done, we can bring the person to Downbry City, but we can show you the video or go on live video to see the person because some of these people, they just need to gain your trust first, especially people in the Diaspora. Most of them would say that many times they support people in Nigeria, the people divert the money to another thing entirely.
Some of them want truthful confirmations and evidence before they can help you. Along the line, this might bring a challenge. You might feel like why are they doing this if they don’t trust me? They should leave me alone; another person will trust me. But for a foundation that is just coming up, you need to bring in your best. I had an experience whereby someone was asking for the whole certification of the foundation. I had to provide this for the person before he could support.
Another thing is that for those that are sending money to Nigeria from the Diaspora, we always have some difficulties due to policies surrounding money laundering and stuffs like that. Some of them who would send huge amounts of money always back it up with a letter that I’m sending this money for so, so and so person. It is not money laundering, it is for so, so and so case. When the case is done, you will do the video of that person to the person that paid the medical bills.
What role did your growing up days play in your decision to start a foundation?
Like I said earlier, while I was growing up, I loved to give, to the extent that even when I didn’t have, I still wanted to give. I remember that when my mum was still alive, whenever she put me in her shop, half of the items in her shop would be gone. And what was I doing? I was giving them out to people. She would tell me not to come to her shop again, saying, ‘I don’t want to see you in my shop again. You have turned my shop into a charity home.’
The act of giving has been in me for a long time. But when I got to Offa as a youth corps member, I was motivated more when I saw a lady that needed help. She was a student and I was serving at the Federal Polytechnic Offa. I was going out of the gate and I saw a student lamenting about what she would eat. As a corps member then, it was difficult. But due to the spirit in me, I had N1000 gave her N700. She said she had not eaten for a couple of days. She was happy and I smiled, knowing that I would suffer for that N700 that I had given her.
But in a way I never expected, someone supported me too. All these things are what give me more value and more confidence that it was the right time to move into this foundation fully because I had the passion for it.
Was there a time in your life you contemplated discontinuing the foundation?
Yes, number one experience is stories of people scamming others and people were counting us as part of them, especially when you are just coming up as a foundation. There was competition. There were foundations that had been in existence. It was like you cannot come and take over. I had an encounter with one of the foundations, though everything is gone now and we are now best of friends.
There is a tendency to see you as a fraud because other people do that. Anytime people see foundation or charity organisations, their minds go to fraud because one foundation has defrauded them before, so they will think other foundations do the same. Sometimes you borrow money to help people who are in need.
To what extent has bureaucracy affected you? And have people you wanted to help acted funny before?
People that you want to assist contribute to one of the greatest problems too. There are some people you want to help, immediately you raise the funds for them, you give them the money, probably the person is sick, it might be a sick child, after raising the money, you hand over the money to them and say go and use this money for your treatment, some of them would divert the money to another thing. At the end of the day, the people that donated the money would be expecting you to give them the report of how far you have gone on the case they donated for.
What some people do is to say they don’t need medical attention again. They go the traditional way. In our constitution as a foundation, there is nothing like going the traditional way. Anything that is against medical advice, there is nothing we can do about it.
Some will even be dying like this, they will divert the money. We have seen a mother who left her child in the hospital and ran away with the money, two to three million naira.
We have some families who would say they would divide the money into two and share it among themselves. We have had a case where we raised millions of naira, the person died, and the family members were fighting over the money, telling us, “Foundation, we need to share this money. A whole lot of experience in that is to the extent that we invited the police.
And some people won’t want us to take care for their children. They say this child will eventually die. We would tell them don’t say that, let us take him or her to the hospital, let’s do all the necessary things we need to do. Some would say they don’t want. They don’t need our help even when we tell them that there is money.
