Roli… The simple warm-hearted ‘Girl’ in State House

BY OYINDAMOLA LAWAL

SEATED in a vast office, with little sunlight streaming through the window, Mrs. Roli Sheila Uduaghan casts a glance at her visitor. Her eyes are also on the files on her table. She is simply dressed, formal, so to say. No chunky earrings or bracelets. She brims with smiles
This afternoon, she is scheduled to hold meeting with some members of her Foundation, so, the chat, she begs, should not last long.
Her tone is warm, as she says, “ We’ll talk for only 10 minutes, I have to attend to other urgent matters.”
Ten minutes, I wondered. To get fact from the lady, who recently bagged an award for her services to humanity?
As I ponder on the first shot, she snaps me out of reverie, saying with a diction that sticks out in rhyming lore, “what I miss most as a governor’s wife is my freedom.” A fit of laughter fills the air. “I can’t go to the market freely.”
There’s an excellent atmosphere in the room and suddenly, she breathes, ”my mission is yet to be fully realised.”
She says her mission is to alleviate the suffering of women and less-privileged in Delta State. And in five years, she has done so, albeit, quietly. On May 12, however, she will make some noise about Mastercare Foundation, which in the past five years has addressed the plight of women, especially widows in that state.
On that day, the foundation will host wife of Acting President, Dame Patience Jonathan, in a
programme themed Lending a helping hand.
To be held in Asaba, Delta State, it is an opportunity for Mrs. Uduaghan to highlight Mastercare’s activities.
According to the lady, since the Foundation’s inception, it has made remarkable impact on the lives of widows, women and children in Delta State, which the world has to know.
“Part of the project has been the provision of working tools and equipment, which includes free farm in-puts and implements (fertilizer, cassava stems, premium treated maize for higher yields) to boost their earning, distribution of gifts to the children, execution of certain projects such as the free eye-care programme, provision of empowerment tolls like boats, fishing nets, tricycles, hair dryers and other saloon kits, and many others,” she says innocently.

ON November 2, 2009, Mastercare Foundation, in collaboration with John Hopkins University, United States of America, marked the first World Pneumonia Day in Delta State. The event featured a rally and lectures from different professionals on the causes, symptoms and prevention of pneumonia. She says plans are still on the way to initiate projects that would create more opportunities for women and children to live better lives.
Mrs. Uduaghan opens one of the brochures on her table and details her assistant to bring it closer. “Women need to be given a sense of belonging, direction and self worth so that they can live responsibly, comfortably and contribute meaningfully to the growth and development in the society,” she said. “I selected widows because that is where the group of people I feel greatly for lies, because of what they are going through when their husbands die,” she snorts.
Uduaghan explains with a deep chuckle, “it is a programme I have been doing for five years now, even before I became the governor’s wife. We have been working for some time now. May 12 has been set aside for public presentation — a kind of outdooring… you know, we want to tell the world what we are doing, I can’t just come out to show the public empty basket.”
She says, “most of the time, I deal with the women directly. Just like this event, I invited people and I told them to get me 10 women from each local council, who are in business or want to pursue a career,” she pauses and adds, “whatever I do, I go down to the grassroots; I do most of the things myself. I do not have much money to do these things, so there is no way I will now give it to somebody that will not value what I am doing. When you see the people I give, you will know that of the truth they are in need. I do not deal on word basis, I also scrutinise them.”

MASTERCARE is also launching a Business Career Clinic in Delta State — a women empowerment initiative — that will highlight available business opportunities to the Delta woman.
This programme entails lectures and various training programmes on different business ventures that the women can build on. The lectures are to hold every month over a period of 10 months in diverse locations in the state. The first lecture holds in Asaba on Thursday, May 6.
According to her, through the empowerment programme, “we want to find out what they actually want to do, if they have the opportunity.”
She adds, “for those we assist, we don’t just give them money, every assistance is dependent on what they are actually doing and what they want to do. For those that are hairdressers, and do not have the means to establish themselves, we give them a full package of a salon… but we don’t rent stores for them. We also give them grinders and refrigerators to sell cold water and drink, amongst others.”
As the governor’s wife, one of the major challenges she faces is the misconception of what the position is all about. “People just sit and imagine that governors’ wives have solutions to all problems, they can answer all problems; they are even God; and when they do not see what they expect, they try to blackmail you or call you names. They do not realise that as a governor’s wife, you are just a housewife like any other one out there. You are really doing what you are doing for public not for any man,” the youthful lady says, sipping the liquid in her glass.

ON Nigerian women, Uduaghan had this to say: “They are very industrious; never mind the extent we have reached now, we are trusting on God we will get there one day. They are the best of women that I have ever come across. They are patient, industrious and very hardworking; you cannot do without the average Nigerian woman.”
Why are Nigerian youths left out in her project? She answers, “ I can’t serve everybody. As I said earlier, this thing I am doing is not a governor’s wife project; I am doing it, as a call from God and the youths are not part of the project. It is only for widows and children but if the youth fall into the group of widows/children, fine. I am not the governor; it is the governor that is responsible for everybody.”
Asked what her style is, she answers, “I do not know, I just wear what I wear that suits me, and maybe, the occasion I am going to. I like wearing free clothes, I do not like tight-fitted clothes.”

