For Toyosi Kolade, shoe-making is not the exclusive preserve of men.
She acquired the skill to make a living and pay her way through school. A
visit to her room in Ladoke Akintola Hall of the Obafemi Awolowo
University (OAU) in Ile-Ife, Osun State, showed how passionate she is
about the vocation.
Shoes of various sizes are scattered all over the place.
Toyosi, 22, has just finished from the Political Science Department,
but in her last two years, she paid her fees from the money she made as a
cobbler. Toyosi ventured into shoe-making to assist her parents.
She said: “I started shoe-making when I resumed for my third year on
campus. A skill acquisition programme came up in my church for youths to
learn any trade that would make them independent. I opted for something
unique from what others are doing. I chose to make and repair shoes;
this fed me throughout my stay on campus.”
When she started, she was mocked by people who felt she was in a
wrong vocation. Toyosi said: “People made me to feel ashamed of myself
by mocking me whenever they heard that a female student is doing such
work. But I never let that discourage me. In the end, some of the people
who taunted me ended up being my customers.”
Toyosi never allowed the trade to affect her academic pursuit. The
Ekiti State-born cobbler said she devoted ample time to her studies and
entrepreneurial skill.
“The reason I ventured into shoe making and repairing is for me to
support my parents’ expenses on me. I have always liked to be
independent but there was no means. But when I learned the trade, I was
able to pay up to 40 per cent of my fees in school.”
She is not alone in this kind of business. Her colleague, Adeniyi Taiwo, who graduated from the Department of Geography, sells
moin-moin (bean cake) at Awolowo Hall. He prepares the garnished
moin-moin in thick leaves for sells and each between N25 and N30.
Adeniyi, who hawks the
moin-moin himself, said: “I was
motivated to start this because of the meagre resources I got from home.
I needed to have my own source of income to be able to pay some little
expenses in school. It is not everything that you ask from your
parents.”
To him, the trade is not for women alone. Adeniyi said: “The only
business you can tag as women’s trade is the one only a female can
handle. In the case of selling
moin-moin, everybody can do it, in so far the aim is to make money.”
Adeniyi moves from one room to the other, hawking.
In Imo State, Ellen Sunday made her mark, combining business,
academics and spiritual life. Ellen, who started from a few wraps of
groundnut and sugar in 2012, now manages a full scale business, selling
pepper, tomato and kerosene in large quantities.
“I really want to be independent,” she said, when asked why she
dabbled into the business. She added: “I was tired of asking for money
from my parents all the time. I started when I was in 300-Level, but
when I resumed for final year, I increased my stock and sold to students
in large quantities.”
Of all the wares, Ellen said it is tomato that is most profitable. “I
started the trade with about N2,000 but I can’t really determine how
much it has grown into. My trade has multiplied even beyond my
expectations,” she added.
Ellen said she is proud to be a student-trader, saying she paid 95
per cent of expenses on campus from the business. “Although my parents
used to send money to me but, most times, I won’t touch it. The business
paid up to 95 per cent of my expenses on campus,” she said.
“If I choose to sleep conveniently on my bed, hunger will wake me up.
This was why I found it better to discomfort myself so that hunger
would not eventually discomfort me,” Bamidele Adeleke, a graduate of
Sociology and Anthropology, who eked out a living selling bread, said.
Instead of sleeping on his bed, Bamidele stockpiles bread on his mattress and squats with his friends.
He started the business early this year because of what he called
“economic meltdown in the family”, which reduced his pocket money from
home.
He said: “I started the business with N1,600 and six packs of bread.
Today, I sell about 10 packs a day, which is more than N4,000. The
business paid up to 85 per cent of my expenses on campus.”
Now that they have graduated, does that the death of their business?
Bamidele, who is currently taking the Institute of Chartered
Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) courses, said nothing would separate him
from bread business, even as a graduate.
After her National Youth Service, Toyosi said she would start a
shoe-making business on a large scale, urging her colleagues to acquire
vocational skills in addition to their academic degrees.
Adeniyi would like to be his own boss by going into entrepreneurship.
Ellen said she would continue the business after school but on a large
scale. “I have a dream to have a supermarket of my own,” she said.
Source: The Nation.
