In an insightful and illuminating interview, Ezinne Kufre-Ekanem, the visionary force behind the UpYou! Women’s Conference, delves into the essence of the conference’s mission and its resonating significance in today’s dynamic world. With a firm grasp of the unmet needs and dreams that women often carry, Ezinne sheds light on the driving forces behind this empowering initiative. Engaging in a candid conversation with LM’s Nkanu Egbe, she explores the profound implications of embracing one’s authentic self, while also addressing the challenges faced by the modern generation. Through her words, the interview introduces a narrative of transformation, unity, and the vital role of dialogue in fostering change and empowerment among women…
OK, so let’s talk about this conference on Saturday next week. This is like 7 days from now, it’s on the 26th of August and it’s at Victoria Hall. EbonyLife place. Now tell me what this conference is all about. ‘Building Bridges from Within’.
It’s an ‘UpYou!’ women’s conference. It’s an offshoot of the radio programme. As you know, we have a radio programme called ‘UpYou! with Ezinne:’ where in the last two years I have spoken to diverse women on various topics. You know, because of those conversations that we’ve been having, it became obvious that there are gaps.
Yeah, there are gaps. And then we’ve now decided, you know what? Let’s call ourselves together and have this August meeting. You also know how women go home for August meetings to discuss all the things that concern them, their communities, and everything else.
We said OK, now we are. We are generally not travelling as much anymore now. So OK, let’s do a conference where we also come to an August meeting. But this time around, we’re not looking at our communities and anything per se. We’re now shining the light on the inside of us so that we can actually fix ourselves. Because honestly, as a broken woman, you can’t do if you don’t. If you’re not, if you’re not whole, you can’t be wholesome. You can’t do wholesome things. Yeah, if you are broken, then you will only just be doing things. You might just be looking good and going. But on the inside, you don’t feel it. And then one day you snap and then we say oh! This seemingly nice woman. Why did she snap? She snapped because there was a gap, and that gap was not addressed. You know if you walk on the streets of social media. Yeah, you find that women are just snapping left, right, and centre. And then when you click on those pictures and you look at those women and you scroll down and look and you say why, why, why? So, basically, we narrowed it down to the fact that we have unmet expectations and unmet dreams. When you talk to women, they will tell you, Oh! Before I got married, I wanted to be XYZ. I got married and I had children and so now we’re saying so, and you know they don’t deal with it.
And because you don’t, it’s not. If it can happen to you, it can happen. But if you process it, if you deal with it, then you don’t wake up in later life and snap. If you understand, OK, I gave up this dream now to be able to chase this other one. I will pick it up later. At this point, it’s easier. You’ve dealt with it, you’re dealing with it, than for you to say, I got married, and my husband told me not to work and I wasn’t working. And then, now, look. You know, maybe life happens or something and your husband loses his job or so you become resentful. And then, in your resentfulness, you begin to act up and then in acting up, you’re doing all sorts of things that are unbecoming of a woman. So, we need to have those conversations, we need to build bridges from where you got broken to where you want to go to.
Because the truth is, if you want to move from point A to point B, you build a bridge. If I wanted to go from the mainland to the island, I go on the bridge. So, from wherever you feel your life paused or the bend came, a bend is not a full stop. It’s just a pause. So, we want you to revisit that pause, then build a bridge from that pause to where you are now so that you can go to where you actually intended to go. To, you know, and then also. I mean, so you forgot a dream. You left a dream behind and you finished training your children. They’ve all gone. Grown up. They’ve all. Why can’t you pick up the dream? Life has shown us that there is no time that is late for you to start.
So, you can actually build bridges from where you left that dream to where you are now and still go to where you have to go, you know, so these are part of the reasons why we’re having these conferences. And also, I always like giving the analogy of Lagos State. That’s where I live. The congestion, the vehicular congestion, and the traffic in Lagos is massive. And all the time we hear, oh, if we had more roads, you’ve had more bridges, it would be easier, you know. And if we had rail, if you had this, we’ve had that and that’s the same thing we’re saying with this conference to women. If you had other bridges, if you build bridges from yourself to other women to other people, then you have a network of bridges. So, whatever you will need; however, you need it, there is someone. There’s a bridge that is connected to you that can bring it to you.
