I’ve passion in children, women safety – ROSOWA ex-president

What would you say was your greatest achievement while in office? On assumption of office as ROSOWA president, I inherited a robust organisation and I say so because I met a group of passionate women and everything I learnt and did, I learnt from them. I was briefed on the STOP, LOOK AND LISTEN programme […]

What would you say was your greatest achievement while in office?
On assumption of office as ROSOWA president, I inherited a robust organisation and I say so because I met a group of passionate women and everything I learnt and did, I learnt from them. I was briefed on the STOP, LOOK AND LISTEN programme and we built all of our ideas from that initiative. We focused on children and that helped us contribute our quota to the success of the corps. We also embarked on the THINK! CHILDREN SAFETY CAMPAIGN aimed at advocating for safe transportation of children by promoting the use of age appropriate child seats and restraints. In choosing the child safety campaign, we were guided by global and local data that showed that road crashes were one of the leading causes of children’s deaths.
Developing and empowering officers’ wives were my second passion. I worked with the women on skill acquisition and lifestyle training, ranging from personal comportment to household management and other life skills. We focused on these soft issues arising from my deep conviction that only a woman with a healthy self-esteem can appreciate what her husband does for a living.
We also concentrated on the welfare and health of our women, and so embarked on a project, the School Bus Project which was to support the child safety campaign. We joined the enlightenment campaign and worked with schools we were already engaged with to promote the implementation of the project.
We also started a crèche at the Wole Soyinka Estate, Masaka, and had hopes to eventually develop it into a school with the support of the corps. A tailoring school was also established which we hope would engage women and children especially during long holidays. We also came up with the Road Safety Lifestyle magazine. We identified a group that was ignored and decided to bring together the wives of the marshals of the corps. They turned out to be a really large group of women passionately looking for avenues to contribute to society’s growth. My dream of inclusion gave birth to the Road Safety Marshal Wives Association. We tried to develop and grow ROSOWA at state and zonal levels.

What was your challenge while in office?
The major challenge I had to deal with was my inexperience and my age, but the women made up for it because they were available to teach me and of course I applied my own wisdom which I thought was the right thing to do. Another challenge I had was the bid to create a culture shift, it was tough trying to get some women to do things differently and see themselves differently. I tell you it was difficult at the beginning. But along the line, I got a lot of support from the women and they treated me very well and respected me. I joined the association as a young naive 31-year-old woman but today I cannot quantify how much experience I have gained. I came into the association as an outsider but I was embraced by women who had no business dealing with me.

Given another opportunity, what would you do differently?
To tell the truth, I don’t think there is much I would do differently because I pursued my passion to the best of everything I believed in. Sometimes, it didn’t seem so smart but I did everything I believed in.

What advice would you give to the ROSOWA new leadership?
My advice is that they have to carry everybody along and get to learn from them because they are the only ones who can tell you how to help them. It is important they are listened to them so that they can be able to give them the best.

What are you doing at the moment?
I am presently living a quiet life I would say. It’s been eight years in the public eyes, so I think I need to take a break. But I am looking forward to better things in the future.