S5E17: Transcript
Democracy, Resilience and Human Flourishing
with Dr. Hafsat Abiola
Tavia Gilbert: Welcome to Stories of Impact. I’m writer/producer Tavia Gilbert, and every first and third Tuesday, journalist Richard Sergay and I bring you conversations about the art and science of human flourishing.
My friends, I hope this episode finds you in good health, enjoying peace and prosperity, feeling hopeful and excited for your future. This is what I want for each and every person. I want our listeners to be — right now, in this moment and always — flourishing. But I ended our last episode with a reference to the mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, and I open our latest episode still reeling from the aftermath of the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, and with the awareness that there have been several more since then. It seems that there is always another and another and another, and in addition to pain, grief, and loss, the effect of this stochastic terrorism is also to undermine democracy itself. We must be able to participate in public and civic life and community without the threat or the enactment of violence. We must be able expect representatives in our government to respond to the needs and the pleas of their electorate. We must be able to count on adults whose job is to "serve and protect" to answer the cries of children. If we cannot, then we are not just dysfunctional, we are broken.
But, in this episode, we hope to offer some light to cut through the darkness. When we mapped out our editorial calendar earlier last year, we didn’t know how perfectly timed today’s episode would be, but our guest gives voice to the resilience, courage, service, care for community, determination, and hope that we all need to navigate this profoundly troubled period and to bring to life a healthier future.
Meet Dr. Hafsat Abiola, native of Nigeria, President of the Women in Africa Initiative, Harvard-educated economist, expert in sustainable development, and civil rights and Democracy advocate. Her story and her life’s work will inspire you, particularly now. To understand Dr. Abiola, let’s start with getting to know her parents.
Hafsat Abiola: My mother was a high school graduate, but she was brilliant, you know, she was the head girl of her high school. But her parents didn’t pay to send her on to university, because at the time, it wasn’t so common that girls went. She was the first generation to be educated in the Western way. She had always wanted to become a pharmacist. Instead, she became a mother of many, many children. So she decided to set up a pharmaceutical company. She was a big success.
My father went into politics, and he ran for office. And he won, he won the ticket to be president of Nigeria. And after he won, the military said, no, no, we don’t really want a democracy. We’re not ready to leave power. And they were trying to negotiate with him. They wanted to give him money, but he wouldn’t accept, so they put him in prison. So when they put him in prison, my mom started selling the properties that she had bought, and she started organizing market women, she started organizing journalists, she started organizing the unions to protest, because the military would be shooting when they go for marches, then you have to take the victims to the hospital, you have to pay for that. And there were so many things you had to pay for. So she had to sell a lot of the assets that she had built up.
And I remember in the interviews she would give, she would say, people always say that women belong in the household, and they belong in the kitchen. They belong in the bedroom. But even in 1995, when my mother was organizing the demonstrations and the protests in Nigeria, she started saying that women needed to go into all public spaces, that they should not only raise children, but they should go into the world to make sure that the world is ready to accept their children, that they have that responsibility. So she had that very clear notion that women belong in all spaces where decisions that are relevant to their lives are being made. And I never forgot that.
Tavia Gilbert: Though he had decisively won the presidency in an election determined to be fair and free by Nigerian and international observers, Dr. Abiola’s father, M.K.O. Abiola was imprisoned, mostly in solitary confinement, for years, while her mother, Alhaja Kudirat Abiola, fought publicly for his release and for her husband’s freedom, until she was murdered in retaliation.
Hafsat Abiola: When I was in my last year of university, I think I was around 20, 21, my mom was gunned down in my country. So I had to pull the youngest two out of Nigeria. And the US ambassador to Nigeria helped the children get visas so they could get out of Nigeria to come to the US. And I remember when I went to the airport to pick them up, and they just ran, and they held me. And so I quickly became a mom at 21, to a seven-year-old, a nine-year-old, my sister who was around 14, and another sister that was about 17. But I wasn’t really a mom, we were just part of a team. We formed a team, my two sisters and I, taking care of the two youngest. And I started working as soon as possible because we had no money.
