‘How firewood became my source of income’

The firewood is arranged in a systematic order, one above the other at Chibiri, a community within Kuje area council of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). They are kept this way, against the glare of the hot sun, in huge separate mounds numbering about 20, by the roadside. From a distance, men idle away beneath a shed. They are watchful. Obviously, these large woods have owners. A small distance away Habiba Mohammed pounds away under another shed from where smoke drifts into the atmosphere. One of her specialties is making pounded yam for her customers who frequent her ‘buka’ just after dawn.
But business thrives better when there is room for generating multiple streams of income. That is what Mohammed did. Three years ago, men who go to the forest and return with large quantities of firewood made money off her. How? Because she does not own a gas cooker or a stove that may eat away her profit, after all Chibiri is not Abuja city centre but a locality characterised by farmlands, trees, bushes and a class most probably just above poverty level. This realisation drove her to one decision: “I began to buy firewood in large quantities for cooking and at the same time sold some to households at my cooking spot.”
Gradually, after selling them in piles of N250, she acquired enough money to buy more from the profit. This led to an expansion of the business. Now, she has become a major competitor to her suppliers. She buys whole sale directly from them as they return from the forest and gets a firewood cutter to cut them into large and smaller sizes.
“Recently, I made as much as N10, 000 for that huge pile,” she says, pointing at a pile as high as 10 bundles.
She has been in the firewood business for up to three years now and experiences one major challenge. While people patronise her heavily during the raining season, fewer numbers come in the dry season. “They prefer to go to the bushes and source for firewood themselves during the dry season,” she explains.