₦airaland Forum

Remi Tinubu: Why the Outrage?


By Soibi Versatile

The wave of criticism that followed Senator Oluremi Tinubu’s remarks on women engaging in kulikuli, corn, and groundnut trading suggests a disconnect between public memory and present expectations. These commodities are not recent inventions, nor are they symbols of desperation. For decades across Hausa, Yoruba, and Igbo communities, they have formed the economic base of many households. It is from the sale of groundnut and kulikuli that school fees were paid, uniforms were bought, and university degrees were funded. To treat the trade as novel or demeaning is to ignore the very foundation on which a number of Nigerian professionals were raised.

What the First Lady stated was not an economic theory crafted in abstraction. It was a reminder of an existing reality: that government interventions are being extended to women in these sectors, and that personal enterprise must meet institutional support halfway. The assertion was not that petty trading should replace macroeconomic reform, but that it should not be discarded while such reforms are pursued. In an economy where liquidity is uncertain, consistent, low-barrier income streams have a stabilizing function that cannot be dismissed as insignificant.

The outrage appears to be fueled less by the content of the message and more by the timing of it. Nigeria is experiencing acute cost-of-living pressure, and citizens are understandably impatient with counsel that sounds like adjustment rather than relief. Yet adjustment and relief are not opposing ideas. A household that adds trading income to a strained budget is not conceding defeat; it is creating room to breathe while policy measures take effect.

There is also the matter of perception around scale and dignity. Kulikuli and groundnut businesses are often underestimated because they are informal and labor-intensive. However, the turnover in well-managed operations can surpass that of many retail provision shops. The demand is constant, the supply chain is local, and the profit cycle is short. These are characteristics investors typically pursue, yet they are treated with disdain when practiced by women in open markets. That contradiction deserves scrutiny.

Part of the backlash reflects what can be described as an entitlement mentality, a posture that expects the state to provide comprehensive solutions without corresponding individual initiative. While the government bears responsibility for creating enabling environments, no administration has delivered prosperity exclusively through handouts. Sustainable improvement arises when policy and personal agency intersect. Citizens who engage in productive activity expand economic circulation, protect their dignity, and contribute to the very revenue base that funds public programs.

The language of “manna from heaven” is therefore instructive. Waiting for perfect conditions is not a strategy; it is a postponement. Nigerian women have historically converted small opportunities into large outcomes. Markets have always been sites of innovation, negotiation, and capital formation. To grumble over a harsh economy without leveraging available avenues is to surrender agency before it is tested.

Senator Tinubu’s comment was essentially a call to act within present constraints rather than be immobilized by them. Petty trading is not being presented as a ceiling for ambition. For many entrepreneurs, it has served as a floor from which larger ventures were constructed. The trader who starts with groundnut today can move into packaging, distribution, or export tomorrow if the structure is right. Dismissing the first step makes the later steps impossible.

If the public is genuinely concerned about the limits of these trades, then the conversation should shift from derision to development. The relevant questions are practical: How can processors access better equipment to improve hygiene and yield? How can storage facilities reduce post-harvest losses for corn and groundnut? How can digital marketplaces extend reach beyond the immediate community? Outrage without proposals produces noise; proposals produce pathways.

It is also worth acknowledging the emotional fatigue behind the criticism. Nigerians are tired of being told to endure. That fatigue is valid. But fatigue should not translate into a rejection of every form of economic participation that does not arrive with immediate relief. Endurance and enterprise can coexist. One sustains the present, the other builds the future.

In the final analysis, Remi Tinubu’s position is not contemptuous; it is consistent with a lived Nigerian experience. The economy is hard, but it is not static. Women who trade kulikuli, corn, and groundnut are not being asked to settle. They are being reminded that movement, however small, is preferable to stagnation. The outrage, therefore, says more about a nation’s weariness than about the wisdom of the counsel. What is required now is not scorn for petty trade, but investment in making it bigger, cleaner, and more profitable.


Soibi Versatile,
Daily Memoirs Media Chief Writer.

Allow the Bullshittual people to be running their mouth. Their opinions have always been inconsequential in the scheme of things

A country where 60% of the population are less than 30 years. In every other country, people at this age are engaged in the projects that will be beneficial in future but no, we need to go back and do the same menial business our parents did.

