Rosemary Olubode, founder of Rosemary Olubode Inspirational, aimed at helping women build an unbreakable bond with their spouses and performing their primary responsibilities at home, has explained why she is an incurable philanthropist.
Rosemary Olubode revealed that she had a very humble beginning. She was born in 1975, in Jibowu, Lagos State, and was raised in an environment that was not any better than life in the slums. According to Rosemary Olubode, she lived with her parents, aunt and uncle in a single room they shared with giant rats which naturally became co-tenants because of the condition of the area.
Rosemary Olubode, who by all standards, has become a success regardless of her past, recollected that she wore one green outfit to church for six years while in secondary school, due to poverty. The pharmacist said one of the reasons she extends a hand of help to the less privileged is because there will always be poor people around. She added that her experiences growing up, was sufficient to feel the pains of the needy.
“Where I was born. I will do a tour of the area u was born someday. In fact, that house had like 1,000 rooms, phase I and phase 2. Let me tell you, we were not at the main building; we were at the boys quarters, and when it rains, rain enters our house. We had a soak away in front of our house. When you wake up in the morning, you are facing the soak away that has collapsed. You will be seeing faeces. It was normal for us, we sleep with big rats that dug holes into our room, it was normal. And when my mum wants to cook, she would carry the stove outside in front of the soak away, it was as bad as that. I could describe us as Poorest of the poorest”, Rosemary Olubode said.
“What motivated me to embark on that journey (philanthropism) was number one, as a child, I could remember on Sundays, a lot of people say I love Green. Until now, it is my favourite colour. How did I start liking green colour? I remember when I was in secondary school, the only Sunday cloth I had was a green skirt and a green chiffon top. And that was the only thing I wore throughout my secondary school days on Sundays to church. I’ve seen the way people drop out of school because there was no fund. In the area I grew up, you will see people who never sent to school because their parents had no money to send them to school.
“Then luckily, when I married my husband, my husband like I said, was very kind-hearted. My husband would pay people’s school fees, my husband would pay people’s house rent, my husband would buy food stuff for people, you know, he just clicked, and my husband would tell me people need; the little you can do. At a stage, my husband adopted a child at SOS and was paying the child’s school fees, from when the child was in primary school up to the University.
“So all those things inspired me to just give back to the community. I give to people without publicity. People who know that I give, come to me to say ‘this child needs school fees, so I would just say ‘how many?’. They might just say one child and I would say I can do two. I pray school fees for children and I don’t even want their parents to know me; that’s what I do, I’ll say please don’t share my contact with their parents, I don’t want a thank you, I just want to do it, and there are children I’ve adopted; I’ve said till they finish secondary school, till they finish primary school, I’ll be the one to pay their fees. There are people I even paid house rent for. This if February, I know the number of people whose house rent I paid in January, I know how many children I’ve paid their school fees; I just do all those things coded. Like i said, I was hiding myself, I don’t want people to know me, I just want to do things quietly”, said Rosemary Olubode.
In that undignifying condition, she understood the weapon of studying hard as the only way to rescue her family. The Rosemary Olubode Inspirational, who is the second of four siblings, demonstrated uncommon brilliance as a student. She finished with the best result in the West African Examination Council (WAEC) in 1993 at Jibowu High School, and later bagged a BSc in Pharmacy at the University of Benin in Edo State. Reflecting on how she managed to succeed academically, despite the challenging financial hardship at home, the mother-of-three who lost her husband in 2020, hailed her heroic mother for providing all that she needed despite having almost nothing from her menial job. She has likewise assumed the position of a mother to several underprivileged children.
“My mum was supportive, she provided me with all the books I needed. At a stage in her life, she had to go to the market to help people to carry load, so I’m grateful to God for that. She provided everything I needed, even though we were very poor. My mum knew the importance of education, though she stopped her education at Primary 6. I had books, I had everything I attended the best lessons in Lagos. When I was writing WAEC, I would leave Jibowu to attend extra moral classes my mum enrolled me in at Maryland. I would take public transport to go for my lesson classes. That was it. Even for my JAMB exam, there was this lesson today Idi-Oro. I had everything. We were poor but my mum knew the importance of education and I just had to be the best,” the host of Rosemary Olubode Inspirational stated.
