Al-Hayat Relief Foundation is an interest-free cooperative society, which started in 1997 in Ijebu-Ode (Ogun State). It was formed to rescue our Muslim brothers who were often forced to take loans from Shylock lenders, who charged exorbitant interests. More so, we observed that the practice was that when they took the loans, the lenders would not want the loans to be paid back. Rather, they prefer
red the interest to accumulate. We felt that it would be proper to come together and put up a cooperative that would be interest-free. What we wanted was to live and have all the necessities of life without unnecessarily getting them in the wrong way. Islam abhors ill- gotten and accumulated wealth; it believes that for whatever you own, it must be in halal way as opposed to haram. Six of us sat down and started talking to people about it, but unfortunately, the first set of people that we invited thought it would not be possible to float an interest-free cooperative in this environment and so backed out. But we were resilient and we continued with our membership drive and by the time we were about to do our annual general meeting after a year, we encouraged each member to come with friends and by the time we finished,the membership had swelled. Right now, we have branches in about six states.
