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My Mission In Life Is To Uplift Mankind – Hajia Bola Muse

Hajia Idayat Bola Muse.The Chief Executive Officer of Bomarah Investment, Hajia Bola Muse is indeed a role model when it comes to achievement. This committed and successful businesswoman has achieved a lot and contributed her quota to humanity. Her foundation, Bomarah Foundation has touched lives of widows, physically challenged and motherless children. No wonder, she was recently elected the treasurer of the government approved Freight Forwarders at Apapa Port recently.

This busy and simple role model granted Top Celebrities Magazine. She talked about her achievements in  various businesses, family and sundry issues. Enjoy it…

Kindly introduce yourself

My name is Hajia Bola Muse, I am the CEO of Bomarah Investment which is the umbrella body of the other five companies. I am a simple and elegant woman, I was born in Oyo State but I grew up in the North, Kano State precisely. I did my elementary and secondary school in Oyo State, I completed the rest of my education in the north, Kano State.

You are one of the respected women we have in Nigeria today, tell us how it all started? Did you ever envisage it was going to be like this, I mean your status now?

Thank you for that question. As far as I am concerned, I believe that whatever position you are, it is Almighty God that destined it for you. So, as a human being, you cannot just wake up one day and say today you will be here, if God does not give you the opportunity and wisdom to be there, you can never be there. Right from my youth; I have  always asked the Almighty Allah to bless me because I want to be blessed in the sense that I love good things of life and you have to struggle to get it. More so, you must be determined, let me tell you my experience, when I finished my secondary school, I had to go to the north to stay with my grandmother. My grandmother spent virtually all her life in the north, she was more of an Hausa woman and she didn’t believe in girl- child education, she believed that when a girl gets to her adolescence, she will have to marry but people like me that came from an average home, I needed to take care of my siblings because I come from a polygamous home. My mother was the only one in charge of affairs. And as the first child, I needed to assist her. In my own case, marriage was not my priority then, I wanted to help my mother first, so when my grandmother started her trouble that I must get married, I told her that this is not my ulterior plan and my plan is to further my education. So, what motivated me the more was that I needed to be somebody. I dreamt of becoming a big personality in life, I used to see ladies driving cars and I would be telling God that one day, I would like to drive my own car. I admired people who are rich a lot because I love good things and that was it. At times, when I was going to work between 1986 and 1987, I used to project into the future because I needed to see myself through school and I needed to assist my mother because of my other siblings. So, I needed to get a better job and how will I get the job because my grandmother was really on my neck talking about marriage. So, I had to go and squat with a friend and the woman I was squatting with happened to be my friend’s mother, she runs a restaurant, her condition of staying with her is that I must get to her restaurant before anything and I had to struggle because I am from a polygamous home, I felt like I am on my own and I had to fend for everybody and my mother being a busy woman, she is not a kind of woman that will do everything for you 24/7. Whenever she was working, I had to join hand with her in the work because she is a dealer, she sells anything sellable, a petty trader. So I had to go out in the morning to assist her by making sales, then after selling, I would dress up to school. When I came back from school, I had to help her sell. I only read in the midnight when everybody had slept. So, that was the kind of life I was used to. So, when she said that before she could allow me stay with her I must meet some conditions, I quickly said no problem. I am not talking about modern restaurant, I mean Mama Put kind of restaurant. I just felt that a beggar has no choice. I spent close to two years with her working in the restaurant and in the process of working in the restaurant; I met some good people, those people assisted me to get a job. When they called me for the interview, I was not in the shop then, but they told me that she did not want me to go so that her business would not suffer. She refused to deliver the message to me, it was after some weeks, the man came to our shop and asked me how the interview went and I asked him which interview because I was not aware of any interview but later I got the job, I was being paid N400 per month.

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Can we say your polygamous background gave you the experience to achieve all what you are today?

Yes, the polygamous background actually gave me the zeal to get to where I am today and I thank God.

Let’s look at your company, how did it all start and what actually made it unique?

I think what makes Bomarah Investment unique is the zeal to achieve the best and  I am a very contentious person. I believe that what will be, will be and I am a very straight forward person.  Bomarah Group consists of five companies, we have the clearing and forwarding, Bomarah Investment which is into freight forwarding gave birth to other groups. I give glory to Almighty Allah; my customers have been with me since 1997 and I still maintain them till now. I am not lazy and I don’t want to be with lazy people. In my office, all my staff are determined men who are willing to work, the reason is that I have my target and aims, it is not that I don’t believe in women. I also employed women before but they are not the type I want and I believe to tread where men do, I believe in what a man can do, a woman can do better and that is me.

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Lots of women will like to attain the position you are but perhaps there are constrains; what advice do you have for such women?

My advice first is that you must discover yourself because when you discover yourself; you will know what you want to do because you need to set a goal for yourself, otherwise you will be chasing shadows, that means you are nobody and will end up changing business here and there but when you discovered that this is what I am good in, you will not derail. Let me tell you that I have so many friends that are into textile business, gold dealers and others, any time we meet, they are fond of asking me where is my shop and I tell them I don’t have a shop but an office because I don’t know how to do buying and selling but with my pen; I can turn it to something else. I want such women to have the wisdom and be contented.

I believe you must have gone through some challenges before you got to this level today. Can you share them with us and your experiences doing men’s job?

Let me tell you one thing, in freight forwarding business, it is not easy and it can be easy in the sense that it takes God’s wisdom and a lot of trust and energy for a customer to trust you because there are lots of people that when you give them the goods, it’s either they disappear with them or continue to run away with your money, so that is it. What made it easier for me was the contribution of my first husband, we were working together. I worked with him because he is the one that originally worked as a clearing agent. So, it is through him I learnt all the rudiments of freight forwarding business and when we were working together there was trust between us and the customers were so confident that we would not dupe them. We built the relationship and everything was working as planned and when he is no more, I picked it from there. In fact, I will say that today, I give him the glory because without him, I don’t know where I will be today though I might still be where I am because God destined me to be there, he was the one that gingered me up. At the age of 25, I was already a director in the company, so you can just imagine. When somebody has a target and has the zeal to pursue it, it’s an achievement.  I was a widow at the age of 26, so you can see.

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Let’s also look at your pet project, Bomarah Foundation, your motto is to promote mankind, what is the idea behind the setting up of that foundation?

Thank you, I need to support mankind, my upbringing is even a major factor, also for a person like me that hate people crying and suffering. I have passed through the corridor of poverty, I know what it is to be a widow so all this covers everything. When I was passing through the threat of my in-laws, I told God, if you bless me, I will not conceal it, I will thank you and by God’s grace, I am thanking Him because it is from the profit that we get from Bomarah Group that we use in financing the foundation.

The foundation; is it only for the widows?

Not only the widows, we also deal with people with disability because these are the people that some will not want to mingle with; the deaf, the crippled, the blind. These are the people that need help and love. It takes the courage for you to listen to the blind or crippled person. Look at what the less privileged experience in Nigeria; there is no road for them. So, that is why I am providing for them and associating with them and also we have scholarship programme for some children too, particularly the indigenous students.

Are you planning to go into politics with this your foundation?           

No, I am not planning to go into politics, it is not my calling.

Let’s look at your position as the treasurer of freight forwarders in Apapa Port, how challenging is it?

To Allah be the glory, I am the only female member of the executive, I thank all my colleagues for their support because they have made things easy.

But you are married now, how do you combine home and office work together?

I thank God, my husband now is a customs officer, we both know what we are set out to achieve, he knows I am a career woman, so there is no problem with that.

So, how do you relax?

I relax a lot, I go out for occasions and sometimes, I travel abroad to relax with my children.