So, the time to be last; the time to be insular. It’s gone. The time to wake up and say I’m in my silo and I’m comfortable, it’s gone. It’s not competition, it’s collaboration. It is sisterhood. Because we are the ones that dropped the ball. Society is bad? It’s us. We are the ones who train the children who became men who became women. And if anything, it is my generation. That’s why I’m concerned because, I mean, my parents, our parents, trained us well and we woke up and suddenly felt that, oh, that training they gave to us was so hard. And so, we were going to cushion our children from such. And as such, we have bred entitled children. And we are forever catering for our children. So we need to talk about these things and build bridges because if society is going to be good, it’s going to be good one family per time. And who runs the home? Women.
You know, you mentioned somewhere there about expectations, unmet expectations. Do you think there are too many milestones that women pile for themselves? Is that something that women do that makes them get frustrated?
Let me answer this way. Somebody once asked me and said, what’s my opinion of Nigerian women? And I said Nigerian women are resilient. They are hard workers. They are go-getters. But the thing about Nigerian women is that they are also, ‘me too’. And that’s a big thing and we tend to want what is on the other side of the fence. We don’t work our seasons. And it still stems from the same place. We don’t know ourselves. And so, because we have not invested in knowing ourselves and deciding, this is who we are, and this is what we want to do part time. Then, you wake up in chapter one and your neighbour is in chapter 17 and you want chapter 17. It doesn’t work that way, so these are the conversations we’re also going to have. So, you have a friend and your friend dresses up to the 9s with designers, stuff and everything, but she’s paid her dues. In fact, I had Mrs. Isoken Nwabunka on the show once and I said to her, can a woman have it all? And she said no. And I said, what do you mean? No, you have it. Oh! you are married. You have a business. You have children, you have grandchildren, you are educated, you are beautiful, you have nice dresses, you have nice cars. What do you mean, you don’t have it all? And she said, I carry a different dream. My dream is to empower women. My dream is to get to a point where every woman is inclusive, where every woman can find for themselves, you know. And I said Oh! Well, that’s you. But all of us, a lot of us want to be like you. And she said then let them walk in my shoes. That is koko of the matter, walking in the shoes of what you want to do, what you want to copy. A lot of people also see me and they go like, Oh! she’s having a good time. She paints her face every day and she’s talking on the radio. They don’t know. They have no clue because I don’t look like where I’m coming from. So, based on this, you see that’s why we have put this conference together. Again, all the people coming to this conference to speak look together. Yeah, all of them are people that we inspire to be like. But on Saturday, they will tell us stories of how they became and then we will find. And sometimes, they were down in the valley. And sometimes they had challenges and they had to surmount them. It’s in the surmounting, they have become who they are. But you see our flash and indomie generation that we raised and even us ourselves want it now and want it now.
I always say to people that, you see, it’s one thing to have expectations. It’ss one thing for you to have dreams when you say to life, this is what I want. Life gives you the bill for what you want. And most times, the bill for what you want comes in the forms of tests, trials, challenges, and adversities. So, you need to pass that process. It’s when you now pass those tests, those adversities, those things, challenges. That’s when you now come out with what you demanded from life. Life doesn’t just wake up and hand you what you want. No, it doesn’t. So, the more you want, the more trials you are going to face.
The other thing you talked about; you said women do snap. They do get to the end of their tether, so to speak. I was thinking, so, you are having this conference. A lot of people are going to be talking about challenges and then you know, the elephant in the room could possibly be the myriad of mental health issues arising from unmet expectations. Are you going to have a booth of a sort where we have some psychologists just to take care of the fringe of women that are going through such a crisis?
