Aisha Abubakar Falke: Defying the odds, impacting the Northern less privileged
Serial entrepreneur Aisha Abubakar Falke has been touching the lives of the less privileged in Northern Nigeria with Northern Hibiscus, a non-profit organisation she founded that is devoted to touching the lives of society’s downtrodden. The serial entrepreneur and founder of the fashion brand, Falke by Aisha, in this interview, gave an account of her unlikely trajectory, from the laboratory to the sewing table, concisely articulating the motivation for her selfless service to society. Drawing from her experience, she also gave a good picture of the price of being an outspoken woman in a conservative society.
For someone who studied Applied Chemistry, fashion is off your beaten path. How did you get into the industry?
At the time I attended Danfodio University, aged 17 years old, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. My parents wanted me to study Medicine, so after secondary school, I enrolled for remedial studies, after failing to get admission immediately. Because my mother wanted it, I applied for Medicine. I didn’t get it. I got Applied Chemistry instead and that was the course I ended up studying, despite that my mother wanted Medicine. After my studies in 2008, I knew I wasn’t going to practice it.
When I was young, I used to draw outfits for my tailor. I did the same thing for my aunties and siblings. After I got married at my 200 level, I was encouraged by my husband to explore my artistic and creative side. This was how I ventured into fashion designing. I started with a friend that was getting married. I did something nice for her and she was very happy. The rest, as they say, is history.
Tell us about the Northern Hibiscus organisation.
Northern Hibiscus stemmed from the thirst I had for Northern content. Every day I wake up, I go to BellaNaija and Linda Ikeji and check out things that interest me but I knew that a lot of Northern women yearned for these things but couldn’t relate. So I decided to create a platform where these women can access and feel like it was theirs. I started it in September 2016. The second reason I started Northern Hibiscus was that I wanted to start a multi-vendor online mall. To start that kind of thing, you need a lot of money for marketing and publicity. I didn’t have that kind of money, but I found out I could reach my target market through blogging. If the likes of Linda Ikeji could write every day, I figured I could as well. So, I started writing, though, anonymously. But at point people knew it was me. I was already a bit popular with my fashion brand and I didn’t want the two to mix. I aimed to reach youths and so that led to our first summit that was attended by 1,400 youths and including the Kaduna State governor, his wife, some senators and members of the House of Representatives. This summit gave us publicity and that further galvanised me.
My friend and I decided to start a pro-bono school in Kano with at least 100 students. If they are properly educated, they would take their own families out of poverty, that was our idea; that if we can create one breadwinner amongst the poorest of the poor, they’ll go on to create 100 breadwinners themselves.
We then got teachers, a building and the students poured in. That was how Educate Academy was born. We have also been doing food drives, raising money to pay hospital bills. When COVID-19 came, we launched the NH Community School with 100 facilitators to teach thrice a day on Telegram. A lot of people learnt a lot of things from the platform during that period.
We also started a food drive campaign tagged Survive Covid, Survive Hunger campaign. In Jos where we had the first drive, we provided a month’s worth of food supplies for 337 families. We have been to other states including Kano, Zamfara, Katsina, Adamawa, Gombe and Kaduna.
It seems you left women out of your programme…
No. We launched the NH Community School, which helps people learn at least three skills daily in areas like social media marketing, food business, fashion and so on. Of the over 35,000 students on Telegram now, over 80 per cent are women. We also highlight businesses owned by women that are doing well in the North as a way to encourage them and others.
What do you think can be done to better the lot of women in northern Nigeria?
When you see an educated Northern woman, you can’t help but fall in love. She is educated, progressive knows what she wants and is very intelligent. We are trying to educate on several fronts: the regular and the street education. I am trying to push for financial literacy amongst Northern women. We want women to be able to do businesses even from their bedrooms.
With your over a decade of experience in the fashion industry in Nigeria, how do you think the industry can be repositioned to make it more impactful nationally and internationally?
Having been active in the fashion industry for over a decade, I have experienced the various facets of the problems plaguing fashion designers. One of the big problems is the lack is production companies. Outside this country, it is easy to be a fashion designer. But here, it is a different ball game. There are so many problems you have to deal with yourself, it is tiring. We need factories that manufacture different aspects of clothes, that is the major solution to our problem. It would lower costs and make fashion faster and more affordable. I am more of a fashion marketer than a designer; that is an area I am tilting towards more.
What are the benefits of mentorship in the life of a woman?
I didn’t have the benefit of a mentor when I started, and that made things difficult for me. It took me considerable time to achieve things. If I had had the benefit of a mentor, I could have achieved certain things faster. At the onset, my tailors saw how vulnerable I was and took advantage of me. So I learnt the hard way. Mentorship is very key, it is the foundation of entrepreneurship and more women need to be mentors for those coming behind them.
Tell us about some of the challenges that were in your way and how you scaled those hurdles…
One of the challenges with blogging was the Northern community not understanding it then and they gave me a lot of backlashes. People would come online and abuse my whole family, which I had to ignore. My TV show with Arewa24 came with a lot of restrictions and judgments. And because I am very vocal on social media, people often remind me I am a married Muslim woman and shouldn’t be too audible, but should simply say “yes” and “no sir.” When you’re an outspoken Northern woman, you get backlash from everyone, especially clerics, telling you that a Northern Muslim woman shouldn’t be heard but seen. People keep telling me that my husband should be jealous of me. I struggled with infertility and people kept mocking me by posting pictures of pregnant women, praying I would never experience motherhood. I get a lot of attacks and backlash but I can’t be broken.
What is your advice to women in general?
You can do it. Let nobody tell you that you aren’t good, worthy or pretty enough. Think wild dreams, go out there and achieve them. Don’t allow anyone to restrict you.
