How Jalingo vegetable market offers opportunities to widows, divorcees

The market located at Lau Motorpark is the main vegetable market in Jalingo, the Taraba State capital.

Hundreds of women, mostly widows and divorcees are taking advantage of small business opportunities offered by Jalingo Vegetable Market to make a living.

Finding by North East Trust showed that hundreds of women dominate business activities in the market even though main vegetable dealers in the market are men.

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The market located at Lau Motorpark is the main vegetable market in Jalingo, the Taraba State capital.

Further findings showed traders bring in  truckloads of  vegetables from Kano, Bauchi, Yobe Gombe Katsina and Kaduna  daily to the market.

The women, are seen daily struggling amongst men in the early morning to buy vegetables for sale at different parts of the metropolis and adjoining settlements.

North East Trust  findings revealed that the women  started as  petty traders but because of their number they now dominate the business of vegetables in the capital.

One of the women, Saadatu Abubakar, who is a widow ,told North East Trust that her husband died about six years ago and since  then she has been in the business of buying and selling vegetables.

According to her, she started the business  with a capital of N4000 and she is now using the profit to feed her four children and pay their school fees.

Saadatu Abubakar explained that early in the morning on daily basis she would buy vegetables including water leaf, bitter leaf, tomatoes pepper,  onions and other vegetable  sales.

She said she used the front of  her house at the Water Board area in Jalingo for her business and people within her area patronise her.

Saadatu, said that every household needs  vegetables on daily basis and that was why she has many customers.

“I started the business of buying and selling vegetables with only N4000 but my capital is now up to N120, 000 apart from taking care of my needs and for my children,” she said.

She said  there are many other women, and most of them are either widows or  divorcees, where she lives, engaged in the business of selling vegetables.

Another woman, Florence Mulki, told North East Trust she has been in the business for four years and she started with a capital of N3000. She said she had grown her capital and has ventured into other businesses.

North East Trust correspondent also reports that women dominate the vegetable business in several other small markets in the metropolis.

Such markets include the ones located at Jeka da Fari, Sabon Gari, Mayogwoi, Mile 6, Kasuwan Beta, Nukkai and Magami.

Similarly, across local government areas of the state, hundreds of widows and divorcees are equally involved in the business of vegetables, our finding further revealed.

The Chairman of Jalingo Main Vegetable market,, Abdullahi Tijjani, told North East Trust that thousands of women mostly widows and divorcees are taking advantage of business opportunity offered by the market.

He said women in their hundreds struggle with their male counterparts in buying and selling of vegetables in the market  and other towns in the state on daily basis.

Abubakar Tijjani stated further that most of the women started the business with small capital few years  ago but because of demands of vegetables in the town, they are  making good fortune, a development that attracts more women into the business.