Tavia Gilbert: The family suffered another devastating loss, when M.K.O. Abiola died on the day he was scheduled to be released. His cause of death has never been determined: Some believe he was poisoned, there are claims that he was beaten to death, others say that he was not given proper medical treatment while imprisoned, so that his long-untreated heart disease killed him. Regardless, Dr. Abiola and her siblings only had each other.
Hafsat Abiola: The most important thing for us at the time, in terms of our debt to our parents,was the fact that, as soon as we all came together, we stood in a circle. And we made a commitment to my mom, that we will take care of each other, and that we would also continue to fight for democracy. To me, actually, this was a time of flourishing for us, because we were able to look after each other.
That time was a wonderful time because we were all together. And all the problems we were solving together. But we had the opportunity to solve those problems. I was educated, my older brother was educated, my immediate younger brother was also educated. The others that needed to go to school, we had a plan for how they would go to school. I was able to get a job right away, luckily, and the money was enough for me to take care of them. All we were paying for was the rent, and then food, you know, so basics. But it was a wonderful, wonderful time because we were together.
So now when we go back to Nigeria, when there are elections in Nigeria, and we’re involved in voting and all of that, it just makes us feel so deeply fulfilled. The fact that we took care of each other was big. And the fact that we also continued that fight was also, for us, very big.
Tavia Gilbert: Despite the brutality that killed both her parents, despite the fact that they died because they believed in and called publicly for democracy, Dr. Abiola’s value system kept her from becoming bitter or resentful. She chose to tell a story about the blessing of strengthening her family with her brothers and sisters.
Hafsat Abiola: It’s actually a very African approach to life, that once you are together, to us, you know, it’s already 50%. Then when you can take care of each other, then it’s 100%.
Tavia Gilbert: In fact, it’s not only Dr. Abiola’s courageous and determined parents who shaped her beliefs and the choices she’s made, but African culture.
Hafsat Abiola: We are spiritual beings, Africans. They say that we’re not human beings having a spiritual experience, we’re spiritual beings having a human experience. And I think that’s certainly true of how the African people are raised. We’re raised with this understanding that we are spiritual beings, like my parents, for example. It’s our general belief that they are in a place called the ancestral place, where they are with other spiritual beings, and they are watching what we are able to achieve, what each spirit is able to achieve.
I think that we have a real responsibility to express what our spirit wants to express, and our spirit is always talking to us, it always tells us what its beliefs are, what it wants to do, how it wants to interact with the world. During the time of slavery, people like Harriet Tubman, you know, they had a very clear understanding that their spirit said for them to seek freedom. It’s not just slavery that creates the sense of being enslaved, even life now, we think we’re free, but life can create its gilded cages. And we need to know that we’re not meant to be in any kind of cage, we’re meant to be free to express ourselves. And we always have to fight for our freedom, whatever our circumstance is, and it’s that freedom that the spirit wants, the spirit wants to be free to be itself and to express itself, and we have to fight for that.
Tavia Gilbert: So what is Dr. Abiola fighting for? Her mother’s boldness and wisdom live on in her as the leader of the Women in Africa Initiative, “the world's leading international platform for the economic development and the support of African women entrepreneurs.”
Hafsat Abiola: Our focus is on women’s economic power. We have one in four women in Africa become entrepreneurs, and it’s the highest proportion in the world. And it just shows you the boldness, the courage that these women have. And if they can be supported in their entrepreneurial journey, they can make such a huge difference to the economies in Africa, they can make a huge difference to poverty in Africa, to job creation in Africa, and they can transform those societies.
Because I know that once women have economic power from the example I have of my mom, and even of my own life, you have more voice. And we can lever that economic power towards creating change in the larger society. So that’s what I’m doing now, is to support women to begin that process of making the economies work.
Tavia Gilbert: By building women’s economic power and helping transform society, Dr. Abiola is honoring her mother’s example of rejecting any limitations imposed by a patriarchal society and inspiring African women to find their voice.
Hafsat Abiola: The challenge women face is from the point from when they’re girls, from when they’re babies. Because in that time, there is not the experience, there is not the confidence, there is not the voice, there’s not the authority, there is not even, often, the sense that you have a right to your own body, that you have a right to be heard, that you even have rights at all.
