By Dr. Joel Ademisoye, United States
Hello, Adesuyi A Leslie Ajayi. Having read your brilliant piece, you took the Bull by the Horns and took me down the memory lane during my secondary school days, on my holiday trip from Owo to Oyo Town, a stop at Ikire, to purchase the juicy, delicious Akara Ikire, was part of the rituals for the travelers on the journey to Ibadan. I vividly recalled that I carried out this historic Akara ritual on my trip from Owo to Lagos, at our stop at Ikire, I purchased the Akara Ikire, a loaf of bread and a bottled water, which completed my launch in 2022. So, Akara is part of the food culture and diet of the Yoruba people in the Southwestern Nigeria.
Thus, when some Nigerians of a particular ethnic and religious group are playing and crying to the political gallery over the First Lady Tinubu’s government grants for the petty traders of Akara, Kuli Kuli, pure water, etc, one wonders what their fuss, outbursts, outrage and condemnation is all about, but revealing their ethnic undercurrents, ethnic identity, religion and partisan politics in Nigeria. I would not be surprised that the First Lady Tinubu’s idea of the government grants for the petty traders of Akara, is like Mrs. Tinubu has committed a serious crime against the Nigerian people? I consider the First Lady’s government grants is just a vehicle or a tool to help the petty traders of Akara, Kuli Kuli and pure water, who are not under the government radar and captured in the conventional Federal Government loan program for the low income and poor families in Nigeria. But, for this writer, the petty traders are members of the small business groups in Nigeria, who don’t have access to the credit facility and the conventional loans system offered by the commercial banks across the country.
With the 2027 Nigerian presidential election just around the corner, I consider the Mrs. Tinubu’s idea, to be a hot cake and a good material for the political opposition to the President Tinubu’s reelection bid, such as the members of the Peter Obi’s Obedients Group in the country.
Before the election of President Tinubu in 2023, Nigeria, a member of the OPEC, with its flowing Petrol Nairas, the country replaced India as the poverty capital of the world in 2022. However, President Buhari government promised to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty, but unfortunately, who knows what was the outcome of the poverty alleviation program in the country? Recently, The World Bank report showed that Nigeria has 139 million Nigerians or 63% of its population living in poverty. This mass poverty condition in Nigeria, is in the midst of plenty of the oil revenues in the country, which is a good push factor for many young Nigerians to get involved in the Japa movement, in order to migrate from Nigeria to the foreign countries like the United States, Canada, Germany, United Kingdom, etc., to seek the greener pastures. So, the First Lady Remi Tinubu’s bold action to address the mass poverty and rescue the 139 million Nigerians out of the perennial, historic hunger and poverty in Nigeria. I see Mrs. Tinubu’s incremental approach in reducing the poverty and her strategy of fighting the growing poverty at the grassroots level, especially among the Nigerian women- petty traders of Akara, Kuli Kuli and pure water, who are of little financial means, historically discriminated against by the country’s banks and have no access to the commercial bank loans. Arguably, it is a new day for these petty women traders, who are getting positive response from the President Tinubu administration, which is offering them a small government grants of N50,000, not a loan to be paid back.
But, like anything else in the country or a President Tinubu government program, it is being politicized, X-rayed through the political lens and it is on auto- pilot. In my humble opinion, many Nigerians are disingenuous, ethnocentric, playing the partisan politics and unrealistic in their evaluating, assessing and commenting on the Nigerian First Lady Tinubu’s government grants for the petty traders in Nigeria. Let Nigerians shed the old skin of ethnicity, religion and partisan politics and put more realistic, pragmatic and good understanding of the Nigerian First Lady’s federal government grants to the petty traders in Nigeria. I found this Tinubu government action to be helping the petty traders in the country, which is first of its kind in Nigeria, where the government grants program for a change, is potentially benefiting a targeted group and it is having the ripple effects on the Nigerian economy.
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