The economy that made such ventures successful is currently not present. A ball of akara is currently selling for #200 or more depending on your location and it's not enough to feed you at all

It's ok to support Tinubu and APC, but please there are policies that you shouldn't defend at all. If this is the position of the person closest to the president then there's no plan for the youths

Ordinarily, her comment would not raise dust if her husband had not mismanaged the economy and if they were not living is filthy lucre.

The dingbat budgeted over N430m for just feeding for himself. That is over 1.2m per day on food.

What sacrifice is the presidency making in view of the hardship it caused?

People who had administrative and technical jobs are now being told to fry akara and kuli kuli.

With the rate of insecurity, which farms would produce enough produce for the over 70m people that the dingbat pushed into poverty by virtue of his flawed reforms?

Some idiots kept comparing Nigeria to China and i asked them if they will be willing to sacrifice their current freedom for us to enact the Chinese revolutionary model,they were all looking at me like morons.....you don't even have the liberty to choose your own course to study let alone your career or trade,you couldn't even own a car unless it was directly tied to a productive venture,you couldn't just live the village and move to the city without govt permission, at some point you couldn't even birth more than a child.....but all they are seeing is the glitter of modern China without having the idea how much sweat and blood went into it......as at 1989,China had no single highway but we were already driving benz's and rolls Royce,eating caviar and drinking French champagne, revelling in economically destructive acts of consumption without production, frittering away our petrodollars to detriment of the future generations,now the chicken has come home to roost you are now crying tinubu.

But I even brought raw Gnut recently to experiment and I was surprised it was 250 Naira per cup after experimenting I felt cheated . . although there is nothing wrong in the suggestions provided the profit margin is good and the grant can cover all other expenses. It is by starting small that you grow but starting small shouldn't mean slaving away. Access to credit is very important at reasonable rate.

Dailymemoirs4:
Remi Tinubu: Why the Outrage?


By Soibi Versatile

The wave of criticism that followed Senator Oluremi Tinubu’s remarks on women engaging in kulikuli, corn, and groundnut trading suggests a disconnect between public memory and present expectations. These commodities are not recent inventions, nor are they symbols of desperation. For decades across Hausa, Yoruba, and Igbo communities, they have formed the economic base of many households. It is from the sale of groundnut and kulikuli that school fees were paid, uniforms were bought, and university degrees were funded. To treat the trade as novel or demeaning is to ignore the very foundation on which a number of Nigerian professionals were raised.

What the First Lady stated was not an economic theory crafted in abstraction. It was a reminder of an existing reality: that government interventions are being extended to women in these sectors, and that personal enterprise must meet institutional support halfway. The assertion was not that petty trading should replace macroeconomic reform, but that it should not be discarded while such reforms are pursued. In an economy where liquidity is uncertain, consistent, low-barrier income streams have a stabilizing function that cannot be dismissed as insignificant.

The outrage appears to be fueled less by the content of the message and more by the timing of it. Nigeria is experiencing acute cost-of-living pressure, and citizens are understandably impatient with counsel that sounds like adjustment rather than relief. Yet adjustment and relief are not opposing ideas. A household that adds trading income to a strained budget is not conceding defeat; it is creating room to breathe while policy measures take effect.

There is also the matter of perception around scale and dignity. Kulikuli and groundnut businesses are often underestimated because they are informal and labor-intensive. However, the turnover in well-managed operations can surpass that of many retail provision shops. The demand is constant, the supply chain is local, and the profit cycle is short. These are characteristics investors typically pursue, yet they are treated with disdain when practiced by women in open markets. That contradiction deserves scrutiny.

Part of the backlash reflects what can be described as an entitlement mentality, a posture that expects the state to provide comprehensive solutions without corresponding individual initiative. While the government bears responsibility for creating enabling environments, no administration has delivered prosperity exclusively through handouts. Sustainable improvement arises when policy and personal agency intersect. Citizens who engage in productive activity expand economic circulation, protect their dignity, and contribute to the very revenue base that funds public programs.

The language of “manna from heaven” is therefore instructive. Waiting for perfect conditions is not a strategy; it is a postponement. Nigerian women have historically converted small opportunities into large outcomes. Markets have always been sites of innovation, negotiation, and capital formation. To grumble over a harsh economy without leveraging available avenues is to surrender agency before it is tested.