The undermining of the woman begins from when she’s even a baby, from when she’s very young. Many of the girls in Nigeria that are married off, the child brides, are married off from the age of 12. They’re barely having their first menstrual period, they don’t even know what the change is happening in their body, and they’re married to much older men. The disparity, the power disparity in the relationship is so huge for them to overcome. So the fact that society is not able to protect their rights sets women up to live in a disempowered state in the society.
So if we really want to have women be empowered in Africa, we have to protect the rights of girls, we have to protect their rights to an education, we have to protect their rights to not be married before the age of 18. We have to also protect their rights that if they happen to get pregnant before 18, they can stay in school, because in many countries, if they get married while they’re in school, that’s the end of education for them, which is ridiculous.
So there’s so many things that have to be done to make sure that the rites of passage of the girl child is protected, because once we can do that, the empowered girl is the powerful woman on the continent. But the disempowered girl, is the woman that you see who is battered, beaten, poor, on the continent.
Tavia Gilbert: Dr. Abiola is a determined visionary, but she’s not naive. She knows that her goals cannot — and will not — be quickly achieved.
Hafsat Abiola: I’ve read that sometimes you have to hear something maybe seven times for you to change your mind. I think that in Africa, you might even need to have it more than seven times, because for me to change your mind, it’s to try to change the mind of an individual. But the Africans are not individual, and they’re not individualistic in their mind. We’re communal. We exist as part of communities, and it’s what makes us powerful, but it’s also what makes us very resistant to change.
To have change in the community you need to change the mind of maybe seven people in that community. And that takes time. Women have a huge amount of power, because they’re in relationships all the time. They’re in relationships with their children, they’re in relationships with other members of the community, with their husbands, with the elders, and with the future generation, because they often act as a bridge.
But often, they restrict the power that they have to just disseminating the norms, the values of the community, but we need to help women understand that they also have a responsibility to shape the norms and the values of communities. And to do that, you know, we really have to work with women to boost their confidence. And then, if they feel very confident, those women can engage their society. Women can then really embody the full potential that they have, and make a difference in transforming the way that the community understands itself and expresses itself.
Tavia Gilbert: So how does Dr. Abiola help women realize their enormous potential? How does she boost their confidence and lead women to using their voice? She leads by example, by cultivating her own virtues, by embracing the wisdom of her culture and history. She embodies the power and purpose of an African woman.
Hafsat Abiola: Courage. Courage. Confidence that I do not work my life, my journey, by myself. All around me are my ancestors, and they walk with me, they’ve already gone ahead. Some are staying behind, some are by my side, some make sure that beneath me, that the road is safe.
I move forward with authority. I am in control of my destiny, I know that I will make an account of my life. Nobody will subjugate me, nobody can. Nobody will. And with that full awareness, I take decisions. And sometimes those decisions are not convenient for me, it can make my life difficult. But I am confident that I set an example.
This example my daughter is aware of it, she pays attention. My son is aware of it, he pays attention. So whenever that final call is, I can go in confidence to my ancestors, and my children can step into my shoes and move also with authority.
I only know power. I only speak to others with a way that says I recognize the power in you as well. I cannot make myself small to make you comfortable because it’s an insult to you. So while I’m in this full awareness, I’m in my own superpower space. And I invite others to also claim theirs as well.
Tavia Gilbert: Dr. Abiola welcomes others to join her mission to empower talented women entrepreneurs in Africa. And she has razor sharp clarity about the enormous global value of the African people and the African continent. When Africans and Africa thrive, the entire world benefits.
Hafsat Abiola: They say that there’s a $42 billion financing gap for women entrepreneurs in Africa. And it’s important to bridge that. There are very concrete things we could do, like accessing finance. But you know what I would really want to do is I would want to make clear how the world benefits from Africa. Because I think that if we make that clear, it changes Africa’s relationship with the rest of the planet.
Tavia Gilbert: Dr. Abiola’s mission to empower Africans extends beyond the borders of her nation and continent. She wants Africans to receive all that they deserve. Historically, Africans have given of their talents, their labor, their resources globally without proper compensation, both at home and abroad.
