Hajiya Adama Ibrahim Dankwambo, is the First Lady of Gombe State and the founder of Hajiya Adama Women’s project. In this chat with Joyce Remi-Babayeju, she spoke on need for women empowerment and values impartation on children.
In Nigeria, the office of first lady is synonymous with pet projects and sundry programmes for the improvement of lives and alleviation of poverty among the peoples of their states. In this stead, Hajiya Dankwambo has proven herself as a woman filled with a passion for rural women and especially women without any means of livelihood.
She was tracked in Abuja recently during the Nigeria Association of Women Journalists, NAWOJ Week 2013, Dinner/ Award night where as a distinguished guest she unveiled the new NAWOJ wrapper.
Speaking on her passion for eradication of the begging culture and poverty eradication from rural women in her state, she said that her passion is to empower women in Gombe State and especially those who resort to begging because they do not have any means of livelihood.
‘’Like last year I graduated about 3000 women, this year we have about 2500 women, we had the last graduation for this year. This is one of the things that I am doing to improve the lives of women in Gombe state. What we noticed is that women are no longer staying at home they go around begging but when you give them these skills it will make them to stay at home and then imbibe the right values in their children’’.
‘’Because what is happening in Nigeria now is that parents have lost the responsibility to their children so they just go out on the streets and behave anyhow but if women can stay at home and with a source of livelihood they can carter for these children; I think it will go a long way in reducing the security challenges we have today in the country’’, she said.
How did it all begin? Hajiya Dankwambo told Leading Woman that it all started during the electioneering campaign for her husband. ‘’ When my husband won the election in 2011 during the campaign tour I promised the rural women that once my husband is elected as governor of Gombe State, I will try to eradicate poverty especially among the rural women. So in keeping to my campaign promise I have a pet project called Hajiya Adama Women’s Project. What I do is that I empower women by giving each of them different skills like fish farming, soap making, tailoring and knitting”.
‘’In about five areas so what we do is that we take these rural women through the training of skill acquisition and then upon graduation we give them the required tools and the cash of 50,000 and in total we have graduated about 5,500 women who are now self reliant”.
The Gombe State First Lady, revealed that apart from empowering rural women her heart also goes to women with Virginal Vesco Fistula, VVF, so she finds a way to alleviate their sufferings by training Traditional Birth Attendants.
She said, ‘’Apart from that I am into VVF through training of traditional birth attendants to reduce the high mortality rate in the state because we noticed that a lot of these women give birth at home because their husbands do not allow them to come to the hospitals. When we train these women they will go to the homes and deliver the babies for them and that will go a long way to reduce the mortality rate in Gombe State”.
Another area where Hajiya Dankwambo is contributing to humanity is with the disabled persons in her state. She said, “We are also looking at the disabled. We have designed a programme for them too because we also took the percentage of disabled in our programme and then we provide them with wheel chairs, hearing aids, and also we are creating awareness on HIV/AIDS and cancer in my state”.
Because she has a lot in her pouch for the people of her state, she said, ‘’ We are doing advocacy in the area of the girl- child education because we have a lot of girls that are out of school in Gombe State, we are also creating awareness, we are seeing success in this area and I am happy that NAWOJ has seen the little things which I am doing in Gombe and have decided to recognize my contribution by giving me this award and I am grateful’’.
Being able to play this multiple roles is not an easy task. She said that trying to balance the role of a First lady, wife and mother is not easy, ‘’ What I do is that there are some days I stay at home and then some days I dedicate to my office. So you create a balance so that one does not outweight the other’’.
What is her idea of an African woman? She said, ‘’An African woman is a simple woman, a mother, somebody that cares for the less privilege, humble, somebody that is a philanthropists. Someone who likes to cater for the less- privileged in her environment.