It’s like you’re in the spirit or you’ve been spying on our posts. Yes, we have. There would be a team of psychologists, wellness coaches, emotional coaches, and mental health experts, all going to be present at the conference and they have one assignment and one assignment only – to grab any woman, who is being triggered by anything. Anything that you know, you grab them. The thing again is I try not to say this, but I’m going to say now hoping that it will come across right. We keep saying we don’t talk in this society; in our society, we don’t go to see the psychologist. In our society, we don’t go talk about mental health and all that. But it’s time we started talking about it. It’s time we started having those conversations because it is because you want to be. Well, I have realized in the last couple of years that your greatest success is your health. So, if you are not mentally OK, there is nothing; you have all your dreams already gone. So, if going to sit for one hour to speak to a psychologist, is what will save me, I’ll gladly do it and I’ll just forget about what society thinks or not. That you have fatigue doesn’t mean that you are mad; that is two different things. That you are depressed doesn’t mean that you’re crazy. That’s two different things. This narrative has to be changed by those of us who understand it so that people can get the help that they need. So, we have this team that is going to be present on Saturday. We have even gone so far as to get an ambulance on the premises on that Saturday as well. Paelon Hospital gave us an ambulance with a nurse and everything. We have first aid that we can administer to someone who is, you know, triggering up because there will be the trigger. We have the Lagos State Domestic and Sexual Violence Agency. Yes, sexual abuse is coming on and they’re going to talk about it and look in a room filled with women. If you ask them to stand up, you will discover that maybe three-quarters of them have been raped or abused in one way or the other. In my time when we were growing up, we were not allowed to speak of such things. So, even if you were raped, you kept quiet. So, it is now, as other people are talking, that you to you now say, ah, that’s actually what happened to me. And you know, sometimes we don’t really know why we are the way we are. We don’t know why we are frigid. We don’t even understand menopause. We don’t understand how, we don’t understand why, why we don’t enjoy sex with our husbands, and they’re all going up and down, taking side chicks and all of that and everything will be talked about. We need to heal the woman first.
Let me take you back a bit. You have UpYou! which started from the radio programme or is an offshoot of the radio programme. But the radio programme – UpYou! is an offshoot of a book. So, let’s start from that point. That book, UpYou! what instigated the write-up? I know you have been through so many scenarios. Let me put it this way because life is such a stage. So, you know the different scenes that have played out and you have been in many of them and you know you have now written this book of you from which, of course, has evolved the radio programme and from which is now this conference that is about to hold. What is this concept of UpYou! that you have stayed with and why do you feel the need to remain on that theme?
OK, great. I like the way you say this UpYou! that you have stayed on and I’m going to stay on it. A long time, if not forever. Now, the concept of UpYou! was born from when you go to a women’s conference, you hear them talk about Imposter syndrome. You hear them talk about fear not being enough, pushing that narrative. And then you find women affirming themselves. I am enough. I am enough. And I’m like. And then when you read the profiles of these. Women, you’re wondering. What’s the fear here? You did all this? And you still can’t see that you are enough. I went to one of such conferences, and I was a speaker there and I spoke. In fact, it was very funny because the convener of that conference had come to meet my husband, and complained that that speaker pegged off, and now he doesn’t have a speaker. And I was sitting at my dining table listening to them. And when they finished, I just said, wetin dem dey find for Sokoto dey for shokoto. And then both men turned to look at me. I said, Of course, I can speak. And they were like, why not? OK, come and speak. And so, they gave me a topic and then we got there that day and then, they had very highfalutin names. You know the way it goes. And so, this one, that one, that one, and then the moderator now said, well, after lunch, we’re going to have you. Don’t go away. I was sitting with Laila St. Matthew Daniels on that day, and I said to her, people have said everything. What am I coming to say? She said, Is this your first time? I said, actually, yes. And then she said, No, don’t be afraid. Just go and talk. I said OK. And then finally they called me, and I went there, and the woman told me 10 minutes. I said OK. I opened my mouth, and I said I talked. I was talking. The women were moving and sitting on the edge of their seats. The hall was quiet. Everybody was listening. I was talking. A poignant part of my presentation involved a song. There was a song I wanted to play. So, when the DJ started the song, the woman who told me 10 minutes screamed, don’t cut her! Don’t cut her! Listen, she’s making points. I had to then say to her, that’s part of the point. By the time I finished my presentation, Dolapo Osinbajo, the then VP’s wife was on the stage holding my left hand. Pauline Tallen was on the stage holding my right hand and Bishop Tina Bawa was telling me, If you’re not a baptised Christian, I’m baptising you, right? Now you’re fire. You’re a voice. Where have you been? The APC Chairman of Lagos State wanted me to join APC. Everybody was all over me, they