Hafsat Abiola: You know, I find it fascinating when you look at the era of slavery, how much slave labor contributed to building the United States, to building infrastructure, railroads, roads, highways. And how little benefit came to the African Americans that were involved in that. And how that mentality has shaped their economic outcomes today. So even when they fought in the Second World War, they were told soldiers in general would get certain benefits, certain opportunities to begin to build a good life, a decent life for themselves in the United States. And that applied to soldiers except African American soldiers.
You know, those kinds of discrimination, it’s the way in which the society decides who gets what. So if you think about the fact that every cell phone in the world has coltan in it, and coltan is only found in two countries, in China, and in Congo. And China doesn’t sell its coltan on the world market. So every cell phone in the world is powered by coltan from Congo. And Congo is not even the richest African country. In fact, it’s the poorest African country. To me, it smacks of an exploitative relationship not unlike slave trade and slavery. But because it’s so far away, nobody pays attention.
One big thing I would like to express with my life is a return of dignity for the people of Africa. And freedom for the people of Africa, the ability to pursue their own ideas in their own way. I think that the continent is imposed upon unduly by the rest of the world, and I’d like to see a change in that. 60% of the continent is under 30 years old. And most of the countries, there’s huge unemployment, and especially among young people. It’s as high as about 30% of young people that do not have jobs, do not have a way to earn what they need to live.
So I think, you know, that Africa’s problems of empowerment and poverty are constructed by a global economic system that is racist, and that Africa’s contributions to the global economy is hidden and not properly compensated and remunerated. So I think it’s hard for the women in Africa to thrive. It’s hard for people in Africa in general to thrive under this kind of global economic system. And so if I had a magic wand, if I were a global czar, I would begin to tackle this.
Tavia Gilbert: Though she’s not the global czar, Dr. Abiola is doing everything in her power to help Africans flourish. While she’s focused on growing entrepreneurial opportunities for Africans, she recognizes there is much more to flourishing than having abundant work.
Hafsat Abiola: Of course, you know, having work does not mean you’re flourishing, because there are many people who are working in circumstances that are not ideal. And the job doesn’t express their passion, it’s just a way for them to earn a living. I would like to live in a world where we could all earn enough to live and do what we love to do.
For me, that would be dancing, I love dancing, I love reading, I love quiet, and I love watching my children grow. They’re not life-changing things, but they make me happy. And I would like for us to live in a world where everyone can do that. I would like us to live in a world where we put most of our energy towards setting people free to do that.
I find it odd and disturbing that so much of our resources globally, is in armament. And I think if we put so much of our resources in developing ways to kill each other, there’s just no way that the world that we live in can be one in which human beings can flourish. There’s just no way.
I think of flourishing as the beautiful and full expression of human creativity, human expression. And I think it’s not really material. I think there’s a minimal material condition that you have to have to have human flourishing. But once you have that, it’s the security, the sense of safety to be yourself in community, and in the community, such that others also can be themselves. I think that it means having the freedom to… make my mark, to express my thinking. That, I think, is the best kind of space for human flourishing.
Tavia Gilbert: Dr. Abiola makes her mark and expresses her feeling by continuing to uphold the ideals her parents fought and died for.
Hafsat Abiola: In terms of the minimum conditions we need to flourish, I think democracy is one. And I’m very fortunate that my family taught me the importance of sacrificing for creating that kind of world. You know, because my father and my mother fought to have democracy in my country and actually died in the course of trying to ensure that Nigerians will have the right to vote.
That’s one way of flourishing, and for decades, the people in my country, Nigeria, which is the largest country in Africa with about 200 million people, had no say as to who governed and how. And we had to really fight to change that, and I think that we need to continually stand up for those things that give the minimum conditions for all human beings everywhere to live in freedom and with dignity.
Because think of my mother’s story. This is a woman who built up assets, then sold assets to secure liberation, freedom, democracy for the country with the biggest population on the continent of Africa, with 200 million people. That’s a gangster move. Women are making these kinds of moves. And we should tell their stories to encourage each other, and encourage other women, but also to encourage the society as a whole, to see the full potential of women.
