-Kayode Ajulo
In the golden hush of a late June afternoon in 2026, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, First Lady of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, rose with purpose before an assembly of remarkable women.
Their faces, etched with the quiet resilience of devoted mothers, industrious traders, and visionary dreamers, reflected the enduring strength of a nation’s heartbeat.
In that moment, history seemed to pause, as dignity met destiny beneath the watchful gaze of destiny’s daughters.
With measured words drawn from lived experience and compassionate observation, she pointed to the humble stalls of the market, where pots of sizzling akara, ears of roasting corn, and trays of kuli-kuli have sustained generations. “We are trying to give hope,” she said, “and to start an akara business doesn’t take a lot of money. To start roasting corn, or kuli-kuli, doesn’t take much.”
It was not a decree of limitation, but an invitation to agency. Yet in the digital echo chambers that followed, this call was distorted into caricature, a supposed insult to a suffering nation.
Her words stir the depths of my own heart, for I know intimately the quiet odyssey of my beloved mother, Princess Chief Christiana Monisola Ajulo, JP, now a venerable 91 years of age and known as Ma’ami Ajulo.
A seamstress by divine calling, she began her journey with a sowing machine, then hustle her trade in the vibrant yet unforgiving alleys of Gbagi Market in Ibadan. There, with unwavering resolve, she traded humble wares, small provisions, scraps of fabric, and the essential threads of daily life, braving the uncertainties and tempests of the marketplace with grace and grit.
From those modest beginnings, she ascended with quiet dignity: first as a respected textiles trader, weaving networks of trust and camaraderie; and later, as the proud proprietor of a bookshop that blossomed into a cherished cornerstone for her community and the enduring foundation of our family’s legacy.
That trajectory was no accident; it was the fruit of dignity in small beginnings.
That perhaps explains the deeper misunderstanding afflicting our public discourse today. Not the hardship itself, which is real and biting, but the tendency to scorn the very ladders that have lifted millions when grander ones seem distant.
Nigeria’s First Lady was not inventing a new gospel of poverty; she was echoing an ancient truth rooted in our history of enterprise.
Consider the timeline of our national awakening. On October 1, 1960, as the Union Jack descended and the green-white-green ascended, Nigeria inherited not just independence but an economy where market women, like the legendary Iyalodes of Yorubaland, were already engines of commerce.
By the 1970s, post-civil war reconstruction, small-scale trading and agriculture fed families and rebuilt communities long before oil revenues promised (and often failed) to deliver utopia. Institutions such as the Better Life Programme under Maryam Babangida in the 1980s, and later initiatives under various First Ladies, recognized what economists from Adam Smith to modern development thinkers have affirmed: the dignity of labour begins with what is possible, not what is ideal. Because women have always been the shock absorbers of economic stress, because they turn little into sustenance, therefore they build resilience that policies alone cannot manufacture.
The First Lady’s intervention through the Renewed Hope Initiative is precisely such a bridge.
Far from trivializing suffering, it meets vulnerable women, widows, market traders, young mothers, where they are, offering grants, not loans, to ignite micro-enterprises.
Critics who mock “akara” as tone-deaf ignore the data of the informal economy, which, according to studies by the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics and World Bank reports over the years, employs over 80% of Nigeria’s workforce, particularly women.
These are not dead-end jobs but seedbeds of scalability. Many a successful distributor or exporter began with a single tray under the sun. Not dependency on distant bureaucracies, but ownership of one’s immediate circumstance.
While detractors claim disconnection from macroeconomic pain, they practice the elitism that dismisses the poor’s own ingenuity. Not empowerment through realism, but rhetoric that leaves people waiting for unattainable salvation.
Senator Oluremi Tinubu has consistently walked this path of practical solidarity. As a former Senator representing Lagos Central and now as First Lady, her record reflects investment in education, skills, and direct support.
On International Women’s Day, March 8, 2026, she declared: “When we give women access to education, healthcare, economic empowerment, leadership platforms, justice and equity, we gain stronger families, more prosperous communities, and a more inclusive nation.”
This is no isolated remark but the central mantra of her advocacy. It aligns with the Renewed Hope Agenda of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, which seeks inclusive growth rather than empty promises.
Distortion versus truth; cynicism versus constructive hope, these are the moral polarities before us.
The outrage that followed her June 2026 remarks was not primarily about economics but optics in a season of inflation and adjustment pains.
Revisionists framed her words as an endorsement of perpetual smallness, when they were a pragmatic starting line. A’s not really B (a dismissal of ambition); it’s C (a recognition that ambition thrives on accessible first steps). Not grand theories detached from reality, but grounded action that says: begin with the pot, scale with the profit, multiply through the network. While some claim the era demands only high-tech solutions and white-collar salvation, they overlook how small traders have weathered structural adjustments, military eras, and democratic transitions alike, because honest work compounds dignity.
History’s great reformers understood this polarity. Nelson Mandela reminded us that “there is no passion to be found playing small, in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” Yet he also built from the ground up, recognizing incremental victories.
Closer home, the market women of Aba and Onitsha, or the cassava processors of the Middle Belt, embody this: they do not wait for perfect conditions; they create value within them.
The First Lady’s message honours that heritage. It does not replace broader reforms, monetary policy stability, infrastructure investment, skills training, but complements them by putting resources directly into the hands of women who sustain households.
Today, as Nigeria navigates the necessary pains of economic reorientation, the First Lady’s stance offers a prophetic instruction: dignity resides in productivity, however modest the scale.
Mocking small-scale trading is not advocacy for the masses; it is a subtle contempt for their daily triumphs. True leadership validates effort at every level.
So what should citizens and leaders be measured by? Not by the grandeur of their pronouncements, but by the practicality of their compassion; not by how loudly they decry hardship, but by how effectively they equip people to overcome it.
Character is vision married to sacrifice, seeing potential in the akara seller today and the enterprise owner tomorrow.
Service is not promising heaven while scorning the tools at hand, but handing over the matches that light the fire.
And so, Senator Oluremi Tinubu has chosen the more noble path and in rising to defend her call, I do not merely champion one woman’s voice, but uphold the timeless ethic that has built nations and forged legacies: to begin humbly, as my own mother did, once a tailor of modest means, and now the revered Iya-Ijo of Christ Anglican Church, Ifira-Akoko, a proud matriarch whose seed has blossomed into generations of great lawyers, decorated educationists, smart engineers, and visionary entrepreneurs, to persevere with honour, and to rise through honest, steadfast endeavour.
Nigeria’s women, and the great nation they anchor with such grace and strength, deserve nothing less.