said. Where do you have this fire from? I said, you see, I don’t see anybody. I don’t know any of you, so I can afford to speak my truth and the truth I speak is the truth of God. We are our own problems, women, and we need to look at ourselves and fix ourselves. So, it was from that time that the UpYou! concept came. What was it that I said to them? You do a lot. You are enough because you were created enough by God. Your problem is that you do not want to be a woman. You haven’t asked yourself. What does it mean to be a woman? You are busy looking at the man and saying hey, no, be a woman. if you’re a woman, you won’t have problems with the man. So now women pull back, go back to your manufacturer, and find out what He says. You should do that. You’re a help mate in every circumstance, every situation. Ask yourself, am I helping this man? That’s your job. And then when you know you’ve done what you’re supposed to do, even if the man does not think, you be like the agama lizard, look up, look down and tell yourself, UpYou! Your master in heaven has seen it. And that’s what matters. It was from that day that the concept of UpYou! was born. And after I left that day, that organiser had me come all the way to Houston, in the US to headline his next conference. And so everywhere I went, I preached this my small UpYou! concept to women and it resonated. And then one day I just said, I’m turning 50. I need to do something for myself. I’m 50. Let me do something to commemorate, to mark that I’m 50. I’m going to write a book. I want to write the book and then. What was there to write up? And so, I wrote UpYou! and I put every, every technique, every principle that I’ve ever practised, to become who I was at 50. I wrote it down. I shared it. These things are not Rocket Science. Neither are they new. I didn’t invent them. However, you need to constantly do them over and over until it becomes your default, and then you find that you can actually live life. Then, of course, I had no idea that life was waiting for me because as I finished making the book. My biggest trial so far happened. My husband had a stroke. And so, it was more like life was telling me, Ngwa nu! Shebi, you have been talking? Jump up, jump down, knock your head and look sideways and say, UpYou! Ngwa nu! Right now, show the women how you can do it or how they should be doing it. I was talking to someone a few days ago and I said, I’ve looked at myself. In the last three years plus and all I can say is that God was doing house cleaning. You know, I said, you know how somebody wants you. Want to move into a new house? You need to clean it down properly so that it’s good. I said God wanted a vessel that was clean and that’s why he allowed the last three years to happen. And so now I have what? What will I say? I have the badge. I can say UpYou! I can say to another woman, stand up. I can say, you will smile tomorrow. I can say, it’s not as bad as it looks. I’ve walked across.
And because I have, I have gone through it. I now hear differently. So even when you are talking to me all night and everything. I’m hearing the gaps. Because this also three and a half years have allowed me to introspect. And I saw my own gaps. And so, I’ve spent the last three and a half years fixing the gaps. And so, I’m a better person. People now come and say, Oh! You’re so nice. You’re so warm. You’re so friendly. But that’s because I have fixed the gaps. I have done forgiveness for what I should forgive. I have let go of what I should let go. I have shed the weight that weighed me down, which I didn’t even realise. So, it’s the same experience that I hope that women will have on Saturday. I know that Saturday won’t solve everything, but I just pray Saturday starts the conversations for them. Because honestly, everything is on the inside like Fadekemi, one of the speakers said on the radio yesterday, When you fix the inside, then the wings appear, then you fly.
What do you pray should be the takeout? We know there’s an entry point, but what do you feel should be the takeout at the end of this conference? And you know, the progression to other conferences. What should be the take-home for people as they come to the conference and digest all the stuff that’s going to be delivered at the conference and when they do get to hear the different perspectives? Of course, there’re going to be triggers, and there are going to be life changes. For people. So, what do you expect that you know is going to happen for the women that attend, the participants of the conference? What is going to happen for them?
Yes, I expect that women will move. That there will be a shift from, I want to win at all costs, I will do anything for anything to a win-win situation. Where you think about the next person; to a kind of a shift back to what it used to be, where it took a village to raise a child. Where you don’t run; where you don’t turn the other eye when another woman’s lot is going bad. You see it as that’s my sister’s lot, and you pitch in. Where you don’t mind giving your shoulder to another person to climb on so they can see further. Knowing fully well that her seeing further, this is your sister. It’s not a competition because, if we understand that, I will give unto whom I will give unto. That’s what God said. I will bless whom I want to bless. If we understand that concept, then honestly, we shouldn’t be withholding things that will enable the next person to excel. I’m hoping that women will understand that. There’s something they normally say. Heaven is the goal. But that’s the truth. And not run the race here like, it ends here. And also, so that you see that if we get it right, then all the things we see on the streets of social media, which is the other universe, the other planet on which we live, we won’t be seeing. All the bashing of men we won’t see. We will understand why men are.