It’s critical — conversation, listening, and storytelling. These stories are critical in Africa, precisely because we are communal people, we take a while to be convinced of anything. It’s actually to try to convince the people in the villages, in the most remote areas, that, take a bet on this your girl, take a bet on this your daughter, and put her through school.
It’s a struggle, because these are often very poor families. Struggle to put her through school. Even if she gets pregnant, let her have the baby and let the community help take care, and let her continue her education. Fight for the life of that girl, let the girl flourish, let her flourish.
What is flourishing? It is that, let us treat each other as human beings, capable of making mistakes. Let people grow, and be, and learn and be even bigger, and make mistakes, and learn and then try again. Let them keep trying, we don’t know where it’s going to lead. But ours should be about making the earth safe enough for all people, wherever they are, to be full — to be fully expressive, to be fully engaged, to be fully contributing. That’s the best kind of planet.
Really, our quest should be to evolve, to create a world where humanity can evolve, and I really think that we have that responsibility to be ready and to express our best selves.
Tavia Gilbert: Dr. Abiola believes that embracing that responsibility gives you superpowers.
Hafsat Abiola: I think everybody even has superpowers. When I think of superpowers, I think if you embrace what you believe, and if you embrace the notion that there is no challenge that you cannot meet, then you become unstoppable. And that’s a superpower. If we are not trying to play to win on the terms that have been defined, but we’re just trying to set our own terms, that’s a superpower. If we don’t buy into the general ideas, if we allow our minds to be applied to the things that we think of as the most important things, that’s a superpower.
Our minds are so powerful that if we focus on the problems that are the most important, we will solve them. The only problem with our minds is our minds only have so much bandwidth. So if we allow our minds to be consumed by peripheral things, not the most important things, we don’t start on a journey, then we’re never going to get to the destination.
When Madiba Nelson Mandela decided to fight, he didn’t know it was going to take that long. No, but he started, and it took three plus decades. But today, we see that South Africa has made a big leap forward. There’s still so much to be done, but the apartheid system that was so egregious is no longer there. I think if we always tackle the big problems, if we always tackle the lack of democracy in its different forms, the lack of equity, and all of these, the big issues, people in their small spaces will flourish.
And if we apply ourselves to tackling these big problems, then we are like superhuman, we’re as powerful as Superman, we’re as powerful as Captain America, we’re as powerful as Wonder Woman. The brilliance of the entire universe is contained in each one of us. And now we bring that power to bear on something that is actually consequential, is to leave the world better than how we found it.
Tavia Gilbert: I hope Dr. Abiola’s story and her leadership offer you some comfort. They certainly have me. Despite grief, loss, and injustice she experienced with the violent, untimely deaths of her mother and father, she still chose to develop her confidence and find her powerful voice by caring for her family and the people of her country, and by fighting back against brutality and oppression. Dr. Abiolca can inspire each of us to develop resilience in our own struggles, whatever they may be, and to use our own voices to realize the dreams we have for ourselves, and for the people and the country we love.
We’ll be back in two weeks in conversation with Cristine Legare, University of Texas at Austin Department of Psychology professor.
Cristine Legare: Currently in this point in human history, we’re seeing the loss of tremendous linguistic diversity and cultural diversity. We’re also seeing access to information in ways that have never before been possible, connections between groups of humans that have never been possible in the past. Opportunities for an incredibly diverse array of different cultural communities and populations — the access to technology, to global decision-making — that was never possible in the past as well. So we are more interconnected, we communicate more than ever before, which I think is tremendously positive. But there’s always loss associated with gain. It always has been.
Tavia Gilbert: If you appreciate the Stories of Impact podcast, please follow us, and rate and review us. You can find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, and at storiesofimpact.org.
This has been the Stories of Impact Podcast, with Richard Sergay and Tavia Gilbert. Written and produced by Talkbox Productions and Tavia Gilbert. Senior producer Katie Flood. Music by Aleksander Filipiak. Mix and master by Kayla Elrod. Executive producer Michele Cobb.
The Stories of Impact Podcast is generously supported by Templeton World Charity Foundation.