…Says Women Buys On Impulse
By: Mayen Etim
KADUNA, North-West, Nigeria – A financial expert with the Mabina Microfinance Bank Limited, Kaduna, Mrs. Chidinma Tite, has identified some of the causes why women failed in businesses, saying most women are being encumbered with a whole lots of home costs, marriage as well as impulse purchases.
She disclosed at a seminar organized by a Nongovernmental Organization, Empowering Women for Excellence Initiative, (EWEI) held in Kaduna on Friday.
According to her, women owned businesses faced a whole lots of home costs because women by their nature are emotional, hence, she will not allow her child go hungry while she saved up money for her business capital.
She said the seminar become necessary to help beneficiaries of the EWEI loan grants acquired some form of educational literacy, life skills of saving, spending and budgeting to keep their business running.
Tite explained further that a woman can go to the market to buy items for her business, but on sighting a new pair of shoes will divert the money to buy them instead.
“For a woman to succeed in business, she has to cut out impulse buying. All purchases must be based on budget and she must not live outside her budget.
“Marriage is very good, but an average woman is emotional. Women want to used their business money to cook sweet soup, buy present for the husbands that the business can not afford and this killed business,” she said.
“We want to let the women know that hunger does not kill a child as they need to save their businesses. If a child eats food, tomorrow it will still be hungry, but if the business grows the woman can feed and train the child onward from that business. So women need to have spending limit both for the business and personal use.
“I want to tell women that saving their business is more important because when the business is saved, your husband will be very proud of you. He will even want to show you off as a successful business woman. So it is important to have a balance between marriage and business. As the business grow, the marriage is growing. None should suffer for the other,” Tite admonished.
Addressing the beneficiaries, Tite said that one road does not lead to the market, noting that the women have unlimited resources at their disposal. She informed them that the greatest inputs for their business is not money but their ideas.
She however urged them to think hard as ideas rule the world, and that the limitations of the money they make is the limit of their ideas.
Earlier, the Assistant Program Officer, Admin/Logistics, External Relations, Ms Grace Attah, said that EWEI founded in 2008, for the past ten years has been at the forefront of empowering women through enlightenment.
According to her, EWEI have several projects and activities carried out and Economic Empowerment Partnership, (EEP) is one of such projects.
She said that EEP trains women of low income or no income earners as well as out-of-school girls on life skills and then give them loan grants as capital to start up small and viable businesses of their own.
Attah said further that EEP in it first and second phases had activities in two communities in Mahuta in Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna state, where women were taught on how to make beverages, petroleum jelly among others.
“Today is the 3rd phase, and in this seminar EEP will enlightened beneficiaries of our loan grants on financial literacy skills after which they would be given the loans to start up their business,” she disclosed.
Speaking on behalf of other beneficiaries, Mrs Stella Emmanuel, commended EEP for the seminar and for choosing them for the third phase of its women empowerment program.
She said that the new skills acquired from the seminar, will help boost and take their businesses to a new height.