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 sizable 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?
