By Morenike Taire
Is working with the better half all it’s construed to be? Working from home now has a new meaning. With more and more women getting educated and more glass ceilings being broken, women are getting more ambitious than ever, often having similar goals to their men, if not more ambitious ones.

In these days of equal opportunity and offspring that self entertain, there is no longer stopping any modern day couple from registering a Jones & Jones type of enterprise.

Is getting in the same car to get to work and getting to hire the hubby’s secretary an extension of happily ever after?

Mope and her husband, Demola Makanjuola, were childhood sweethearts who married right out of graduation and though both had a background in law, they both wanted to pursue a career in management. They found a house in a good location on  a major highway, lived upstairs while downstairs was the offices of their consultancy firm.

Today, almost twenty years down the road, they run one of the most successful consultancies in Lagos, with clients spanning industries as varied as aviation, civil engineering, oil and gas besides management.

Are they not tired of each other’s company? Do they sometimes need space away from each other?

They look at each other as though the thought has never occurred to them. “In the early days”, Mope explained “we went everywhere together- everywhere! Now, I like to stay when he goes abroad sometimes, especially when the kids are home on holidays”.

If being together has made the Makanjuolas closer, it has not been the case for Joy and Vincent, who met when Vincent, a Ghanaian, had asked for directions at the airport when he first arrived Nigeria about seven years ago.

“it was love at first sight”, gushed a still starry eyed Vincent, who had come into the country to look for greener pastures he thought he could find in a neighbouring African country. Vincent ended up putting up with Joy’s family in their modest apartment on the outskirts of town. Their’s had been a short courtship.

According to Joy: “It was taken for granted that we would marry, and that we would set up a business center”. Without respect for their little education however, they both enrolled for computer classes at a local college to pick up basic skills.

Everything was fine for the next six years but last year, two kids down the line, Joy felt a need to express herself in different ways. “ At first, it was a big source of trouble. Sometimes I felt my head would explode if I did not immediately get out of here”.

Fortunately, they found a way out of their issues. It was agreed Joy would return to computer school to specialize in design, which she did. Today, Vincent handles the business center with the aid of an assistant, while Joy has opened another shop on the next street where she trains people on IT design.

They both agree that the one disadvantage of being in the same business is that when business is low, the whole household suffers from the lack of income source diversity.

This happened some years ago when many small businesses in the neighbourhood folded up only for their owners to go for easier, more lucrative GSM sales businesses. “Thank goodness things are back to normal again!” Vincent sighs.

It has been disadvantage all the way for Efosa and Ime, who met at the oil company where they both work ten years ago and decided to marry. “I was skeptical about working within such proximity to my partner”, recalls Efosa, who works at the company clinic on a different floor than her ex husband Ime, an accountant. “At that point I was too much in love to care”.

Fortunately, company policy at the time allowed people to marry within the organization, as long as both were not in the same department and they wed, to the delight of mot of their colleagues.  The marriage lasted only three years.

“It is the culture here to have a fling with the IT girls and youth corpers”, Ime shrugged without remorse as explanation for the behavior that led to their break up. She was just unnecessarily jealous!”

The story had it that Efosa, in a fit of anger, had beaten up a youth corper suspected to be having a fling with Ime. It was a miracle that she kept her job, but it was the final straw in the highly stressed union.

“He is still carrying IT girls up and down”, says Efosa, “But at least that is his problem and that of his new wife”. They live in the same quarters as well, which means the children get to see both their parents without stress.

Mope and Demola have never had one fight about cash, and they own various properties which are registered jointly. After two decades, they still enjoy a close relationship and have no regrets. When told about Efosa and Ime Williams, they did not pretend to know what the problem might have been.

“There are no hard and fast rules about this thing’, say the Makanjuolas blissfully. “It is different strokes for different folks, but they must agree”.

Xpressions: Zuma sets example in fight against corruption

It appears his days of controversy are over as South African third black president Jacob Zuma this week announced the sack of three of his ministers on corruption allegations.

The man who was once pummeled from all sides on the global scene for promoting superstition over facts on HIV/AIDS  and  marrying many more wives than are clearly necessary, is finally doing something that not only meets wide approval in the rest of the continent but also setting an example to it.

Back home in Nigeria as in the rest of Africa, corruption, covert or overt, mainly institutionalized, has been responsible for massive and really unnecessary human suffering since independence.

It has been mouthed to the point of being clichéd, yet little has been done by decisive, government action, to deal with the guilty. Excellent  indictments too often get lost in the maze of pseudo bureaucracy and so called due process. It will be nice to see our president have the boldness to fire someone for corruption right up, and then wait to be challenged in court

Gadaffi’s death: matters arising

Not every African I rejoicing over the death of dictator of old Moummar  Ghadaffi.  A continent whose mind works mainly on the basis of bread and butter, no one but some Libyans can understand why they want the ousting of a leader who has given them a better life, for more than forty years, than most Africans can ever have. In the following months, it will be clear whether Libya regrets its decision, or stands by it.