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At the Malaysian Estate, an Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp in Apo, several women are convened in the main room of an uncompleted building chatting but hard at work on different tasks. A couple were folding and cutting nylon bags into even strips; another was knitting what appeared to be some of those nylon strips into a purse. Two were hard at work on different manual floor looms, one stringing plastic nylon strings through the loom machine, while the other is weaving plastic threads into place leaving a trail of colourful 100 percent nylon-made fabric on the loom.
A much younger woman is treading and kneading thinner nylon strip into shape on a smaller loom leaned against a wall. The fabric coming through the looms are range from colourful, intricate designs to bold and simple patterns. The end result are wonderfully handcrafted mats, backpacks, tote bags, and purses displayed and sold at the Ecobarter Online Shopping App.
A 2016 joint report by the Internally Displaced Persons Monitoring Center (IDMC) and the Norwegian Refugee Council states there are over 3.3 million IDPs in Nigeria. The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) rates the number of IDPs in Nigeria at 2.9 million as of December 2021. Prince Chiagozie Ekoh et al in the paper Resettlement of Internally Displaced Persons in Nigeria (June 2021), said an estimated 2.7 million persons are displaced in the north-east as at the end of 2020 owing to conflicts. Findings from the paper which examined the Housing Problems Facing IDPs in Abuja indicated that displaced persons who migrated to Abuja live in dilapidated homes and are at constant risk of becoming homeless because government has no existing plans for their resettlement. It also shows that the IDPs are at risk of secondary displacement which may endanger all the progress, development and resilience built over the years.
By weaving plastic bags into simple and intricately designed fabrics, eight women at the Apo IDP camp, including Mariam Abubakar, Chanja Bello, Halima Umar, Hadiza Ibrahim and Adama Abubakar keep their children and families afloat from hunger and street begging.
Making an early start from 8am to 4/6pm each day, they take turns at the looms, often weaving two fabrics each, per week. A yard of fabric costs N1,000 or N1,500 depending on the intricacy of the design. Intricately designed fabrics of multiple colours and patterns costs N1500, while simpler, mono-or-double colour design goes for N1,000 per yard. The women then sell the fabrics to Ecobarter, a recycling collection and upcycled ecofriendly company that deploys the fabric in the creation of quality products as backpacks, tote bags, purses etc.
Kickstarted as a recycling collection company, Ecobarter founder, Rita Idehai intended to operate a plastic bottle-to-clothing business. The capital-intensive nature of such venture led to scaling-down her plan to a recycling collection company. Post Ecobarter’s official launch in 2018, she discovered plastic bags were the bane of plastics wastes recycling, one which many existing recycling companies neither collected nor recycled. Hence, the idea of what to do with the nylons took root. Further research led her to the idea of weaving plastic nylons into fabrics.
“I wanted to ensure that we are not just collecting waste because its profitable rather that we are collecting waste to clean up the environment. I had to learn the skill myself, before teaching the women, and get a professional to do more work.” said Idehai.
In 2021, a chance connection with a friend whose NGO embarked on community impactful projects with IDPs about the same time Ecobarter Foundation was looking to implement a skills training project led her to the IDP Camp. The project funded by the British High Commission via its Nigeria for Nature project – saw to the training of 20 IDP women on weaving, with a contract to create 500 tote bags from 10,000 plastic nylons. ‘‘We trained the women and also paid them to weave the bags. That was exciting to them, and since then we have been working with them,’’ Idehai said.
Contrary to other capacity building projects targeted at IDPs, Ecobarter Foundation didn’t just train the women to leave them out and alone in the labour market (with and sometimes without ‘soft loans’), they integrated them into their for-profit business, buying off whatever fabric the women created to repurpose them into several other products, which are sold on the Ecobarter virtual shopping platform, where other ecofriendly products made in Nigeria, and those shipped from China are sold.
“It is like when you go to market and buy Ankara in yards. It is finished product that you can turn into something else. We buy the materials from them as fabric in yards. That’s what we do. They sell the fabrics to us, and then we turn the fabrics into different things,” explained Idehai.
With additional funding from US-based World Connect, the women were trained further on weaving skills, and a new skillset, jewelry making. The funding also helped in funding Ecobarter’s new space at the Pigbakasa Junction at Apo-Kabusa Road, kitted with solar energy system that provided the women better lighting and space to work for longer periods.
Weaver and instructor, Hauwa Mahmoud, translated for LEADERSHIP, the women’s excited commendation of Ecobarter. In their excitement, they all spoke at the same time.
‘‘Before Ecobarter, we used to beg for alms on the streets to sustain ourselves. But for Ecobarter, we don’t beg anymore. We simply focus on our work,” said the women.
Formerly traditional cap knitters, the women earned more than they do today. They lost their source of livelihood and clientele when Boko Haram insurgency group invaded their communities in northeast Nigeria. In the IDP camp, cap knitting didn’t pay at all.
‘‘They had no customers or clientele in Abuja. They are like strangers, and struggle to get clients to buy the cap from them. It is a bit easier for them now as Ecobarter buys the woven materials from them. Because if we ask them to go sell it, there is no market for It,” translated Mahmoud.
An experienced weaver before Ecobarter, Mahmoud is an instructor and unofficial interpreter with the foundation. Since joining the organization in 2021, her income has expanded as she earns about N40,000 to N50,000 working for Ecobarter, with the hope of realizing similar or higher amount from her freelance weaving business once she acquires her own looming machine.
Unfortunately, the women hardly get by on N3000 per week, with their large families of four, five to seven children each to support. The one woman with a child told Mahmoud they barely manage. Some of the women were widowed, others husbands were around, and, one lost contact with hers’ years ago, pos the invasion of their community and had no information of his whereabouts, dead or alive. Compounding their individual problem is the looming threat of homelessness, as owners of the Malaysian estate hosting the IDP camp ordered some of the IDPs to vacate the premises.
On the other hand, Ecobarter faces challenges of low level of awareness of the value of wastes, limited funds which affects the women’s earnings, and at one time, theft. The company had lost its solar energy system to robbers some time ago.
‘‘It is difficult for the women that we work with to understand there is value in wastes. We had to convince them. There is a lot of convincing that goes into the services that we provide. Most of what we do require a lot of funds. This new site wouldn’t look as it is now, if we had funds. The women are not making maximum money. If we had electricity here, we will train the women to weave and sew. That means that the fabric they are making for just N1,000, by adding just a few accessories they can make N5,000 or N10,000 from those bags, and that’s more money for them. However, we don’t have electricity. And we want to set up a solar power system that can power the industrial machines we need, and that costs a lot of money,” said Idehai.
On the bright side, post the recent theft of the company’s solar system (funded by World Connect) Idehai has beefed up security at the new site; and the benefits of acquiring industrial weaving machines notwithstanding, Ecobarter she said, will stick with manual looming machines, to ensure the women don’t lose their jobs to machines.
“What we think we need in terms of industrialization are industrial machines, and we have two of that already courtesy of World Connect; but we need electricity to power them,” said Idehai.
This story was supported by Nigeria Health Watch through Solutions Journalism Network, a non-profit organization dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems.
Source: Leadership
