“Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat”
( Quote Mother Teresa)
All through my childhood, I have acknowledged the fact that I was not from a poor home though my father was just a primary school teacher who had our faith deeply rooted in the Anglican doctrine.
1996, when I finished my Junior West African Examination, I had a long period to stay before my result will come, so my father took me to Okutu where he lived.
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| group of okutu volunteers |
Okutu under Nsukka Local Government Area of Enugu State were dominated by Christian Igbos but they shared a common boundary with Ugwaka –Ola under Igalamela Local Government of Kogi State which was dominated by Muslims. The major problem of these communities was that they were abandoned by their host states due to the remoteness of their locations. They lived in grass houses which always flames at winter periods of every year. They leaved in abject poverty and what they needed was not business ideas or micro financing but Education.
When I got to Okutu on August 21, 1996, I began to realize the challenges my father was facing as a teacher and an Anglican Priest. He trained his students not only educationally but socially and religiously. The two communities relieved their children on him and any child stubborn to the parents would be sent to my father’s house for moral discipline. Within the month of my stay, he took me around to see how he ran his missionary/charity work.
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| benefited children |
All through the years , right from the primary school days of our first born, my father always come home with two children from Okutu and he explained to my mother that they were children of his family friends that gave him farm lands where he cultivated yam. During my stay with him, he made me to understand that he has been on a scholarship program for 21 years, sponsoring two students with best class performance, every section.
Though my father was paid by the state government as a teacher, joining with his commercial farming practice in Okutu, he rolled back a high percentage of his income towards this Non-profit program and that was why he earlier refused to explain to my mother, the details of his Charity work.
He monitored the students closely from their class performance, mentoring and identifying the pupils that exceed average. He picked them for common entrance examination and then he brought them down to Nsukka town where he registered them for their secondary education.
All through the years, I watched strangers come into our family and soon, they had become part of us, sharing our family joys and burden, they had attended different schools within Nsukka and the successful ones, proceed to the university. I could remember Joseph, Michael Adama, Fidelis, Patrick etc that later won a higher degree scholarships to study abroad. Dozens of children had lived with us and we accepted them owing to the fact that our parents were religious role models.
After my father had explained to me the way he selected the best amongst them, I concluded that grass root programs like this are always free from fraud. Being an exciting young boy, I asked him series of questions more and he never failed to explain them.
I wanted to know what motivated him to initiate ODOZIOBODO Scholarship Program; he sympathetically told me the rate of poverty in Okutu. It was increasing instead of decreasing. As days passed by, the population of the people in Okutu increases, underage/premarital pregnancy was raging higher. He told me that after some personal analysis of the community, he concluded that the only solution to this gross poverty is education. He believed that an educated community is a liberated community. With education, Okutu People will understand more of religious and moral discipline, and that will reduce premarital child birth. With education, Okutu people will understand a better way of farming, they will embrace farm mechanization and also learn how to process and package their farm products better, before sending it to Nsukka town market.
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| yam barn |
Because of the state of this community, I saw reasons with my father that the only solution to the problem of poverty in Okutu could only be Education.
He presented to me samples of proposals he has submitted to the local and state government, asking for the establishment of secondary school in the community but all were ignored as he never received a reply.
He decided to use St Matthew’s primary school Okutu which was established by the Anglican missionary as an avenue to get closer to the children and to pick two or more yearly, with personal conviction that they can compete with other children that had their primary education in the city
When he returned the sample letters to his file, I tried to know if there were people who actually listened to his concepts or if every one did ignore him. When I asked him, the wrinkles of sad reflections in him faded to a decent smile of satisfaction. He told me how the Anglican Church assisted; they were regularly giving a scholarship offering in the church which was used to support the program. He also told me that when scholarship students started getting to the university level, the cost of their education became too high that he could not afford, he consulted the village heads of which some were pagans, on explaining his plans to them, they relieved a 500 hectares of land for him to develop a farm for the scholarship program, so also, the people of Ugwaka-ola, approaching him, demanded that their children should also be considered for the scholarship award. Having that kind of challenge for enlargement, he called a community congress, inviting the communities of Okutu and Ugwaka-Ola. This congress was announced in the churches and mosques and also, the village heads called village meetings and demanded that everybody should be in attendance.