Senator Tinubu’s comment was essentially a call to act within present constraints rather than be immobilized by them. Petty trading is not being presented as a ceiling for ambition. For many entrepreneurs, it has served as a floor from which larger ventures were constructed. The trader who starts with groundnut today can move into packaging, distribution, or export tomorrow if the structure is right. Dismissing the first step makes the later steps impossible.

If the public is genuinely concerned about the limits of these trades, then the conversation should shift from derision to development. The relevant questions are practical: How can processors access better equipment to improve hygiene and yield? How can storage facilities reduce post-harvest losses for corn and groundnut? How can digital marketplaces extend reach beyond the immediate community? Outrage without proposals produces noise; proposals produce pathways.

It is also worth acknowledging the emotional fatigue behind the criticism. Nigerians are tired of being told to endure. That fatigue is valid. But fatigue should not translate into a rejection of every form of economic participation that does not arrive with immediate relief. Endurance and enterprise can coexist. One sustains the present, the other builds the future.

In the final analysis, Remi Tinubu’s position is not contemptuous; it is consistent with a lived Nigerian experience. The economy is hard, but it is not static. Women who trade kulikuli, corn, and groundnut are not being asked to settle. They are being reminded that movement, however small, is preferable to stagnation. The outrage, therefore, says more about a nation’s weariness than about the wisdom of the counsel. What is required now is not scorn for petty trade, but investment in making it bigger, cleaner, and more profitable.


Soibi Versatile,
Daily Memoirs Media Chief Writer.

Because it was done in the past and barely supported families to survive back then when inflation was not as much as it is today, doesnt mean Nigerian women of today must engage in it.


And where did such petty businesses done in the past landed Nigeria? Into backwardness, more hardship, multifaceted and multidimensional family poverties.


Compare that with China, India, Singapore, etc that we were better off back then and today they are far better of than us, simply because they advanced, they transitioned from relying on multiplying those petty, future-less businesses to more futuristic and expandable businesses that serve global market and not just to quench instant hunger.



What stops the First Lady from embarking on a program to send our women abroad to specific countries to learn garment production, agricultural product processing, mechanized farming and other futuristic trades that have the potential of meeting global market needs and position Nigeria for a greater future of having more exports?



Must we continue to dwell in mediocrity and be happy with it when we can reach for the sky?


A Chinese woman that worked as a laundry woman helping people to wash garments locally to support her husband a carpenter in the late 90s is today a owner of a company that produces chips for global manufacturing firms and her company now partners with Apple, etc for making chips and she also has a company that also produce laundry machines.



Why can't Madam Remi Tinubu think this way for Nigerian women or she thinks they do not deserve such big dreams since they are Nigerian women?



The First Lady was completely wrong.


She ought to be championing better and bigger trades and businesses for Nigerian women not the past outdated petty businesses that can barely support families today when you consider the super inflation her husband's failed government have brought upon Nigeria

If you go your Facebook page now type giveaway....those that need 20k to support their business over 1 million people go show interest...that 50k for some people na oil well oo..

Mrs. Tinubu should have told them what they like to hear. She should have said there's unlimited amount of money on the internet just waiting to be taken with little or no effort.
She should have encouraged them to explore crypto currency and various online schemes.
Quick money is what most young Nigerians are looking for.

helinues:
Allow the Bullshittual people to be running their mouth. Their opinions have always been inconsequential in the scheme of things

you'll soon learn that those inconsequential people in the scheme of things can never be underestimated

Yes op you're right

No need for all these criticisms....

She has never said anything of value since her time at the Senate.

Nigerians should please leave her and ignore henceforth.

She has seen oil money to loot let rant,the 1.5 billion naira for her official cars is akara money.

Sir, if this advice is so excellent, let the government launch an empowerment scheme where the children of APC chieftains take the lead in frying Akara on the streets. If it isn't good enough for your children, do not get angry when other people's children reject it. True leadership leads by example. Until we see the children of APC chieftains roasting corn on the streets of Abuja after graduating from UK universities, nobody should preach petty trade to other people's children.


Why did they start with cars for the women leaders last week? 🤡

https://www.tiktok.com/video/7647286952948944136


If this advice is so filled with wisdom, why are politicians' children being appointed into secure NNPC and CBN roles while everyone else's children are being handed a frying pan? If frying Akara is such a lucrative blueprint for economic recovery, let's see the government allocate the next round of CBN grants to the children of the poor to set up roadside akara stands.

