By Suyi Ayodele
(Published in the Nigerian Tribune on Tuesday, June 30, 2026)
https://tribuneonlineng.com/iya-alakara-the-poor-cant-fry-their-way-out-of-poverty/
Somewhere along Ososami Road, Oke Ado, Ibadan, perhaps in the late 1960s, a little girl in school uniform stood beside an old woman frying àkàrà. The bean cakes hissed in red palm oil. Their aroma drifted across the street, teasing the nostrils of hungry schoolchildren. The girl watched her classmates spend their lunch money on one or two pieces, slip them into their pockets, and nibble at them while the teacher worked arithmetic on the blackboard. It is a memory millions of Nigerians of her generation share.
I am tempted to say that the girl was Remi, Nigeria’s First Lady. But I will not. I will only say that memories such as these may explain her recent advice that women could earn a living by frying àkàrà, making kúlíkúlí or roasting corn. It was not the counsel of a cruel woman. It was the recollection of someone whose childhood taught her that these were honourable trades through which hardworking women raised families, built houses and educated their children.
The difficulty is that memory is not reality. The Nigeria that produced those àkàrà women no longer exists. Beans, palm oil, charcoal, transportation, rent, multiple taxes, insecurity and inflation have transformed what was once a modest survival trade into an enterprise requiring capital many poor women simply do not possess. Worse still, millions of desperate Nigerians cannot all become àkàrà sellers. Someone must still have enough disposable income to buy the àkàrà.
We did not have the privilege of a modern-day nursery and primary school. As local boys and girls in our gaari (local) schools, we created our own nursery rhymes. Our muse is the local environment and the activities therein. Our rhymes are not just for fun. They carry messages of reverence, caution and, in some cases, derision. One of such rhymes is presented below:
Call: E má fì’yá alákàrà se’ré – Don’t joke with the woman selling àkàrà
Response: Ìyá Alákàrà – the woman selling àkàrà
Call: Óhún ta sánsán sí mi ní’mú – she sends good aroma to my nostrils
Response: Ìyá Alákàrà – the woman selling àkàrà
Call: Óhún ta sànsàn sí mi l’ófun – she sends sweet sensations to my oesophagus
Response: Ìyá Alákàrà – the woman selling àkàrà
The above rhyme is a tribute to the women who sold àkàrà in those good old days, when those in power had blood flowing through their veins. We sang the rhyme to appreciate the importance of àkàrà sellers to our gastronomic needs. Those women were simply handy as they ensured that our school uniform’s pockets remained stained with oil.
How many were they in my primary school days? Maybe three or, at most, five. From Temidire to Odo Oro, Oke Ijebu-Agege to Ikunri, they were not more than five àkàrà sellers in those days.
Àkàrà business, to those of us from the countryside, is no child’s play. It is the business of the ‘elders’ – very esoteric! Only those who are wise and discerning venture into the trade. In my place, for instance, you must take the oath that you would use only palm oil to fry your àkàrà before you would be allowed to venture into the business. This generation, I understand, will never comprehend the fear that someone can use human blood to fry àkàrà instead of palm oil. That suggestion itself sounds silly to them.
But we knew then that it was possible. Hence the need for the would-be àkàrà sellers to go through the rituals of oath-taking before they could set up the business. A woman who could undergo the esoteric rite of entry to the àkàrà business is not the one who should be joked with. Our local rhyme should therefore make sense now, right?
Irò is the Yoruba equivalent of the English word, contemporary. The Yoruba age-grade system categorises children born within a decade bracket as irò. Members of the same age grade, the differences in their ages notwithstanding, must have the same experiences. This proposition becomes truer if the children share the same countryside orientation or upbringing.
There couldn’t have been much difference between the Oke Ado, Ibadan, of the late 50s to early 70s and the Ekiti countryside of that period. Children of those periods, who are today’s grandmothers and grandfathers, shared the same experiences. They saw various àkàrà sellers at their trades.
They knew that apart from the items required for the rite of entry, starting up an àkàrà venture did not cost an arm and a leg. With sékélé money, a small space, half a gallon of palm oil and two mudus of beans, one could easily become the CEO, Remi Alákàrà Nigeria Limited.