The congress, held on the 8th of march 1984, was the first joint meeting, ever held, bringing together all Muslims, Christians and pagans in this two communities and my father told me that what disturbed his spirit a night before the congress was the nature of opening prayer that will soothe the people.
The meeting was graced by almost every body in the two communities and they agreed to team up in unity to raise fund and send their eligible children yearly to city schools to get education and bring back to develop their land. The Muslim leader (LEO ONOJA) from Ugwaka-Ola donated another 500 Hectares of land where farming should be done to generate money for the scholarship exercise. Prior to the dismissal, they agreed to devote every Saturday, farming in the scholarship farmland and agreed to fine any community member that did not attend five tubers of Yam.
These, they obeyed and every Saturday became ODOZIOBODO day in the two communities, in such a day, Christians and Muslims farmed together, sharing ideas and hopes. My father counted a huge success when finally a Muslim man married a Christian girl which he saw in ODOZIOBODO farm. He told me that the day of their union; all the scholarship students came home to grace it.
After this farm practice was established, my father arranged with Big Lorries to transport the Yam produced to Lagos state where they were sold and the fund realized was used to send more children from both communities to school.
I stayed in Okutu for three months, late 1996, the town has developed considerably, people have built good houses, the educated ones have started assisting their younger ones, ODOZIOBODO farm, not only provided funding for the Scholarship students, it has turned to a business, training over 100 people in modern farming, two tractors were used and those that served in the farm were given the tractor once every month to develop their own private farm. More than twenty Lorries of yam were produced annually from the two communities and members of the community have learnt the use of lorry to transport their products to major cities in Nigeria where they make better sales. In addition to that, cassava farming was also initiated in the community, my father took six people to the city where they learnt how to use Cassava processing machines, after that, he installed the machines at different locations within the Christian and Muslim communities, Cassava was processed to Garri, which is a highly consumed food in Nigeria. The processing depots became another source of employment to men and women who took different sections like the grinding, jacking, sieving and frying. The business became profitable to my father and the entire community, paving a way to other entrepreneurs who came in and established pig farms, using the waste products from the Cassava depots to feed their livestock, creating more employment for the people of Okutu and Ugwaka-Ola. It was a turn around for the people of Okutu and Ugwaka-Ola. The Government have started coming, they have seen that the place can generate Tax for the Government of Nigeria.
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| casava prossesing |
“You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it”
(Quote Bill Cosby)
My father died April 23rd 2003 after awarding Scholarship to over 2000 children, his burial was attended by people from all over the world and before he died, he asked me to remember my promise.
When I finished my university Degree, I had my mind set to what I will do that will help reduce poverty in Nigeria, as a physicist, I thought of initiating a rural solar electrification, something that is directly related to the knowledge I acquired, 60 percent of my country population do not know about electricity, while 80 percent of the population lacked access to modern energy supply and services to meet their daily need. Without electricity, it will be impossible to develop sustainable micro businesses. My vision was not just to install photovoltaic systems; I also considered installing the knowledge within the rural inhabitants for minimal technical upkeep. As an entrepreneur, I had so many businesses in mind, such as carpentry, there are lots of grown trees in the rural areas, I could initiate training for the inhabitants and after that, we could produce furniture and export to the cities, generating money for both the trainees and for the smooth running of the business. There are other profitable ones like laundry services, cafeteria, beauty salon, livestock farming, bakery, tailoring. These are eligible enterprise solutions to conquer poverty in the rural areas, but without a reasonable supply of electricity. Such businesses could not be established by interested micro entrepreneurs because in the past, it has failed immediately after the training period due to poor/unaffordable source of power. While I strive to be an entrepreneur, my effort should start with the primary concern of rural electrification and one day, just like my father, I shall empower over 2000 men and women out of poverty and at the same time, creating an endless source of income for me and my younger generation.
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