1vandragon:
Ordinarily, her comment would not raise dust if her husband had not mismanaged the economy and if they were not living is filthy lucre.

The dingbat budgeted over N430m for just feeding for himself. That is over 1.2m per day on food.

What sacrifice is the presidency making in view of the hardship it caused?

People who had administrative and technical jobs are now being told to fry akara and kuli kuli.

With the rate of insecurity, which farms would produce enough produce for the over 70m people that the dingbat pushed into poverty by virtue of his flawed reforms?

What exactly has been mismanaged in the economy

Peter OBI and his followers like Oseni Rufai are making selling of Àkàrà look like banditary and armed robbery

Basic123:
What exactly has been mismanaged in the economy

Is the cost of living crisis a joke to you? Look at the poor budget implementation. How have borrowed funds being utilised?

What about the drastic increase in poverty rate from about 40% to over 60% within about 4 years?

https://dailynigerian.com/poverty-hit-63-under-tinubu-27million-nigerians-faced-food-insecurity-in-2025-imf/

Let's not even talk about inflation, corruption, low government accountability...

The main evidence of the mismanaged economy is in the every day lives of the masses.

https://www.icirnigeria.org/poverty-food-insecurity-increased-in-2-years-under-tinubu-imf/

1vandragon:
Is the cost of living crisis a joke to you? Look at the poor budget implementation. How have borrowed funds being utilised?

What about the drastic increase in poverty rate from about 40% to over 60% within about 4 years?

https://dailynigerian.com/poverty-hit-63-under-tinubu-27million-nigerians-faced-food-insecurity-in-2025-imf/

Let's not even talk about inflation, corruption, low government accountability...

The main evidence of the mismanaged economy is in the every day lives of the masses.

https://www.icirnigeria.org/poverty-food-insecurity-increased-in-2-years-under-tinubu-imf/

If you dont understand what led to the inflation and depoliticise it,you cant really be a good assessor of the economy.
Go and check S&P and fitch rating in the last 2 years.

https://www.spglobal.com/ratings/en/regulatory/article/-/view/type/HTML/id/3563619


https://www.fitchratings.com/research/sovereigns/fitch-affirms-nigeria-at-b-outlook-stable-10-04-2026

Fitch was in April 2026,S&P was in May 2026



Those are economists that know better than you.
Layman like you and piliticians often use microeconomic upset following a good major macroeconomic reforms to judge outlook either out of Ignorance or deliberatly for political reason.
When you do a major surgery,your body will react as if you just had a major trauma like accident,with time the response will settle and the real outcome of the surgery will show.

There is no way OBI and ATIKU will also remove fuel subsidy and float naira like they all planned following the recommendations of most economists that there will not be microeconomic response in term of inflation whose effect will become milder as reform equilibrates and citizen adjust with improved purchasing power.

Its is this you people misunderstanding of this microeconomic upset such as the iatrogenic inflation and effect on their politics that every succesive Nigerian president has been running away from that has made them to keep subsidy and continue defending naira

Basic123:
If you dont understand what led to the inflation and depoliticise it,you cant really be a good assessor of the economy.
Go and check S&P and fitch rating in the last 2 years.

https://www.spglobal.com/ratings/en/regulatory/article/-/view/type/HTML/id/3563619


https://www.fitchratings.com/research/sovereigns/fitch-affirms-nigeria-at-b-outlook-stable-10-04-2026

Fitch was in April 2026,S&P was in May 2026



Those are economists that know better than you.
Layman like you and piliticians often use microeconomic upset following a good major macroeconomic reforms to judge outlook either out of Ignorance or deliberatly for political reason.
When you do a major surgery,your body will react as if you just had a major trauma like accident,with time the response will settle and the real outcome of the surgery will show.

There is no way OBI and ATIKU will also remove fuel subsidy and float naira like they all planned following the recommendations of most economists that there will not be microeconomic response in term of inflation whose effect will become milder as reform equilibrates and citizen adjust with improved purchasing power.