Auntie Remi Tinubu, sorry, Mummy Remi Tinubu (we call all our female pastors and the wives of our pastors Mummy in the Pentecostal), is the wife of our President. She had her formative years at Ososami Street, Oke Ado, Ibadan. Well-planned Oke Ado was an elite part of Ibadan of that time. As a daughter of a well-to-do man, the now 65-year-old woman must have seen a sizeable number of ákàrà sellers in her younger days.
She must have rendered the Ibadan version of our local rhyme several times then with the children in her neighbourhood. The picture of the small women frying àkàrà in their corners and making enough money to train their children, build houses and do other things must have registered in her memory. What a child learns in the cradle is usually difficult to forget.
Mummy Remi Tinubu, therefore, should not be blamed for retaining those old memories of how not too-fortunate children of her time stuffed àkàrà into the pocket of their school’s skirt, their hands travelling intermittently between the pocket and her mouth while their Eskisi mas worked the Arithmetic sums on the chalkboard. When caught, they paid for it. Boys and girls of our generation did that. Little wonder then that the very part of our uniform to go off is the pocket!
What about kúlíkúlí, that African biscuit made from groundnut? Nobody in Mrs. Tinubu’s generation could have missed the experience of the delicious kombo of kúlíkúlí, and gaari. That pair remains a saviour of the not-too-rich members of the society.
The making of kúlíkúlí is never the pastime of the people from my area. The delicacy comes in different shapes and sizes. Mostly ‘imported’ to our locality by the alájàpá (itinerant traders) women who travelled as far as Patigi in present-day Kwara State, mothers bought the edible in large quantities to compliment the gaari lunch of their children as they returned from school.
On the way to our schools then, we had some retailers who sold kúlíkúlí. The attractive ways the items were displayed drew the children to the stands to buy. Of course, most of the children used their lunch money to buy kúlíkúlí, only to starve during lunch break, and must beg their mates to give out of their lunch.
To discourage a child from spending his or her lunch money on kúlíkúlí, our teachers then dropped yet another school rhyme: kúlíkúlí aládun, ó ún kó’mo l’ólè (sweet kúlíkúlí teaches a child how to steal). Mummy Remi Tinubu could not have also missed that school rhyme of that epoch. Again, the memory stuck for a good adult to recollect.
Then we come to àgbàdo (maize). It must have been a taboo in those days in my place to roast maize as a venture. Who would buy it in the first instance when virtually everyone grew the crop? My first cultural shock was around 1978, when, on the streets of Lagos, I saw women roasting maize and people were buying it! What? Àgbàdo sísun (roast maize) of all trades! God forbid. That should be the late 80s and early 90s enterprise in Ekiti and some other states of the Federation.
But the situation is different nowadays. Roast maize or ‘roasted corn’ in our Standard Nigerian English (SNE), is commonplace. And we are in the season of maize. Every street corner is dotted with one stand or the other, of women roasting maize or selling the cooked ones. The trade is seasonal, and so the profit from it. When the maize season is gone, those in the trade move to other commodities. Roasting of maize is not a trade one should take as a permanent venture. Life goes on for the average Nigerian masses, who must endure the pain of the economic woes inflicted on them by the locusts in power.
After eating up the nation’s vegetation, the ruiners we call rulers turn around to insult our sensibilities by making suggestions as to how we can help ourselves instead of lamenting that the government has brought the nation to its knees! Because they don’t suffer the same maladies as the people they have subjected to untold hardship, those in power show a high degree of disconnect when they make projections as to what the common man or woman on the streets can do to earn a living in a country where there is no life!
Mummy Remi Tinubu (pardon my frequent recourse to my Pentecostal orientation here. Having just escaped being ‘excommunicated’ for being ‘rude’ to a church constituted authority, I must not be caught on this page addressing a senior Pastor in our Mission with the wrong appellation) suffered the malady of leadership disconnect penultimate Wednesday, when she suggested that since frying àkàrà, baking kúlíkúlí and roasting maize would not cost the head of an elephant and the intestine of an ant, Nigerians should go into the ventures.
