It was Sunday evening when I got a call from my brother-in-law, asking me if I had a hardcopy passport photo. I told him I had one and we agreed to meet up on Monday morning so I could give it to him. He then sent a format for me to send my details. Name, date of birth, phone number and email address. I filled out the information and sent it to him.
A lot of times opportunities come from the government or non governmental organizations. These opportunities can come as social interventions, grants or palliatives. There are a lot of them available in Nigeria, but a lot of people don't get to hear or know when these opportunities are available.
I used to be one of those people who never got to know about interventions, I mostly get to hear about it when the benefits are shared. But recently I began to look out for these things, searching online, following news updates and sometimes asking questions.
But with all my inquiries, I never got lucky, though I have applied for a number of them before.
Nevertheless, I sent my details to my brother-in-law as he requested, fingers crossed, I hoped for the best but expected the worst. This is because I have tried with no success before.
Two months passed and I didn't get a call or notification to even acknowledge a submission of my details on any platform, so I was starting to think it's just like the others that I applied for before.
My face when I thought of the possibility of it being another fruitless effort
But then I got a call last week Thursday, and the caller asked to confirm my name and told me to come to an address on Saturday, that RHI support would be distributed and I'm one of the beneficiaries.
I was so excited, and I was wondering what form of support it was, because the RHI has various programs that support various categories of people in Nigeria. I assumed it was going to be a financial support and it is usually between the sum of NGN 50,000 - NGN 500,000. This is the range I have seen so far.
Saturday came and I went to the venue as instructed. On arrival, I saw a large number of women and my jaws dropped. There were up to 500 women or more and more were still arriving.
When it was time, the hall was opened and everyone went in. When I walked in, I saw a stack of interesting stuff. Gas cookers, deep freezers, generators and electric grinding machines. At that point,my excitement grew.
When the officials of the event came, they announced that since there were a variety of items, they didn't want to select the items to give to each person so they made it a lucky deep.
The names of the items were written on pieces of papers and everything was in a bag. Names were called and each person was to pick a piece of paper, whatever was written on it is what each person got.
The four items as I mentioned earlier were available in 125 units each, making a total of 500 items distributed that day.
To cut the long story short, my name was called and I went forward and dipped my hand into the bag and I was lucky to get a deep freezer! I'm super excited for it, although I already have a deep freezer, but it's not wrong to have an addition.
Before I forget, it is an inverter freezer, so I can use it even without electricity. It's more eco-friendly and I can't wait to plug it in and commence use. I intend to use it for business though.
