OPINION: Another View on the Matter of Akara

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 Confessionslinked 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 liftedmillions out of poverty.

I’m not sure that, in offering a token to support akaraor 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 carriedan eerie sense of pain, hardship, and frustration reminiscentof 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 a chorus that not only turned the song on its head but also weaponised 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.