…government must build the environment in which…businesses have a fighting chance. This is why those words — “we’ve encouraged Nigerians as best as we could” — stayed with me. Encouragement is good. Grants are good. Giving is good. But none of them can be the end of the conversation. The bigger task for leadership is enabling people to succeed. Give Nigerians the infrastructure. Give businesses a better environment. Make trade easier. Help SMEs scale. And above all, don’t limit our imagination.
Some weeks ago, Nigeria’s First Lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, was in the news after talking about grants and encouraging Nigerians to consider small businesses such as frying akara, roasting corn and making kuli-kuli. There was, understandably, a huge debate. Should the First Lady really be telling Nigerians to fry akara? Is there anything wrong with frying akara? After all, generations of Nigerian women have done exactly that and, through sheer hard work, raised families and sent their children to school.
But that was not really what caught my attention. It was something else she said: “We’ve encouraged Nigerians as best as we could. What is within our hands, I have given, and I keep giving.” I found myself going back to those words. What does it mean to say we have encouraged Nigerians as best as we could? It almost sounds as if that is it. We have encouraged you. We have given what we can. Surely, we cannot afford to have our leaders sound as though encouragement is the limit of what can be done.
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To be fair to the First Lady, she also spoke about interventions by the Renewed Hope Initiative in health, agriculture, education, ICT training, and social investment, and showed that they remained open to doing more. But I still think we need to be careful about the message we send. This is not really about the First Lady. It is about government and leadership generally. People elect governments because they expect them to improve their lives. Governments make promises about poverty, education, infrastructure, jobs, and economic opportunities.
Leadership cannot stop at encouragement. And perhaps this is where we are focusing on the wrong thing when we argue about akara. There is nothing wrong with frying akara. There is dignity in every honest endeavour. We all know stories of women who traded by the roadside, sold food, hawked goods and somehow managed to educate their children. We should honour them and the sacrifices they made. But surely the ambition of Nigeria in 2026 cannot simply be to reproduce the survival strategies of generations before us. Nigeria in 2026 should be asking a different question.
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What incentives are we putting in place for SMEs? How are we helping businesses that already exist to grow? How easy is it for them to access affordable finance? What about electricity, roads, logistics and machinery? And then there is trade. By the sheer number of Nigerians, trade should become a dominant part of our economic conversation. How easy is it for somebody making something in Aba to sell it in Lagos?
How do we take that woman frying akara and help her build a proper business? Can she employ five people? Can she employ twenty? Can she improve the packaging of what she produces? Can she easily access financing? Can she take orders online and deliver to people’s homes? Can she eventually supply supermarkets or even export? Why should the national imagination for her end at the roadside? That, for me, is the bigger conversation.
Nigeria has a population approaching 240 million people. That should both excite and worry us. We have an enormous potential market, but we also have an enormous number of people who need jobs, education, healthcare, and opportunities. We cannot grant our way out of this. Of course, grants are important. Sometimes a relatively small amount of money can change somebody’s life or give a small business the capital it needs to start. But there is a difference between giving and enabling. Giving can help someone start. Enabling creates the conditions that allow that person to scale their operations without continually needing to be given something. What happens after the grant?
What incentives are we putting in place for SMEs? How are we helping businesses that already exist to grow? How easy is it for them to access affordable finance? What about electricity, roads, logistics and machinery? And then there is trade. By the sheer number of Nigerians, trade should become a dominant part of our economic conversation. How easy is it for somebody making something in Aba to sell it in Lagos? Or for someone in Kano to trade efficiently with someone in Port Harcourt? And we should not stop at Nigeria.
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How easy is it for a Nigerian SME to sell in Ghana, Kenya, or South Africa? How are we positioning our businesses to take advantage of the African Continental Free Trade Area? Beyond Africa, how do we help Nigerian products reach the rest of the world? We already have glimpses of what is possible. Come December, the world will once again be looking at Lagos. “Detty December” has become an economic phenomenon in its own right. In December 2024, tourism and entertainment activity in Lagos was estimated at more than ₦100 billion. Look beyond the concerts and parties. Look at the ecosystem around them. Look at our fashion. Look at the food businesses, photographers, make-up artists, caterers, designers, decorators, drivers, and the many small businesses that benefit from that activity.
Government does not have to run her business. But government has a responsibility to create an environment that allows her business to thrive. The same applies to agriculture. We need mechanisation, storage, and processing. We need roads. We need to connect farmers to manufacturers and manufacturers to markets. We need infrastructure. Nigerians are already entrepreneurial.
Nigerian fashion particularly fascinates me. Our designers are increasingly visible abroad. Technology and social media have opened markets that simply did not exist for earlier generations. A designer in Lagos can have a customer in London. How do we help her grow? How does she go from producing 30 pieces to producing 3,000? How does she get her products to customers around the world easily and competitively? That is where government should become imaginative.
Government does not have to run her business. But government has a responsibility to create an environment that allows her business to thrive. The same applies to agriculture. We need mechanisation, storage, and processing. We need roads. We need to connect farmers to manufacturers and manufacturers to markets. We need infrastructure. Nigerians are already entrepreneurial. You see it everywhere. We are constantly creating, trading, improvising, and finding ways around problems. Imagine what could happen if all that energy were matched by an environment deliberately designed to help businesses succeed.
This why we should be careful about communicating survival when we should be communicating aspiration. The world is moving too quickly for us to limit people’s imagination to survival. Technology is changing how people work, shop, eat and trade. Small businesses can now reach markets thousands of kilometres away. So yes, let the woman fry akara. But let us not stop there. Let us ask how her akara becomes a business. How that business employs other Nigerians. How it becomes a manufacturer and, perhaps one day, an exporter.
Government does not have to build the business for her. Nigerians have proved repeatedly that they can build businesses. But government must build the environment in which those businesses have a fighting chance. This is why those words — “we’ve encouraged Nigerians as best as we could” — stayed with me. Encouragement is good. Grants are good. Giving is good. But none of them can be the end of the conversation. The bigger task for leadership is enabling people to succeed. Give Nigerians the infrastructure. Give businesses a better environment. Make trade easier. Help SMEs scale. And above all, don’t limit our imagination.
There is much more that we can do!
‘Lande Omo Oba, a lawyer, writes from Lagos.
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