NOVEMBER 2, 2013
The known practice in African tradition where house ownership seems to be the exclusive preserve of men may have been defied by women of Oru-Ijebu in Ijebu North Local Government Area of Ogun State.
In this quiet Ijebu town, being a woman may not be different from what it is in other Yoruba societies, as Saturday PUNCH learnt. But the women have certainly imbibed a culture that is ‘alien’ to many Yoruba communities in terms of ownership of houses.
When Saturday PUNCH correspondent visited Oru on Saturday and inquired from residents of the community which part of the town had more landladies than landlords, a commercial motorcyclist eagerly gave direction to Oke-Ife area and Ajebo, a surburb of the town.
Few metres to the centre of the town, a tarred road to the left opens into Oke-Ife, an area made up of semi-modern houses on either side of the road; the houses arranged in a mixture of bungalows and storey buildings.
This is not a place where one would find a duplex and none of the storey buildings had more than one floor. It is clear it is not an area that has seen new building developments lately, just a quiet neighbourhood of old widows and senior citizens.
The tarred streets of Oke-Ife in Oru, like many rural communities, lay sleepy without activities as few relaxed old women engaged in tete-a-tete in front of some of the semi-modern houses.
Life here is quiet unlike the hustle and bustle of the urban areas. Residents seemed to be unruffled by anything. No traffic disturbed their peace and no sudden noises jolted them unnecessarily.
But most of the houses in this part of the town are owned by women who either built them with their own money or inherited them after their husbands had died.
Eighty-five-year-old Madam Sikiratu Amusa is one of such women.
The lean old woman, despite old age, spoke coherently in her Ijebu dialect. She said she built the six bedroom house she lives in – a mixture of mud bricks and cement plaster – about 35 years ago.
Hers is a testimony to the fact that this trend started long ago in this community.
Amusa told Saturday PUNCH that by the parameters of her youthful days, she was rich.
But any misgiving about what business she must have been doing to be able to afford such a house, was immediately dispelled, when she said, “I sold Egusi (melon seeds), corn and Kolanut in large quantities. There were a very few of us doing that kind of business in this area at the time.
“At the time I built my house 35 years ago, my husband already had his own house. I lived with him in that house. But I still went ahead to build my own house.
“I rented out the house after it was completed. My husband, who was a farmer at the time, did not find anything wrong in what I did since I did not pack out of his house to live in my new house. He was actually happy when my house was completed. He knew that whatever I had, also belonged to him.
“I lived in his house till he died about two years ago. I packed into my own house after he died.”
It was rather surprising that at her age, Amusa would choose to leave her husband’s house after his death; a house she had lived in all her life.
But she said packing into her own house was borne out of the desire to live in the house she built with her own money before she dies.
Amusa said she currently lives off her children and the little she still gets from rent in her house.
“It is just a pity that the students (of the Ogun State University, Ago Iwoye) are no longer here. I do not get much from rent any longer because they were the ones who rented most houses here,” she said.
Amusa’s mien and attitude suggested she no longer had any worries in her life. At her age, she has achieved what many people dream of.
“I was a rich trader in those days and I spent my money on giving my children good education. On top of that, I built my own house,” she said proudly.
Her attitude seems to embody the spirit of self-achievement of the women in the area.
But, perhaps as a result of the foggy condition that age has caused to her memory, Amusa, could not recall how much she spent on building her house.
“I cannot remember how much building my house cost at the time but it is certainly an amount that will make you laugh compared with today’s cost,” she said with smile.
In the case of Suwebat Omilaja, a widow like Amusa but much younger, losing her husband in 1984, when she was merely 26 years old gave her the needed push to complete the house project, which was barely off foundation stage as at the time he died.
The modest cement house was completed in 1997, 13 years after her husband’s death.
The 55-year-old woman said her husband died at the age of 62 but the 13 years it took her to put a roof over her head and that of her children, was a period that she was thankful to God for.
She said, “Women here are just naturally hardworking. For a woman, having a house is like the peak of physical achievement. I am not saying the men are lazy, but we as women like to show we are capable of doing what the men do as well.
“Things would have been very hard for my children if this house had not been built. I did all kinds of work. I did a lot of monthly contributions through which I was able to save money.
“I have always noticed that most of the houses here have women as landladies and I have been praying to God all my life to make me a house owner as well.”
Omilaja’s case is understandable.
Like many other widows of Oru, who went ahead to build their own houses despite the fact that their husbands already had houses, 54-year-old Afusat Olowoake, built her house in Ajebo area of Oru; a storey building with six bedrooms on each floor.
