By Demola Akinyemi,Ilorin
For 32-year-old Nafisat Mohammed, a graduate of Accounting from Alhikma University in Ilorin, her dream was to become a banker when she was offered admission in 2010. But after the successful completion of her program and the service year in 2014, her dream job became just a dream.
According to Nafisat Mohammed, now mother of four, in an interview with Saturday Vanguard,when all efforts to get job in a bank or any place of her dream failed, she resorted to the business of herbs which she learnt from her mother while growing as she followed her to her herbal shop and observing her.
Her words: “I started learning this job since I started going to school from nursery to primary and then secondary till I finished my university education. I can tell you that I have known this work since I finished my secondary education and today there’s nothing I don’t know about the herbal business. I have joined my mother in the trade of selling herbs mixture to treat all manner of ailments. I combine herbs of different kinds to heal any kind of ailment and I make more money from it than any other business. By the grace of God I have four children and I’m taking care of them from this business. In a month my mother makes about N200,000 while I make an average of N50,000 profit monthly”.
Speaking on the ailments, she said,”with these herbs we treat pile, malaria, typhoid, fever, Athritis, fibroid, hypertension,diabetes,hepatitis, rashes and so on. There’s no ailment we don’t cure.
“Those who have been here attested to the efficacy of what we give them and that has been increasing our patronage tremendously. People come from Lagos, Abuja and other places and even overseas to consult us because people now believe that it’s safe and permanent to cure ailments with herbs instead of drugs. I’m hoping that sometimes later I’ll also handover this to my children as they’re already into it because they used to come here and also learn what we do.”
Nafisat nevertheless said that she still desires to achieve her lifetime ambition of being a banker whenever the job avails. “Yes,I still hope that someday the job will come and I will work as a banker because that was what I was trained to be. But the way it is now, I will not abandon this herb business so my plan is to find means of doing both,”she said.
Nafisat’s elder sister Bola Abdulazeez who corroborated Nafisat in the interview said, “there’s no ailment we haven’t cured with these herbs. Whatever business one is doing and it’s profitable, it shouldn’t perish one should be able to hand it over to the children. “
Their mother, Alhaja Adijat AbdulRazaq,75, of Ita-Ogunbo compound in Ilorin who was also present during the interview can best be described as the “Generalissimo” of herbal consultants in Ilorin.
Aside the herb materials, she also sells all manners of materials meant for traditional medicines for those who desire them.
Her shop at no 10 Gegele Road, a stone throw to the palace of Emir of Ilorin, Alh Ibrahim Sulu-Gambari is a beehive of activities for customers who come from far and near to buy herbal materials and even to sell all manners of herbs, animal parts, live animals, etc to her.
Iya Gbogbo, claimed that there’s no ailment under the sun that she could not cure with the mixture of selected herbs and other materials after customer has explained the troubling ailment to her .
One of her customers, Bayo Issa, sports journalist based in Ilorin testified about the potency and efficacy of her herbs mixture.
“I’ve known “Iya Gbogbo “for quite a long time now and there was no time I came here for consultancy about any ailment that I was disappointed. I can beat my chest that whatever herbs that are mixed for you here would heal the ailment except the person or patient doesn’t apply it as prescribed.” said Bayo Issa.
Speaking in an interview with Saturday Vanguard in local dialect, Alhaja Adijat AbdulRazaq popularly known as “Iya Gbogbo”said that she inherited the business from her parents and had been n the business for fifty years and that there was no ailment she hasn’t cured.
Alhaja AbdulRazaq also said that the potency of her herbal mixture had over the years increased her customers from neighbouring states, Lagos, Abuja and even overseas.
She said, “I started this work about 50 years ago, I grew up in Ibadan and my own parents handed the business to me. We combine all manners of herbs for any ailment and by the grace of God they have been proved to be potent and that’s why we are still in the business since fifty years ago. We have all categories of people as our clients, the rich, the middle class and the less privileged. They come from Ilorin here, Lagos, Abuja and all over the country. We even have our customers overseas who often ask us to package and send it to them.”
Source: Vanguard
