Good Human of Nigeria: Edem Ossai
How else do we end the year if not with an inspiring story of a woman who quit her job to create a meaningful life for children with her hard-earned money? Edem Ossai is our Good Human of Nigeria for December.
After I hung the picture of our GHN for the month of November on the walls of cyberspace, the search for who would be caught by my lens for the month of December began. Soon, the name Edem Ossai came to the fore. We had met once at an event where she spoke on domestic violence. There is more to Edem.
Born and bred within the four walls of the University of Ibadan where her parents worked as lecturer for years, her eyes became opened to the social reality of life earlier than she could imagine.
“I grew up surrounded by books. I had no option but to interact with newspapers and became very conscious of national issues,” she reminisced.
At thirteen, she lost her father. She and her three siblings engaged in small businesses early to compliment their family income. They became independent, at a young age.
“I used to do a lot of arts and crafts for sales. I did a lot of volunteering work. This threw me into the world of development; into communities where my eyes were opened to their needs. I am aware that members of every society have the responsibility to be civically engaged. Civic engagement is not just political engagement. It simply means contributing to the lives of people in your community- where there is problem; come up with ideas that can save the problem. I couldn’t define it in those terms but intuitively I was working in that direction,” she said.
The Law graduate of Obafemi Awolowo University got a job with a law firm in Lagos. Her visits to Alaka, a low income community in Ojoo area of Ibadan where her mother had relocated to, opened her eyes to some of the social realities on ground.
“There is only one public school in that community with over four hundred households. Each household has at least five children, multiplying that with over five hundred households is disturbing. So I saw students loitering around and engaged in all sorts of social vices. Those who were going to school would absent themselves to help their parents sell so that there could be food to eat,” she lamented.
Soon her love for Law took a downward slope.
“I didn’t see how that effort in the office translated to real tangible contributions to the society,” she said.
October 2011, She quit her job. With minimal resources, she worked something out.
“I have a huge network of friends who I gathered books from. There is also a teeming presence of bookshops in Ibadan. When I had gathered about five hundred, I went into the community. I spoke to the community leader on the urgency of salvaging the future of the children.”
The leadership of the community obliged. They gave her a space at the Ojoo Community School. By November 2015, the initiative kicked off with seventeen children. Today, the number has grown to 85.
“Every Saturday, children assemble in the school.They open the pages of a vast collection of books and they begin to read. We also show them documentaries and video presentations on topics like citizenship, climate change, corruption,” she said.
Today these children through what they have been exposed to now know how to use Google, Encarta and Youtube to solve some of their problems. Their confidence level soars higher, every passing Saturday.
There is more work to do.
“Right now we service three communities. My goal is that in every local government, a mobile library will be present. it is not enough to have one fine facility with books all over the shelf. You should have a vehicle that will take these books to the hinterlands. That is what we are doing with our mobile library which, as of today, has over 400 children registered as users,” she submitted.
Eden Ossai’s mission is to reduce gaps in literacy, leadership and civic participatory skills amongst Nigerian teenagers. By 2020, she hopes to have impacted 2 million Nigerian teenagers through MAYEIN, an NGO she currently coordinates programmes for.