Small trades can build empires, APC Chieftain defends First Lady’s advice

Mr Kehinde Olaosebikan, an All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain, has said the recent call by First Lady, Sen. Oluremi Tinubu, urging Nigerian women to embrace productivity through small businesses should not be trivialised.

Olaosebikan said the First Lady’s message underscored the importance of entrepreneurship as a pathway to economic empowerment, self-reliance and national development.

In a statement issued on Sunday in Abuja, Olaosebikan described her recommendation that women engage in businesses such as akara, kulikuli and corn roasting as appropriate, practical and deeply patriotic.

He said that many of Nigeria’s biggest eateries and food brands started from humble beginnings as hawking ventures, with operators gradually expanding into successful enterprises through hard work and perseverance.

According to him, while some entrepreneurs sold akara on street corners, others hawked bread, amala or even “eba kolobe”, eba without soup, before growing their businesses into thriving commercial ventures.

“Those little drops have built empires. Take Ibadan, for instance. Amala Sky, now one of the most popular amala joints in the country and located in elitist Bodija, did not start in a glass building.

“It started as a hawker inside Bodija Market. Mama Ope, another big eatery in the city, followed the same path.

“Like Amala Sky, she was simply hawking cooked rice in Mokola Market. I watched both women grow from trays and small stalls into entrepreneurs with branches stretching as far as Abuja today.

“The North tells the same story with kulikuli and corn roasting.

“In Kano, Kaduna and Zaria, women who began by frying small batches of kulikuli by the roadside now run packaged food businesses that supply supermarkets across the country,” he said.

Olaosebikan, who is also the Chief Executive Officer of Midas Communications Ltd., said such trades still possessed the capacity to create wealth and transform livelihoods when pursued seriously and scaled with dignity.

He further commended the First Lady’s emphasis on the akara business, recalling a period when Ghanaians reportedly dominated the trade in cities such as Lagos and Ibadan through better organisation and business expansion strategies.

According to him, many local operators lost out because they failed to take advantage of the commercial opportunities available within the sector in spite of being pioneers of the trade.

“We temporarily lost an industry we invented because we treated it as beneath us. Beyond food, the warning is national. We are already losing ground in building and allied trades.

“Bricklayers, tilers, plumbers and furniture makers are now imported from across West Africa, all the way to Ghana. Our construction sites are filled with foreign hands doing work Nigerians can and should do.

“Akara, kulikuli and corn are not the end goal, they are the entry point. They teach capital formation, discipline and scale,” Olaosebikan said.

He added that small businesses helped keep money circulating within families and communities, thereby strengthening local economies instead of allowing resources to flow outside the country.

Olaosebikan explained that the First Lady’s message was not about remaining small but about starting with available opportunities and building steadily toward greater economic success.

“If we ignore the small trades, we will keep importing people to do them. If we embrace them, those little drops will fill the ocean again, this time for Nigeria,” he said.(https://newsatlarge.ng)