MY akara? It’s a banger! Any day, any time, I’ll fry akara for you, and you’ll lick your fingers. Mummy Wa, I’ve started my own; make the empowerment reach my side, abeg.
And this strategy really worked, o. Yes, the same strategy that is always used to distract us from the reality of what is happening around us, the insecurity, the hardship, and the outrageous increase in the price of literally everything you touch at the market.
Or have the Oyo schoolchildren been released and I somehow missed the memo? Have all the kidnapped victims safely returned to their families? Oh, wait. Mr. Bayo said there is no hunger in the country. Maybe I haven’t been keeping up with the news, which is why I missed all the important milestones Nigeria has apparently achieved.
But don’t blame me. Your girl was just tired. Now that everything is obviously settled and we are living in a safe and prosperous country, we can all finally pursue our dreams. We can start akara businesses, roast seasonal corn by the roadside, and sell kuli-kuli. After all, these ventures will comfortably pay rent, cover school fees, sustain entire families, and still leave enough money for us to save for a vacation.
What a time to be alive in Nigeria!
Sometimes, I wonder if we are the generation caught in the middle of a grand national experiment. We were raised to dream big, study hard, work honestly, and aspire for more. Yet, somehow, many of us have found ourselves navigating confusion, uncertainty, and an economy that constantly seems to be moving the goalposts. Thanks to the leadership we have experienced, ambition increasingly feels like a luxury, while survival has become the national curriculum.
There is nothing wrong with frying akara, selling kuli-kuli, or roasting corn. In fact, these businesses have fed families, paid school fees, and built homes for decades. But they thrived in a time when food prices were reasonable, rent was affordable, education did not cost an arm and a leg, and access to healthcare did not require a miracle or a fundraiser. There is dignity in what they do, and they existed in an economy where hard work, however humble, could still guarantee dignity and survival. The problem begins when a nation starts presenting survival strategies as economic transformation.
Nigerian women do not lack resilience. They have proven, repeatedly, that they can create something out of almost nothing. What they lack is an environment that rewards ambition beyond subsistence.
When women ask for empowerment, many are asking for access to capital, markets, technology, skills, infrastructure, and opportunities that allow them to build enterprises, not merely survive another day.
The hard question we should ask ourselves is this: after years of promises and empowerment programmes, why are we still asking these women to remain where they are? No one wants to stay in the same place for life; we all want to move forward. And again, statements like this only encourage survival mode and a subsistence lifestyle. If akara is an all-year-round business, good. But what about corn roasting? Do you want someone to depend on something seasonal?
Are these people in touch with reality? Or, better still, don’t they have advisers who are truly in touch with reality? This is 2026, for crying out loud. The First Lady kept saying, “I gave a billion to this group, I gave half a billion to that group.” And I found myself wondering: from whose pocket exactly? Because if we’re talking about personal funds, then by all means, take a bow. But if we’re talking about public resources and government responsibilities, then calling it “giving” feels a lot like handing people a fraction of what they are entitled to and expecting a standing ovation for it.
Well, I am asking: don’t these people have advisers to advise them? Because they seem unable to see beyond the walls of the Villa. But then, Sunday Dare proudly reminded us that his mother sold akara, bananas, and oranges, and that he even hawked them in the market himself. Fair enough. But does that mean what was considered normal and necessary sixty years ago should still be our economic aspiration sixty years later? Is the goal of governance not to ensure that each generation does better than the last? Honestly, how exactly do these people think?
If our parents sold akara and hawked oranges to survive sixty years ago, shouldn’t our ambition today be to build an economy where our children have more options than our parents did, not the exact same ones? You give out 50 grinding machines in a community, who will grind whose own? You teach people how to make soap and encourage them to start petty businesses, but do you patronise them? No.
Well, Uncle Dare, since you’re closer to Mummy Remi, please kindly remind her that your mother sold akara so you wouldn’t have to and I’m sure you don’t. Working for VOA, serving as Minister of Sports, and now as a presidential spokesperson is certainly not the akara-selling. May God bless your mother. She sold akara, bananas, and oranges so you could have better opportunities. That’s exactly why our parents made those sacrifices, so we wouldn’t have to repeat the same struggles, but build on their legacy.
And that legacy should not involve taking handouts to start akara and corn-selling businesses. The most frustrating and disheartening part is that people will still line up to collect these handouts. I witnessed it myself this weekend. I attended a programme, and the sheer number of women who turned up was alarming. One can only hope that they will not go on to trade their votes and return to the same hardship they are trying so hard to escape.
But then again, this is the cycle they have been taught to accept. Every election season comes with handouts, and every election season, many people are reduced to recipients of temporary relief rather than beneficiaries of real progress. If this is what we call empowerment, then perhaps we need to ask ourselves a difficult question: are we empowering citizens or simply training them to remain dependent?
Come to think of it, is this really empowerment or just another form of disempowerment? Because honestly, I see no reason why, every election cycle, the same people are being “empowered” with the same small handouts. If it is truly empowerment, then by the next election, they shouldn’t still be waiting for another government giveaway. It should have translated into something bigger. Those who were empowered should, by then, be in a position to empower others too.
The problem is not akara. The problem is a country where, after all our resources, all our policies, and all our promises, we are still asking women to settle for survival when they should be empowered to build, innovate, and thrive. The question is: when will empowerment stop meaning manage and start meaning prosper? If you create an enabling environment, then you let the system work for the citizens. That is the greatest empowerment.
Voice just cleared its throat.
- Kabara is a writer and public commentator. Her syndicated column, Voice, appears in News Point Nigeria newspaper on Monday. She can be reached at hafceekay01@gmail.com.