The feisty debate over First Lady Oluremi Tinubu’s comment on akara, roasted corn, and kulikuli, while discussing the Federal Government’s economic programme, is still stirring up a strong aroma, much like the smell of any of these popular local snacks. The thing won’t just go away, especially after her husband, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, jokingly stirred the pot at a public event by calling her Iya Alakara, meaning the akara seller. At an event at the State House on June 23 to flag off the Renewed Hope Initiative (RHI) Economic Empowerment Programme for Women Petty Traders, with business recapitalisation grants of N50,000 each to 37,000, 1,000 from each of the 36 states and Abuja, the First Lady had suggested the beneficiaries could re-invest the grants in selling akara, roasted corn, or kulikuli.
Eating cake
The suggestion has sparked a firestorm, mainly between those who say the First Lady was insensitive and out of touch, and those who disagree. It reminds me of the Austrian-born duchess, Marie Antoinette, the last French Queen before the French Revolution and her curious association with Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s book, Confessions. Of all the interesting things Rousseau wrote in the book about his own personal life – the ups and downs and the struggles in a society going through very difficult times – one of the most talked-about expressions from Confessions linked to the French Queen is “Let them eat cake.” Antoinette had not been born at the time, so it was improbable that she said that. Yet, a mix of fact and legend from Rousseau’s book suggests that on the eve of the French Revolution, amidst hunger protests over the scarcity of bread and other staple foods, Antoinette’s chaperons told her that Paris was boiling. The legend suggests that she sashayed to the window, looked out from the pomp of the palace, and was genuinely puzzled that hunger for bread could lead to protests. “Let them eat cake,” she purportedly said, a statement that has, over generations, come to represent the epitome of elite disconnectedness.
It takes more than cake
Oluremi Tinubu didn’t put it that way; she didn’t say, “Let them eat cake,” even though a section of the outraged public has given her comment quite a monstrous twist. In a country with a large rural poor and a growing number of urban poor piling up, people need all the help they can get, however small it may appear. Stories abound of people in whose lives such little interventions have made a difference. Mexico, Brazil, and Bangladesh are examples of countries where small, targeted and sustained efforts (often a combination of direct cash transfers, skills training, education and mentoring) have lifted millions out of poverty. I’m not sure that, in offering a token to support akara or kulikuli sellers, the First Lady wanted to achieve what Maryam Babangida’s Better Life for Rural Women could not, or that she was aiming for her own improved, pet version of Patience Jonathan’s Women of Change. She just wanted to reach out, and her heart was obviously in a good place. She must have been genuinely puzzled by the controversy, as she made further clarification in Jigawa a few days later, when she announced more grants.
Our mama…
Unfortunately, the timing was wrong. And worse still, the context for many outside the gilded halls where her speeches were delivered carried an eerie sense of pain, hardship, and frustration reminiscent of pre-revolutionary France. It was not what Remi Tinubu said; it was what was heard that has become the problem. In March last year, for example, the First Lady gave away thousands of professional kits (scrubs and Crocs) to nursing students in Delta State, an extraordinary act of charity, over which the Master of Ceremonies raised “Na our mama bi this o, we no get another one…”, a song in Pidgin to celebrate Oluremi Tinubu. Rather than singing responsively, the audience, mainly youths, heard something different and responded in chorus, turning the song on its head and weaponising it. When the First Lady said she would give away N50,000 to beneficiaries of the RHI petty trader scheme, I can imagine that those in the hall applauded her. But what was heard outside was different.
Age of rage
And the hearers, many of them Gen Z, could not relate. How can a former two-term senator (an elite political group notorious for being widely regarded as amongst the highest-paid political officeholders in the world) offer a token to petty traders? What was akara in the scheme of the serious difficulties facing Nigerians, from insecurity, worsening material poverty, poor access to healthcare and education?
My akara story
I used to stay in line late at night or very early in the morning at the road junction in Okoya, Ajegunle, waiting for my turn to buy akara, dodo, or dun dun from the Iya Alakara, and perhaps the First Lady still has such memories from her past as well. But that was a world in which my parents were sure I would go out and return home safely. And even though the four of us (including my parents) lived in one room, the government paid my school fees, and healthcare was free. We managed on the meagre income of mum, a cook, and dad, a storekeeper at the ports’ authority quays. I agree that even today, there are still some exceptions to the rule, including my favourite boli seller along CMD Road, Lagos, who once told me sales from the business largely paid her son’s University of Lagos fees. But the world has changed – and Nigeria has become tougher, with an increasingly large army of young people who, for good or ill, won’t give their leaders an easy pass.
American version
When Bill Clinton or Barack Obama extols hot dogs or stops over on the hustings for a drink and apple pie at McDonald’s, their credentials are hardly in doubt. US voters can relate to them not only because some of these politicians have worked odd jobs before, but also because, apart from the notable exception of President Donald Trump, these folks live modestly and often leave the office poorer. The First Lady should not be discouraged from well-doing. She’s in a different world from that of the Iya Alakara of old. This chill-less generation would not only welcome the Good Samaritan but also demand authenticity and scrutinise him. Finally, in today’s Nigeria, Marie Antoinette might not even have seen what was happening outside the palace. The chaperons won’t let it happen.