Its is this you people misunderstanding of this microeconomic upset such as the iatrogenic inflation and effect on their politics that every succesive Nigerian president has been running away from that has made them to keep subsidy and continue defending naira

People like you do not understand basic governance and therefore expose your ignorance about what socio-economics reforms should be about.

What is the ultimate goal of socio-economic reforms? Is it to impress the foreign creditors who use the ratings or to better the living standards of the people those reforms are meant for?

The fitch and s&p ratings are credit ratings and do not care if the 140m Nigerians are dying of hunger or cannot afford the basic necessities to survive. Do they care that the minimum wage is below the international benchmark? No.

The ratings do not care if government officials are looting funds meant for the masses. As long as the government pays its debts/loans, has a stable stock market where portfolio invements can be easily made, repatriation of funds are freer and introduces policies that free up more funds to build foreign reserves and stash abroad, creditors don't care.

It is like a bank who has a client who regularly deposits money and pays back loans. The bank does not care if the salary of workers are barely enough to cater for thier basic needs or if the owner of the company spends more on frivolities than actually maintaining the key goals of the company.

If removing subsidies was such a silver bullet, why is bat budgeting billions of naira for his own movement? Shouldn't he lead by example? Shouldn't he partake a little in the suffering he is causing?

Let the obi or atiku get power first and see if they will be as incompetent as bat, and if they are, they will also be evicerated for thier incompetence.

Anyway, that is how people like you justified the incompetence of buhari, and now that of bat. You are actually worse than a layman because you know the truth, but choose to be deceitful.

Three years after your so called surgery, millions have become poorer, government accountability has decreased. People are staring at starvation in the face. Even the NBS acknowledges that multidimensional poverty has increased, yet you are trying to squeeze water from desert sand.

Honestly I am ashamed for some educated illiterates. Remi Tinubu was not even referring to them yet they carried the matter on their head like gala.

Remi Tinubu has made donations/grants (free money, not loans) of #50k each to petty traders and was now addressing them on what they can do with the money, which was obviously a suggestion even while she has donated billions on health matters also in the same environment.

The matter that has absolutely nothing to do with them, but because they are idle and have too much of free time on their hands, they would not even bother to listen to the entire story before attacking the innocent woman.

It boils down to the upbringing of most of them. And it's just unfortunate.

I'm sure most of them think the government would just wake up one day and start dashing them 1 million naira each. To them, that is when they would know that the government is working.

While I know that all these are political, people should not be hasty to pass judgement when they've not heard the whole story.

Even the person who recorded it mischievously removed the gifts and donations part but brought only the kulikuli part to the public domain. Isn't that bad enough?

Lithiumite:
Some idiots kept comparing Nigeria to China and i asked them if they will be willing to sacrifice their current freedom for us to enact the Chinese revolutionary model,they were all looking at me like morons.....you don't even have the liberty to choose your own course to study let alone your career or trade,you couldn't even own a car unless it was directly tied to a productive venture,you couldn't just live the village and move to the city without govt permission, at some point you couldn't even birth more than a child.....but all they are seeing is the glitter of modern China without having the idea how much sweat and blood went into it......as at 1989,China had no single highway but we were already driving benz's and rolls Royce,eating caviar and drinking French champagne, revelling in economically destructive acts of consumption without production, frittering away our petrodollars to detriment of the future generations,now the chicken has come home to roost you are now crying tinubu.

Nigerians are ready as long as Tinubu is ready to sign death penalty for all public office holders who steal like China did with the same revolutionary model you are talking about, you people always trying to throw blame away from Tinubu, is Tinubu ready to sign it?

He claims to be the leader, let him lead as the Chinese leaders are doing, they hold themselves accountable first...

What then is he a leader for if he cannot lead by example?

What exactly is wrong wit you people?
Always on the wrong side, just choose to be wicked and biased because of tribal support...

Bola Tinubu, you took a whooping N15 trillion out of an economy you said was in coma barely 3 weeks after you became president, to fund the contract of a coastal road construction that you UNILATERALLY awarded to your friend's company where your own son, Seyi Tinubu, is a director, and your wife has been dashing brand new luxury cars running into billions of naira to politicians ahead of 2027 elections (aside other lavish spendings you have also been making) and you now throw N50K at supposedly "poor Nigerians" to start up Akara business and you want me to celebrate and praise you?
Sorry, you are a selfish and wicked president and your supporters are irredeemable st00pid!