She gave the advice when she empowered some women with a grant of N50,000 each, to establish any venture of their own. I watched the full video, where the First Lady of the Federation made the remarks. I have also read countless arguments for and against the propositions. From whichever angle one views the suggestions, one cannot but agree that the reality of the times we are in as a country is completely lost on our leaders.
Can I explain, please?
The first indicator that Mummy Remi Tinubu is not attuned to the suffering in the land is the amount of money she gave out as ’grants’ to the beneficiaries. When was the last time she visited Wuse Market, for instance? When was the last time the First Lady bought tomatoes, onions and other ingredients on her own? How much is her N50,000 worth today in the economy run and ruined by her husband, the President?
Before saying that to start a maize roasting business does not require much money, did she carry out any market survey to determine the price of a bag of maize? What about the cost of transportation? How much does a bag of charcoal go for in the market today? Who pays for the rent of the space the maize roaster will put her stand? From the same N50,000? What about local government fees? Who takes care of the street urchins who will naturally come around as non-state actors in revenue collection? Are the maize farmers still on their farms? How much of their maize plantation has been fed to cows by AK-47-wielding herders? I can go on and on.
What about àkàrà? From the beans to palm oil, spices to the spaces for the àkàrà sellers, how much of the N50,000 ‘grant’ will be left? More importantly, if all the beneficiaries go into àkàrà business, who buys from whom? And if we may ask: how many women in the catchment areas of the ‘grant’ have been captured? Should we also ask for the source(s) of the ‘grant’? Is it part of our patrimony or funds from the inherited estate of the First Family?
As for those who will sell kúlíkúlí, is she aware that groundnut farmers in the North pay bandits before they can plant, and also pay when they want to harvest? Will the cost of production not be built into the price of a bag of groundnuts?
Less than a month ago, the First Lady was spotted somewhere donating brand-new SUVs to some Women Leaders of the ruining and ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). She also ‘commanded’ all governors under the banner of the APC to give the same SUVs to the party’s Women Leaders in their various states. Now, we ask: what is the cost of an SUV compared to the N50,000 ‘grant’ given to the hapless women-beneficiaries? Who should deserve better treatments between political leeches decorated as women leaders and the downtrodden women pummeled by the voodoo economic policies of this administration?
Who will tell Mummy Remi Tinubu that the àkàrà sellers of her days in Sapele, few as they were then, could not be compared to the suffering masses of today? How would the First Lady, who numbers among the few privileged women to have married billionaires, understand that it is never the prayer of the àkàrà sellers of yore that any of their offspring would take up the àkàrà business? Who will ask her to take recourse to her Yoruba background where it is often prayed that ìran méta kìí t’òsì (three generations must not suffer the consequences of poverty)?
And, even at the risk of final ‘excommunication’, may I politely ask Mummy Remi Tinubu how many of her children, nieces, cousins, relations and associates are into àkàrà, kúlíkúlí and corn roasting ventures? About two weeks ago, the senator representing Edo North senatorial District, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, said that the NNPCL alleged that the children of senators and those of the mighty and big in the nation are the ones working in the national oil company. Why has our Mother Excellency not taken her campaign of small-money-businesses like àkàrà, kúlíkúlí and maize roasting, to those of her ilk in power? Why is it convenient for her dog to breastfeed its own puppies but scout for the litters of grasscutters for dinner?
As some argued, the insults from those in authority, the way they talk down on the masses, their impunity and the leadership arrogance they display, speak volumes of their personalities. I read those comments and my mind went straight to my undergraduate sociology teacher, Professor Kunle Ogunbameru, and his allusion to the theory of Social Insensitivity, where the scholar submitted (not in his exact words, anyway), that leaders with interpersonal insensitivity often fail to read the clues that would have enabled them to recognise how their actions negatively impact the lives of others.
The tragedy, therefore, is not that Mummy Remi Tinubu remembers the women who sold àkàrà. She should. Those women deserve honour. The tragedy is that those who govern Nigeria remember the poverty of yesterday but have forgotten the economics of today. They speak as though enterprise alone can defeat inflation, insecurity and collapsing purchasing power. It cannot. Governments are elected not merely to advise citizens to endure hardship but to remove its causes. The old àkàrà sellers prospered because they worked in an economy that still rewarded effort. Today’s poor are being asked to fry their way out of a crisis they did not create.
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