‘There has been a movement of change where women thrive in public, private and social sectors’

Hansatu

Hansatu Adegbite is the National Consultant on Private Sector Partnerships for the United Nations Women Nigeria Country office. She is a social sector professional with a personal mission statement to positively inspire, impact and invest in lives. A certified International Finance Corporation and Learning Performance Trainer, Business Development Service Provider accredited by the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) and a UK certified Associated Stress Consultant, she is the immediate past Executive Director of Women in Management, Business and Public Service (WIMBIZ) in Lagos, Nigeria. She is a graduate of Business Administration from the University of Abuja with an Action Learning MBA from Business School Netherlands. She is also an alumnus of the Harvard Business School at Boston, USA in Strategic Perspectives in Non-profit Management and has certification in Entrepreneurial Management from the Enterprise Development Centre in both Abuja and Lagos, Nigeria. She sits on several boards and have bagged awards and recognitions. In this interview with IJEOMA THOMAS-ODIA, the self-motivated energetic leader speaks on her passion for volunteering, women’s economic empowerment and leadership.
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You’re a force to reckon with in the field of women empowerment and leadership, take us through your career trajectory?
I grew up with a single mother who was a hardworking woman as a corporate woman. She worked in various organisations and educated my siblings and I; four of us to university level. So, right from the beginning, I had a model of a hardworking woman and that also played out in some of the schools I went to; I attended the first and only girls’ military school in Nigeria and the whole of Africa, the Airforce Girls’ Military school in Jos. It shaped a lot of leadership and audacity skills. In fact, up till date, people say I move like a soldier and so there’s a level of discipline and focus you get. Having gone through school even to tertiary level; I used to volunteer a lot. In fact, I volunteered avidly for over 25 years in various organisations, I belonged also to various clubs that helped develop and build my communication skills and my people’s skills. And so, by the time I finished at the University of Abuja, I served in Kaduna and from camp, they posted me to a bank, I got transferred to Abuja, and was taken as a contract staff afterwards. I met my husband during my youth service and he proposed; it was early after school, and I just felt, as a young girl in Africa, they teach us to go to school, and the next thing is marriage. But knowing all I know now; I wouldn’t have gotten married that early.
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So, the first thing that happened to me after getting married is that he asked me to resign as it won’t be convenient when children start coming. And even though I didn’t want to at the time, because my career is just kicking off, I resigned. So, I became a stay-at-home mum for about five years. And within those five years, in fairness to you, I wasn’t happy because that is not me. It was the most difficult period in my life because you can’t remove a fish from the ocean or from water no matter how beautiful where you want to put them it is not the habitat that works for them, just like you can’t remove a lion from the jungle. It got to a stage I knew I wanted a change because I was very depressed and was almost a shadow of myself. And so, he asked that I chose a business I could do so I have control of my time, that’s how I ventured into entrepreneurship. I started an events management company in Abuja called Festive Friends Limited, which became a household name then, then we organised the first Children’s Day party for the First Lady of Nigeria. After building my business to that level, my husband woke up one day and said he wants us to relocate outside the country; he wants to go to school. Again, it was very disruptive having built the business. So, I made the staff managers at the time signatory to the account of my business and made the painful decision of leaving my business, by the time we travelled, in a year they ran down the business and so I officially shut down the business completely and sold off my equipments. So, when we came back from the UK, I started another business, and this time focused on corporate events and team building retreats.
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Remember that I have been an avid volunteer for 25 years and one of the organisations I have volunteered is Women in Management, Business and Public Service (WIMBIZ); I was at the first WIMBIZ conference 23 years ago. One of the things people don’t realise about me is that if I believe in something the minute I avail myself to serve in that capacity, I give it my 600 percent you will think I own it, in fact I can tell you categorically that there was a time I was Parent Teacher Association (PTA) vice chair in my son’s school, a parent was addressing the proprietress of the school and telling her about me, whom she referred to as the owner of the school, that is how invested I am, that people think I own it. Recently, I was checking LinkedIn and I just saw somebody said that she would almost have sworn that I was the owner of WIMBIZ and this for me is only if I believe in something, I’m like that with everything, whether it is paid or not paid. Go and check my alumni bodies. I served as the president of the Air Force Girls alumni for over 10 years.

Tell us about your role as past Executive Director, WIMBIZ. How did you land that role?
So, having built a network in Abuja, I came to Lagos seeking for a new challenge and to expand my network. I think it was three weeks after I came to Lagos, I had done some teambuilding and training and then I received a phone call from one of the my WIMBIZ mentors to say WIMBIZ is looking for an executive director. Remember, I was at the WIMBIZ first conference, and after that, they set up the Abuja working group where I volunteer and participate actively. So, when I got the call, I applied, in my mind, I didn’t think I would get it, I was just saying, let me just apply, since I will come to Lagos anyway, I have nothing to lose. And so, when I got it, I was shocked because I was coming from Abuja and I didn’t know anyone in Lagos. I called a friend who is the CEO of one of the financial institutions and she encouraged me. That’s how I went in and in fairness to you, when I enter any organisation in life, one of the things I do is I identify certain areas that I feel I can make an impact and change. I think I’m one of the most privileged people in terms of an executive director that will ever serve in WIMBIZ because I served under all the founders for five years, I sat with them in board meetings I worked with them so I learned a lot from them so it’s like being mentored by 13 founders; then as at that time we had an executive council. Again, I worked with the executive council so many of them were committee chairs. We had four executive council chairs and I worked directly under three of them. I have served with over a hundred committee chairs. And through it, there has been so much growth.

