Aisha Babangida: A Quintessential Humanitarian @ 53
By Edwin Uhara
“You don’t change the world with the ideas in your mind, but with the conviction in your heart.” — Bryan Stevenson
Though there are many noble sides of her, but in this piece, I will be exploring the humanitarian side of Her Excellency, Hajiya Aisha Babangida as she celebrates her birthday anniversary this month.
She need no introduction as anyone familiar with happenings in the humanitarian circle across the continent already know that she is one of the very few persons who are truly convinced and are committed to the cause of improving people’s lives and reducing human sufferings in the society.
She is firm in her decisions yet simple and down to earth. She was born with the golden spoon yet the welfare of the common person takes the centre stage in her heart.
Such was the intellectual idea that shaped her worldview and convinced her to float many life changing charity organizations as well as enlarging the scope and the coverage of her late mother’s pet project, the “Better Life Program for the African Rural Woman to the continental level.
Other humanitarian organizations founded by her includes; the Women Enterprise Alliance. The Egwafin Micro-finance Bank. The Tasnim Foundation. The Aisha Babangida Leadership Foundation and many other organizations she heads and sits on their boards.
The Women Enterprise Alliance is an opportunity-based platform created by her to help entrepreneurs to invest in profitable small and medium scale enterprises in Nigeria and across the African continent.
She founded the organization in 2018 as a way of helping entrepreneurs to overcome the challenges they normally face when needing resources to start-up their own company.’
According to her; “Women represent between 60 and 79 percent of Nigeria’s rural labour force but are five times less likely to own their own land than men. Women are also less likely to have had a decent education.”
So, the Women Enterprise Alliance is there to bridge the gap between business vision and business actualisation.
The Egwafin Micro-finance Bank was also established in 2016 to help in facilitating access to funding and financing that the ordinary person on the street may not have access to in the real banking industry.
In her words, “Microfinance acts as a means to target wealth inequality and work towards bridging the gap. Because the poor or impoverished don’t have access to resources, their skills go underutilized, because they themselves are underutilized.”
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Adding that “microfinance, commonly referred to as microcredit which is actually a subset within microfinance, acts as an opportunity for people who may not otherwise receive approval for a loan or credit to still obtain financial services.
The concept was built around the idea of inclusion and access for all. In order to participate in growing economies, people need access to funding no matter their income bracket.”
The Tasnim Foundation is another charity organization founded by her to provide scholarships to young girls in the rural areas as a way of encouraging girl-child education.
The foundation also provide medical equipments and medications to hospitals across the country in order to support the public healthcare services.
The Aisha Babangida Leadership Foundation is also another organization that works with variety of stakeholders, partners and institutions to develop and support programmes aimed at providing leadership trainings, mentorship and scholarships to indigent students across the continent
Undoubtedly, her Midas touch in these organizations have transformed the lives of many, especially those whose only hope of better lives can only be found in the imaginative realm.
She see’s the good in others and invests in them to assist them become that which they wanted to be. That’s why Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe said and I quote “If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”
Born on 25th May, 1970, Aisha Babangida pursued her academic career in the following citadel of learning; The Webster University Geneva, the Wharton Business School, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) and the Cambridge Judge Business School among others.
Nevertheless, there is no one who makes positive impact in life that goes without being noticed because we can only attract and experience what we are.
That’s why several honours and recognitions came her way, among which are; The Gold Medal Award from the prestigious Crans Montana Forum, Brussels, the Womens Champion and Youth Mentorship Awards, Speaker at the World Humanitarian Forum on Gender Equality and Women Empowerment, and Life Member of the Chartered Institute of Directors (CIoD) which was conferred on her during the last annual Directors Dinner and Award Ceremony.
In all these, one thing that have consistently distinguished her from the rest is her burning desire to uplift the downtown and see them become who they were destined to be by their creator.
It is on this note that I say happy birthday to her and I enjoin her to continue her selfless services to humanity because she is already on the positive side of history.
Comrade Edwin Uhara is a Un-trained negotiator and Public Affairs Analyst
