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Keeping Dreams Alive: Erelu Aisha Babangida, the One Who Tamed the Odds

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Keeping Dreams Alive: Erelu Aisha Babangida, the One Who Tamed the Odds

It is easy to take one look at Erelu Aisha Babangida and conclude that she is a child of privilege riding the coattails of her ancestry to strut through open doors and welcoming looks. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Her privilege, thanks to her status as the first child of former military president Ibrahim Babangida, proved more roadblock than road in the pursuit of her dreams. As people wondered what a woman of such lineage would be doing in the muck with the impoverished and less privileged, there were times Aisha must have thought of giving up a dream bequeathed to her by her mother, the late former First Lady, Maryam Babangida.

But love begets tenacity and willingness to fight for the valued thing until the bitter end. And for Aisha, her mother’s love, the Better Life for Rural Women programme, had long since become her own. Hence she fought tooth and nail, first to save it from oblivion, then to repackage it, and finally to expand it beyond its scope and reach during the late Maryam’s heyday.

Far from lapsing into laxitude or just taking over an easy role in one of the family businesses, Aisha manages to astound simply by being her own woman . She is a graceful ornament to the aristocratic order; much like Nigerian equivalent of polished society. Like Maryam, her late mother, Aisha is compassionate, industrious and tirelessly imaginative. Her overriding mission is to better the lot of the Nigerian woman, especially in remote corners of the country where their voices are silenced and their dreams punctured.

In seeking to improve the lot of as many underprivileged women as possible, the tool of the mother — The Better Life for the African Rural Women NGO — has become the tool of the daughter. Her passion for the needy consumes her like an eternal flame and each liberated woman is a healthy firewood that makes that flame burn even more brightly. “it is a work in progress. It is not something we rush into, because it involves lives. It is a legacy for me, for you, for my children, our children and their children. So we are getting there steadily but firmly,” she explained.

In the face of her persistence and tireless rowing against the currents, skeptics are becoming converts and some who dismissed her then have become her staunchest supporters. As her work gains belated recognition, some states and organizations have begun to partner with the woman keeps on hoisting the flag of a noble cause.

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