Good morning, Andy!

On 26 June 2026, Nigeria’s first lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, advised women struggling under the weight of the country’s current economic predicament to start selling akara and kulikuli, quipping that starting a food business requires little capital. The backlash was swift. But Moses E. Ochonu, professor of African History at Vanderbilt University, writing for The Republic, argues that what Nigerians heard as insensitivity is actually something more calculated: the local expression of a global ideology that pathologises poverty while absolving governments of responsibility for it. ‘The idea that Nigerian women, or any Nigerian for that matter, can akara-sell or kulikuli-sell their way out of poverty and into prosperity,’ Ochonu writes, ‘is a mischievous, escapist lie.’

Read his essay, The Sinister Side of Oluremi Tinubu’s ‘Entrepreneurial Citizenship’. Respond in the comments section. We’re curious to know what you think. 


Tomi Olugbemi
Audience Editor, The Republic