‘Nigeria needs food banks now more than ever’

Losing his soldier father at nine and his mother to illness at 12, having to beg for food and basically live off charity, was all the experience Peter Adeeko needed to conceive the Soulace Food Bank project for war widows and orphans. Daily Trust: What was the motivation to start a food bank? Peter Adeeko:  […]

Losing his soldier father at nine and his mother to illness at 12, having to beg for food and basically live off charity, was all the experience Peter Adeeko needed to conceive the Soulace Food Bank project for war widows and orphans.

Daily Trust: What was the motivation to start a food bank?

Peter Adeeko:  My childhood dream was to adopt many orphans and build a big house for them. Little did I know that I would end up an orphan by age 12. My father – a soldier sustained combat injury and he died. My mother took ill afterwards and she too died.  My teenage older brother, became father. This was not without an adverse effect on him. He dropped out of school to fend for us and he became alcoholic and violent. Getting education for me was like passing through the eye of a needle. I was chased out of classrooms and flogged on many occasions, for bringing late school fees.

One of such I vividly remember was in my Class 3, in secondary school. The school principal striped me of my school uniform, socks and sandals as punishment for failing to bring the school fees, and as collateral for payment.  It wouldn’t have been anything serious if I wasn’t the only one in my class as at that time to face this. It was such a humiliation for a child as I was then.  Having scaled through all of these, I am passionate at preventing violent conflict, I also support families already affected by war in Nigeria, through my organization, Soulace Africa Initiative.

I have always been worried with the idea of people being fed during festive period while we pretended, they are fine every other days of the year. I am always uncomfortable with occasional handoffs.  So in preparation for the just concluded international widow’s day 2019, I was keen to do something differently and sustainably.  I want to ensure widows don’t have to wander about where the next food comes from when we have our skill building or vocational trainings.  And for the first time, my mind went to the Egypt and Joseph scenario in the bible. I had a thrust in me its ‘food bank’.  I quickly jumped on the internet and the rest is story.

DT: What experience(s) about your childhood have/has played a role in this regard?

Adeeko: My father died when I was nine. I saw my mother go through the horror of widowhood for 12 agonizing years before she took ill and then died.  I saw my older brother and sister drop out of school for lack of school fees and support from anywhere.  I clearly remember all our travails at the time leading up to our parents’ deaths. I cannot forget impact of the 1988 austerity measures, on my family.  We practically begged to eat at some point. The truth is, many families are going through worse conditions today. Widows are highly disconnected and marginalized in Nigeria and worse for those of veterans.

DT: How did you set up the foodbank?

Adeeko: Soulace Food bank is an initiative born from immense desire to win the war against hunger concerning war widows and orphans in Nigeria. The project was launched during 2019 International Widow’s Day in Ibadan, and will officially kickoff before the year’s end. All arms are on deck to harness needed resources. This will be first of its kind in Nigeria.  The food bank will serve as shock absorber for the widows.

DT: How does it work?

Adeeko: It is a commodity exchange and women support enterprise designed to provide short /medium term sustainable solution to hunger and food insecurity through collection, redistribution and access to rediscounted food items support to vulnerable veteran wives and widows across barracks in Nigeria. This will be through a cooperative structure.  We are liaising with the barracks community for a warehouse where food items will be stored. We are also reaching out to well-meaning Nigerians, corporate organizations and donor agencies to donate raw food items or monetize their gifts, while we execute their supplies.  We are intalks with organisations dealing in family products, to be part of this initiative. The bank is designed to operate a hybrid business model which drives impact and earns some margin or contribution. This model helps us to be sustainable in the long run.

Registered widows with Soulace Survivor Network (our self-help group and cooperative) will pay monthly renewable subscription. In case of supervening financial difficulty, members can pay through their existing contribution in their cooperative account. Veterans’ widows will have access to some pre-determined volume of food items that is equal to the 40% of their spending on food monthly. Albeit, the foodbank shall earn margin on sales to non -members within the community. Receipts on membership collection and proceeds on sale will be ploughed back to replenish the bank’s stock, while we continue to have our partners give to us on a rolling basis.

The foodbank will have kiosks in strategic spots in the barracks where women who want to buy can access them. Selling some food stuff while supporting the widows will be our way of giving back to our food based organisations whose products shall be sold through this initiative.  However, our door is open to continuous collection of food donations.

DT: This is arguably, a first of its kind in Nigeria. What models did you learn from?

Adeeko: It is an impact-driven social enterprise designed to complement our interventions with the community affected by war in Nigeria. I have looked through the Western idea about food banks, especially in Europe and the United States, where the concept is predominant. I have also understudied the Egyptian and Joseph models and implementation. I think we are taking a middle ground, bringing social impact and profit margin to play.

DT: How do you plan to avoid the mistakes they made especially as their situations may be or are totally different from scenarios Nigeria may present?

Adeeko: I discovered that most organizations running food banks in Europe and America, do them as stand-alone or one-off charity-based projects. The reason being, poverty is not as prevalent and social efforts in this regard, are readily funded. This is the reverse with Nigeria and other African countries. Nigeria is presently rated one of the most impoverished countries. Giving to charity has many drawbacks. Regardless, we cannot be onlookers. Poverty won’t just go away and we really need food banks in Nigeria. The food bank is a complementary, participatory and contributory project.  We are restricted to food items with long shelf life. As much as we look forward to big institutional support, we are also exploring smaller contributions from our committed partners. More so, the project is volunteer-based and open ended. We are also venturing into agro-preneur next year.  This is expected to further enhance sustainability of the project.

To tackle challenges with storage, the food bank will only deal in commodities with minimal perish-ability for now. As the project grows, we will absolve more. The kiosks will enhance stock turnover and better reach to widows, while we are also driving social impact.

Daily Trust: You are based in Ibadan. How are you organizing to collect food donations from other locations?

Adeeko: Being a pilot project, we shall be mobilizing food items essentially from south western states. Donors outside this catchment area will be encouraged to monetize their food donations.  However, where it is difficult to monetize, we shall arrange pickup from whatever location through public commuters, but such donor will have to pay for the cost of transportation. In the future, we shall have this challenge curtailed as we plan to replicate this project across all geopolitical zones in Nigeria. Donors can then donate to the nearest food bank to them. These will also be driven and supported by our volunteer network and mobile app that enable prompt donor alert, pickup and deposit.