No stranger would have thought the barefooted unassuming woman who held a child in front of the house painted blue is the owner of the house.
She spoke softly as she explained how she nearly incurred the wrath of her late husband when she built the house.
“All I can say about us women who own houses here in Oru is that we were very hardworking traders,” Olowoake said.
She built her house about 20 years ago, she told Saturday PUNCH, at a time when just N20 could make a big difference in the life of a whole family.
The woman said, “I bought the land for N10. As at that time, I was a big dry fish merchant. I was a dry fish supplier to a lot of retailers in this area. They were all coming to my house in those days.
“I had a lot of money. My peers saw me as a very rich woman. I partied a lot because I was invited to every social event. But that did not stop me from also sending my children to school.
“Someone came to me one day and told me that instead of wasting all the money that I had, I should try and build a house of my own. That was when my attitude changed.”
But she said even though her late husband was not too happy initially about her building a house of her own, she was able to pacify him so that she could keep her marriage.
“Telling your husband that you want to build your own house is something that can destroy your marriage because the husband may conclude that you have ‘grown wings’. But women who built houses and wanted to keep their homes knew how to manage the situation in those days. Building a house of their own is ingrained in the mind of many women here but time has changed. It is no longer something that is easy to achieve,” Olowoake said.
The woman lost her husband about a decade ago and like others, she packed into her house, which had hitherto been let out to tenants.
She is currently living there with some of her grandchildren.
A community leader in Oru, Chief Francis Adegbesa, the Ololu of Odo Iyangunse, provided an insight into why some women choose to pack into their own houses after their husbands’ death.
He said it was due to fear of family interference.
“Some of them may feel that they would be safer in the house they built with their own money as one problem or the other may come up with the relations of the husband,” Adegbesa said.
He also provided insight into why there are so many women landladies in the area.
Adegbesa said, “I believe the reason is that women here have been exposed to trading on a large scale for a long time. In those days when the women were making a lot of money and building houses, most of the men were farmers. The trading tended to bring more returns easily than the farming.
“Most of the women who could not afford to build their own houses were those whose only work was helping their husbands on the farm. But that is not to say that men too did not equally build houses here. There were many cocoa and Kolanut farmers who became rich a long time before the women started to rise in wealth.
“Men here are not lazy. We see it as a thing of pride that a lot of our women in this area own houses. Others who did not build their own houses are landladies in the houses their husbands left behind. That is why there are a lot of houses with landladies in this area.”
Some of the women who have now become landladies in the houses left behind by their husbands did not hide the fact that they once dreamed of building th eir own houses.
One of such women, Mrs. Taiwo Fasasi, said her husband died 10 years ago.
She said, “I was a food seller while my husband was a retired soldier who became a commercial driver. I was popular as a food seller in those days. It was my dream to build my own house.
“But while I struggled with that ambition, the education of my children was something I also needed to focus on. So, all the money went into that. You know in those days, we knew nothing about family planning. We still had to educate all the children we produced.
“My husband built a bungalow from his N700 army retirement benefit. He later built another house; a four-bedroom bungalow. But despite that, I would still have loved to build my own house.”
Mrs. Felicia Ogunfowora, a 78-year-old widow living in a bungalow her husband left behind, told Saturday PUNCH that the struggle by women to build their own houses in the area had to do with the aversion of women for maltreatment.
“Nobody wanted to be treated as less important in marriage. I had a great marriage before my husband passed on in 1994 but the truth is that women are more resourceful when it had to do with surviving and saving money,” she explained.
The men in Oke-Ife area of Oru are quite aware of the fact that the area is dominated by women landladies. But they say this has not been a cause for problem or controversy in any way.
Our correspondent could not get the view of the traditional ruler of Oru, the Oloru of Oru on this unique feature of the community as he was said to be newly appointed and was not available.
According to Pa Busari Mudashiru, an elderly resident of the area, the trend of women saving money to build their own houses started when women who were traders started making weekly contributions in the house of a cocoa merchant in Oke-Ife named Quadri Ogunsanya.
“This is more than sixty years ago. The women traders met at Ogunsanya’s house to make weekly contributions of two shillings. Most of the women built houses from their contributions at the end of the year. Some also spent it on their children’s education,” he said.
Ogunsanya’s house is the first to be built on the street around the turn of the 20th Century. It is still standing today, although inhabitable because it has become old and unstable.
It was learnt that a woman referred to as Iya Mope, was the first to build a house in Oke-Ife about 70 years ago.
Even though the self-achievement mentality that made Oru women find it necessary to build their own houses in years past still exists, the economic situation has made it difficult for the new generation of women in the area to realise this dream.
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