You also currently serve as the first female president of the Business School of Netherlands?
Yes, so for the five years I stayed at home after my first degree, the Business School of Netherlands had just come into Nigeria and so I ran an MBA which prepared me for entrepreneurship. I also studied at the Enterprise Development Center from the Lagos Business School in Entrepreneurship Management, so there is no school network I have not served in its alumni. You see, one of my strengths is I am a connector and a collaborator when it comes to people. I work well with groups and bodies and that helps to build your capacity. So, for about four years, they have asked me to run for president, and due to my schedule, I couldn’t, however, the more you say no, the more it looks as if you are feeling too big. Especially when you respect the person that is also encouraging and asking you. So, after the first and second set, and this time it was between two men, one of the things the CEO used to rope me in is that it is time for a woman.
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Having led the WIMBIZ team over a period of years, would you say you are impressed with the number of women leading in both the private and public sector in Nigeria?
I would say I am grateful that there has been a movement of change but it is still an insignificant number in comparison to not just our population, but the size and population of the number of organisations that we have,
both in the public, private and social sectors, where women can actually thrive. So, even though we have made some progress, it’s not too significant because we have to applaude small wins. I know it can be much better, but at least the journey has started.

What would you tell a young woman struggling with career and raising family. How can she put all of these together and rise to the top?
The first thing I would tell every woman is do not build your life around the expectation of other people which is the most important lesson I have learned in life. Everybody has an expectation of what life should be. Whether it’s what you should do or not, where you should live or not. A lot of Africans including Nigerians, we live for family, for parents, for this or that and at the end of the day, you lose yourself because you’re not doing what you want to do but what others expect you to do. So that’s the first thing, you must identify what you feel will work for you and focus on pursuing that. Secondly, do not think that everybody has to fit into a model of what society has defined as legal; where you say all of you go to school when you come out, get married and have children. If you look at society today, when you are not married it becomes a problem, a prayer point, whereas you should actually enjoy your singlehood because every season in your life is to be enjoyed. So what you now end up having is people stop living; from the minute she wakes up to the minute she sleeps, she’s thinking of only one problem – I don’t have a husband, because of that, she stops living.

She goes to church every day, her prayer point is, God give me a husband. What that does is that it makes you lose focus on enjoying the moment. And it also transcends into the same thing for those who get married and don’t have children. So, the point I’m trying to make is that these shouldn’t define you. In the world today, we have people say, I don’t want to get married or I don’t even want to have children, because they don’t want to bring a child that would suffer or be a bad mother, these kinds of people will be under pressure from people with society’s expectations. The third lesson I have learned is accept every mistake you will make in life as a learning lesson, pick the lessons and move on, don’t allow any mistake in this life hold you down no matter what it is because your own story will be something that will help somebody move for their own glory. Number four is in the area of whether you want to do career, business, stay at home, politics, work in development and social sector. When you begin to identify where you want to play, you must first of all look for an organisation or an individual that has achieved what you want to surpass.
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And once you identify that person, study what you can study about that person. Whether through the person’s books, whatever it is, build your capacity. Also, you must be clear about developing yourself to be the best version of yourself. Most of the times, the mistake we make is that when we start something, we get comfortable with just being ordinary. And the world we’re living in now, you must keep evolving. Number five, communicate effectively.

People that are in business cannot say, I don’t like social media because majority of your clients are there from all over the world. So, try and identify communications skills and platforms that will work for you. And then, once you start that journey, just keep moving. Just keep evolving, don’t look back, don’t give up even if you want to change the trajectory of what you want, change it but keep moving. Learn when to manage yourself and distress and say enough is enough. There is a time and a place for rest and to recuperate so you must do that. For those of us on this side of the world especially Africans a lot of us work and live for our families we end up being the breadwinner but you don’t eat the bread. So, you must discipline yourself to say I must do something for myself every time I get something because at the end of the day, the people that you are their breadwinner will move on.

What is your life mantra?
People come into your life for reasons, for seasons, or for a lifetime. One of the greatest mistakes we make is that we carry a seasoned person as a lifetime person and that is what brings pain and hurt, because in your mind, you saw that person as lifetime, but the person was just in your life for a reason. So, every time you have people in your life, you need to be careful the kind of access you give them into your space, if you are not able to decipher which of these categories they fall under. That is one of the most important things I have learned because it can really prevent you from years of pain and agony. Also, you must identify the uniqueness you bring to this world and contribute your own quota in your own way, in your own style, with your own voice, not to compete with anybody, but to be a true version of your original self so that people will say, this is the original content, no counterfeits. And then the last thing is that there must be something you will leave behind for generations yet to come to show that you passed through this earth. I was listening to somebody recently on a video on Instagram and he said, when we die after three generations nobody on earth knows you really because the generations that knew you have now gone the only thing that will make people know that you pass through this earth is whatever you left behind.
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