Secondly, all the instability in marriages we won’t see because it won’t now be two people struggling. Two captains can’t be in one boat now. I am actually a very fierce person, right? And I’m quite opinionated. But you know what? Once I’m crossing the gate of my house. All that is left behind o, because the person entering the house is Ezinne, Kufre’s wife. Not Ezinne, whatever she was outside. We need to train ourselves like that. It’s even in the Bible. The older women should train the younger ones. So, we need to train and teach what it means to be a woman. And that’s why. I have put together faculty of women. Most of those women, they’ve raised children, awesome children. Some of them have had personal losses. Some have reinvented themselves and they’re doing their sixth career in a span of 60 years or 70. How did they do it? Because you see… OK, that’s another thing. When you ask somebody, how did you do it? You say God is good. The grace of God. No, nobody is saying that on Saturday. How did you do it? You will tell us exactly the process you went through. So that these young ones can learn. And nothing like, Oh! They need to go and hustle. Or, you know, or do runs or something. Let them know what you did. If we are not passing down this thing, then look, shebi, in the Bible when somebody wants to die, they’ll pass the mantle to another person. So, if you’re not passing down the mantle of your own success, you’re not even leaving a legacy.
Well, get ready for UpYou2. That’s the book because a lot of stuff is going to come out of this conference, which you would have to compile into some kind of compendium.
Oh my God. I like you very much. You always give me. Ideas. Thank you.
So, the homestretch stretch of this interview is this, you know, we have a ‘woke’ generation right now. And they are so much different from what you are describing and what you’re talking about here. We are in this generation talking about building bridges and all of that. And we have a generation right behind. They’re quite individualistic. If you do not succeed, you begin to lose. And so, you’re having this conference against the background of this generation, this new generation, the Internet generation built on social media. They’re all very individual. They’re also so very circumspect. They are the most sceptical of human beings right now. They have been given some Hard Knocks in life. So, of course, it’s understandable why they are the way they are. But they also have very asinine in their reactions. Tell me, how are you going to be able to build the bridge to this ‘woke’ generation so that they would understand where you’re coming from?
Thank you for this question. You see there’s a French saying, but I’m going to say it in English. It says the more things change, the more they remain the same. This whole thing you described is because there are gaps. So, we’re going to first start listening to them. That’s why there’s a woman there at the conference, Ebele Chukwujama owns The Listening School, the only listening school in Africa. We have to listen to them. We are quick to say, Gen-Z, they do this. They are ‘woke’. They are that. We need to listen. They are the way they are because there are gaps. When we find the gaps which we hope that the conference will start throwing up, then we will plug the gaps. See! We’ve been treating symptoms. We need to get to the root. Why we delivered them. So, why did they turn out the way they turned out? Did we drop the ball somewhere? So, OK, so why are you guys reactionary? What are you reacting to? What would you want? How would you want it? And we truly listen. Then there will be a meeting point. We’ll find that meeting point and we’ll begin to speak the same language. Because it might look like we are so different. But as that saying goes, the more things look like they are changing, the more they are the same. Because they too will get to some point. That’s why their own blow out eh! E no get Part 2. Because but we have to find those gaps and fix them, so they don’t get to 50. They don’t get to 60 and then we now say, midlife crisis. No, let’s fix it now so that they will now be balanced. For my generation, we are just two pillar human beings. We are very spiritual. And we are very focused on achieving in our careers and everything and we are not big on living. And the children saw this and that’s why they’ve taken to hedonism. That’s why they’ve taken to living because they think that’s what is missing in us. But I’m hoping that everybody will speak and then we’ll be able to gather all our thoughts and then this conversation is, is just starting. It is just going to go on and on and on and on. And we’ll find solutions to it. By God’s grace.
Thank. You so much.
I should be thanking you for your time, and for considering me newsworthy, in the first place.
