of dreaming my mum’s dream

So I got tired of making the same old new year resolutions that were focused on weight loss and other things largely outside my control. This year I decided to take my company a little more seriously. Yes. I incorporated a company last year largely in memory of my mum who passed in 2015. As I reflected on her life and the things that were important to her, I knew that a life of charity and benevolence was all she lived for.

I took that from her. Anyone who knows me in reality knows I thrive on generosity. The more I have to give out to people who really need it, the happier I am. All I pray for is the life, health and prosperity to take this to the levels that my mum would, had she been here. And it starts with MILROQZEE. You see her name was Mildred and I call myself Roqzee so yeah...no deep anything behind that name.

My mum was a Christian missionary in the real sense of the word. As a missionary pastor in the Redeemed Christian Church of God, we found ourselves in the outskirts of Abuja in villages that had no education, spoke no English and had shrines to various deities. She faced village chiefs who kept disrupting church building efforts and kept their people in fear through extreme poverty. They meted out injustice through forced marriages and oppression of the girl child. My mum was having none of it.

In her quiet unassuming way and measly civil servant salary, she would give all her money and clothes and shoes and food till she would be broke. Then she would face my dad and take his own money and food and clothes till he would scream that he still had kids to fend for. Nothing would stop her. She always had a new ‘project’ she was working on and we would wake up and meet a new church member in our house receiving support as a norm. She used economic empowerment to give people freedom and the independence to pursue a different life of literacy and enlightenment, and hopefully God.

Unlike her I am not a people person per se. okay you got me, I am not a people person at all. And I am thankful for the internet and the ability to reach more people in need beyond the physical reach. And so I have this year started the @milroqzee twitter page as the core platform for our benevolence outreach. The first program is the “Fifty Five Twelve” giveaway where we get people to nominate charities they think are deserving of 50 thousand naira every month and themselves win 5 thousand naira as an incentive if we pick the charity they recommended. This happens for 12 months a year.

In the current economic climate in Nigeria, this has proved to be well received and we are hoping to scale it sustainably in the next few months to include University Fees and Widows Assistance. We will fund other grassroots charities as a conduit. I am not delusional in thinking this will solve the world’s problems but I think she would be proud of me for attempting to follow her dreams for humanity.

So please if you are on twitter, get behind us and refer people who may be considered for help. You would be helping them to believe again, helping me to be a better man and ultimately the best son a mother like mine would be proud to have left behind for the world.