‘We Are Looking At Poverty, Poverty Is Looking At Us’

My name is Ayo Okotie from Otujeremi Community in Delta State. The PIX boards have been instituted for a longtime now but there is nothing happening, no information to community members. And of course, the boards that they have constituted, they just have only one woman in the board and that one woman was intentionally picked because she is not literate, and because she is not literate, she can’t relate, can’t interact the way that she is supposed to relate. So, this is a concern for us.
The members of the board, we actually don’t know them. It looks like the board thing is a secret cult that we don’t need to know them. We also see that these board members are old boards that have been in the GMoU (team) and that have been around the community governance and corruption in the community. So it is another concern for us.
The levelof women participation in it is very low and that is a major concern for us. And of course, from some other areas, we see that yes, the board has been constituted but our fear is that projects in the GMoU that have not been concluded, would they just let them go?
Did the GMoU actually do much for women?
It didn’t really do much for women in my Otujeremi Community so for us, it is still another issue.
What will your women want from this new Trust Fund?
What we want from the new Trust Fund is that women’s voices should be heard. There should be transparency in the implementation of projects. Even though they have not carried us into it, there should be transparency, If there is a town hall meeting where the community leaders will tell us that this is where we are, and this is where we hope to be but if they just leave us in the dark, it is not going to go down well with us.
And what will you say are the major needs of women in your community?
Aaah! Plenty. Our needs are many because now, climate issue is affecting us seriously; gas flaring is affecting us seriously. If we begin to mention them, it will be very long. Alternative means of livelihood since our lands can’t produce very well again. You see all these people that are funding these programmes, we need them to come and train us. They should fund community women directly and not put money in the hands of our leaders. The money does not get to us. And I don’t know what government can do because at our own level, the gas flaring thing, we don’t have much-that lies in the hands of government. Government should actually look at it because what we heard, the penalty for flaring gas is too small. So, they will continue to flare it and our health is being affected -cancer, cough, lung diseases, some persons, their eyes are being affected.
If you are in the community when they flare the gas, the first five minutes is always terrible to the ears and everything-the noise is something else. My community has really suffered! This gas flare, we have two.
Two in your community?
Yes. There is one that the women go to dry our stuff-kpokpo garri. Because of poverty, that fire, the effect on our body especially that of our older women that are going there, because they don’t have any other thing to do, they will be telling you that since 1990 they have been drying this and nothing is happening to them. But, do they actually go to the hospital to check if anything is happening to them? If you can come to that site, it is a very horrible site. But you see these women fearlessly going to that their kpokpo garri there to dry it because it takes a long time for the sun to dry it but there, the temperature of that fire will just dry it under hours.
Our concerns are very many-air pollution. The air we are breathing with that gas flare, it is killing. There’s so much; when the 2022 flood came, all our crops, poultry farms, animals, fishes, everything washed away. Poverty is looking at us and we are looking at poverty.