I have spent the past 24 hours and more reading hundreds of comments from people responding to my video criticizing the First Lady’s suggestion that young Nigerians should embrace businesses like akara and kuli-kuli as the solution to unemployment.
The most common responses have gone something like this:
“My mother sold akara to send me to school.”
“My mother sold fish and was able to feed and educate all six of us.”
“My mother was an Iya Eleja and a Mama Oni Wosi-Wosi. May God bless her for her hustle in raising us. Madam Tinubu was right to recommend the same thing to today’s youths, who are simply too lazy.”
“Selling akara is how my mother sent all of us to university.”
Every time I read those comments, I smile. Not because I disagree with the stories. Far from it.
I smile because I think many people have completely misunderstood both my argument and the larger issue raised by Mrs. Tinubu’s comments and the reactions of those defending them.
So let me say something that should not even need saying: I have nothing but admiration for those women.
The Iya Elejas.
The Mama Oni Wosi-Wosis.
The women who woke up before dawn to light charcoal fires while the rest of the family slept.
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The women who stood for hours under the scorching sun in crowded markets.
The women who sold tomatoes, pepper, fish, akara, bean cakes, kuli-kuli, roasted corn, fruits, and whatever honest trade they could find just to make sure their children wore school uniforms and stayed in school.
Those women were giants. They were heroes.and My own mother, ‘MAMA MOSUN’, was one of those heroes.
My mother, mama Mosun, sold wosi-wosi on the streets of Fadeyi. I still remember watching officials from the town council arrive without warning to demolish her roadside omolanke stall and cart away her pineapples and oranges because, they said, she did not have a licence to trade there.
So please, don’t tell me about your Iya Eleja mother or your Mama Alakara mother as though I know nothing about the sacrifices of that generation.
I was raised by one. Right there in the streets of Fadeyi – Lagos right until she died on my 14th birthday
Many of us became lawyers, doctors, professors, engineers, bankers, entrepreneurs, and professionals because of the sacrifices those women made.
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They deserve monuments.
They deserve our gratitude.
They deserve our everlasting respect.