At war with cancer

BY OYINDAMOLA LAWAL
HER passion for helping people, most especially, women, made her study Psychology in the university. But importantly, she was interested in making impact in the society. One possible battle line is cancer: the breast and cervical variants.
For this, Orode Jade Uduaghan has established a foundation. In fact, while studying abroad, the 20-year-old graduate of University of Window, Canada and the founder of Pink Pearl Foundation discovered the need to create awareness on breast and cervical cancer, among Nigerian women.
The foundation started in October 2007 as a passion to help Nigerian women have good health. “We had a concert to raise money in December 2007 at Expo hall, Eko Hotel, Lagos. Artistes like P Square, Banky Wellington, Olu Maintain and a lot of comedians performed,” she says.
When the foundation started, she discovered that the knowledge of cervical and breast cancer among Nigerian women was poor so she decided to go on a ‘state to state’ campaign.
“We have a lot of countries that know about these diseases. I schooled in Canada and every month, there is some sort of awareness campaign in schools even at secondary schools. So, an average 15 years old girl has a clue of what this disease is and how to prevent it. But coming back to Nigeria, my heart bleeds to see that Nigerian women have no clue about these diseases,” she stresses.
Jade says, “since we started this campaign, we have had a lot of people come up to us, asking what breast cancer and cervical cancer is all about? ‘What should I do?’ ‘How should I go about it?’ And that is where the passion and drive came from. It is actually killing a lot of people and if you have noticed, it is increasing more than it was before. We are also embarking on state-to-state campaign as another medium. We have done one in Asaba last month and it was a huge success.”
According to the young lady, “we were able to go round Asaba, went to the markets, walked for a very long time, shared handbills and talked to people about breast cancer even in Pidgin English. We also did one in Lagos recently, with the first lady of Lagos State, Abimbola Fashola… we walked from Onigbongbo Market (Maryland) to Alade Market (Ikeja), she stresses. Basically, our goal is to create this awareness for Nigerian women on breast and cervical cancer.”

WITH two years of waging war, treating and teaching women on breast and cervical cancer, Jade Uduaghan believes that using entertainment medium and advocacy campaign to reach out to Nigerians will help in achieving the goals of the foundation.
“We were able to raise some money and thereafter, embarked on a campaign and seminar, where we invited a lot of women, who were given free talk and free breast check up in Warri. We had over a thousand women in attendance, and over 50 women had free breast checkup. Thereafter, we went ahead with a concert in 2008. We got money to help us do our project in Warri, where we had Faze, Kefee and a good number of people to support our concert and performed.”
She adds, “we used the money we got from the first and second concert to get a manual grand for the Central Hospital in Sapele, Delta State that was in December 2008. We did yet another campaign in January 2009 in Asaba. We had over a thousand women again at the campaign, free check up, and since then we have made a lot of progress. We carry out daily free check-ups for women in Asaba, Delta. We have two doctors that are working with the foundation that carry out these daily check-ups. So women are able to just go in and get themselves checked if they want to and someone they can consult.”

ONE of the experiences that have kept Jade going on the campaign in spite of the challenges was the death of her aunt as a result of breast cancer.
She reveals, “yes, I lost an aunt in 2005 due to late detection of breast cancer. She was pretty young. That again was another push and we had to do something about it.”
Jade says one of her greatest challenges is to make people come out for test on time. “There is a lot of emotional challenges because you get to meet a lot of these women; they come to you when this disease is already deadly. Early this year, we had a case of a woman, who came to me when we had our campaign in Asaba. She showed me her breast, it was already gone but we can’t say no, we did the surgery for her but after two weeks, she died.
“These are the kind of things we face; a lot of people come to us but they don’t come early enough and by then our help can’t really do enough, we cannot do as much as we would want to do to save their lives. We also have challenges of funding but losing people has always been one of the major challenges.”
For many, inspirations come from their experience and God, but to Jade, she gets her inspiration from her patients.
She says, “ yes, I have had a patient that really inspired me. There is this youth corps member, who is undergoing Chemotherapy now. The major problem women have is, if I take away one breast, what will become of me? But she did not put that as a set back and had operation. She is now perfectly fine, she is doing everything she needs to do and it is not noticeable and obvious but she has just one breast. She has given me that drive to still go on doing what I am doing.”

PINK Pearl was coined from woman’s colour and jewellery. She explains, “the pink for me is woman; it is a colour for woman. The pearl is a precious stone; basically it is a woman being precious. When we put it together we got Pink Pearl. I know it is very impossible to say that breast cancer will vanish forever. We want to get to a point where at least every woman can decide what to do at anytime to detect it early. Because what we discover is people come to us when it has gotten to a stage where we can do nothing about it.
“We help them but at the end of the day, it is not productive because they don’t survive. Early awareness is our motive and goal, which is what we are preaching. If you know about this early, you can get to us and you can save your life. We are trying to create early awareness about early detection.” She added
How has she been able to get funds for such a huge and tasking project? She disclosed, “We get funds from companies, individuals. For example during the concert, people bought tickets 10 times more than the actual price as a donation or a gift. And sometimes individuals just come up and pick a patient and pay for treatment. Also, we get sponsorship from companies. But no money coming from daddy.”
Of course, a lot of people would think she embarked on this project because she is a governor’s daughter. Jade Uduaghan, however says, “If you know me and ask people around me, you will know that I have the passion for helping people. I’ve always had this passion to help people. In my secondary school, I was the health prefect. Because of the zeal to help people, I decided to read psychology. Helping people is what I really love doing, even if I am not in this position as the governor’s daughter, I will still do it, but thanks to God I am here. It has given me the upper hand and the opportunity so I might as well just use it.”
Her advice to Nigerians is, “for the men, we always preach, do not look down on your wives, who have had one breast removed as a result of breast cancer but that they should show them love. For the women, after treating them physically, we build their mentality that they can still go on with life with one breast and after talking to them about it they can now move from feeling depressed.”
She says. “We reshape their mentality and after that we noticed their life begins to change from depression to a more stable state. We do a total package, total wellbeing. Then we let them know that they should put their faith in God who created us all. Cervical cancer is the most difficult; breast cancer is what you can see but for cervical cancer, you don’t even know you have it. We are preaching go and get check-up. And when you know you really cannot afford the treatment, we will do it for you.”