Akara, Kuli Kuli and Cholera Outbreaks

There is dignity in labour. Let us start from there.

Agreed, there is nothing shameful about frying Akara by the roadside, roasting corn under the hot sun, or selling Kuli-kuli in crowded markets. Since time immemorial, our grandmothers and ancestors have used these informal jobs to feed families, train children through school, and kept many homes afloat in times of hardship.

But there is a profound difference between respecting survival and romanticising it.

That distinction is what many Nigerians found troubling in the recent remarks by the First Lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, who suggested that selling Akara, roasted corn, and Kuli-kuli are viable ways for Nigerians to support themselves and contribute to the economy. Her comments have sparked outrage, not because Nigerians despise these trades, but because many believe they reveal a dangerous disconnect between leadership and lived reality.

The problem is not Akara. The problem is when frying Akara becomes the highest ambition a government can offer its people.

Giving N50,000 loans to people, encouraging them to fry Akara by the roadside is not economic policy.

Let us be honest with ourselves. Nobody wakes up after years of schooling, after dreams carefully nurtured through childhood and adolescence, after parents have sold land and livestock to educate them, only to say with conviction: my life’s ambition is to stand by a dusty roadside under a scorching sun, inhaling smoke, dodging traffic, exposed to rain, harassment, insecurity, and the indignity of economic uncertainty, frying bean cakes in boiling oil.

That is not ambition. That is madness!

We must stop pretending that the informal economy in Nigeria is some grand ecosystem of entrepreneurial innovation. Street food vending is not entrepreneurship in the romantic sense many policymakers imagine. For many, it is economic distress in its rawest form. It is what people do when formal systems fail them, when there are no jobs, no social protection, no access to credit, and no meaningful pathway out of poverty.

After frying Akara, the next level is begging, and for young people, prostitution. Because what young girl would fry Akara by the roadside and not be propositioned?

When a widow stands beside a busy highway with hot oil bubbling over firewood, inhaling smoke, dodging reckless motorists, and exposed to harassment and insecurity, we must ask ourselves: is this prosperity?

For me, beyond the economic argument of street food hawking, lies an even deeper concern: public health. As a physician, I cannot ignore the health implications of this narrative.

Street food vending in Nigeria is largely unregulated. Water sources are often unsafe, waste disposal is poor and the food handlers rarely undergo formal hygiene training. Cooking environments are exposed to dust, flies, open drains, and human congestion. In many urban and rural settlements, food is prepared and sold in conditions that would fail the most basic sanitary standards.

Today, Nigeria is battling another cholera outbreak, with Borno State at the epicentre. Reports indicate that over 70 lives have been lost, with thousands infected and health facilities overwhelmed. Humanitarian agencies have linked the outbreak to overcrowding, poor sanitation, and unsafe water supply. These are not isolated variables, they are interconnected failures of urban planning, poverty, and public health infrastructure.

Poverty and public health are birds of the same feather; and so they flock together.

Cholera outbreaks occur where systems collapse. It thrives where hunger forces people to eat whatever is available, wherever it is available. When people are pushed into overcrowded informal economies just to survive, the risk of outbreaks rises. Street vending itself is not the cause of cholera but the conditions surrounding it often create fertile ground for disease transmission. So, when we talk about “Akara economy,” we cannot separate it from the realities of sanitation, disease, and vulnerability.

Why, in 2026, are we still reacting to cholera outbreaks instead of preventing them? Why does Nigeria continue to depend on emergency response rather than proactive vaccination campaigns?

So far, we have been able to keep Ebola at bay; then what about cholera that is in our back yard?

The oral cholera vaccine exists. It has proven to be effective. It has been used successfully in many high-risk countries to contain outbreaks and protect vulnerable populations. Yet year after year, Nigeria waits for outbreaks to escalate before mobilising.

Why? Why are cholera vaccines not being strategically stockpiled for high-risk regions like Borno, where displacement, flooding, and fragile health systems create the perfect storm for epidemics? Why are we not investing in water systems as aggressively as we invest in political campaigns? Why are we not building safer markets, regulating food vending spaces, and protecting informal workers with proper sanitation facilities?

These are the real, hard, honest, questions.

Economic empowerment should mean equipping citizens to thrive, not merely survive. The goal of leadership is not to applaud people for surviving the fire; it is to build systems where fewer people are forced into it.

Nigerians do not need motivational speeches about how to endure hardship. We have survived inflation, insecurity, unemployment, fuel subsidy shocks, currency collapse, and health system failures with remarkable stamina. Survival is not our problem.

We must reject this foolish and dangerous idea that frying Akara by the roadside is evidence of economic inclusion rather than economic exclusion. We must do so, if not, Madam First Lady and her cohort will continue to confuse poverty with productivity, desperation with enterprise, and national failure with resilience.

A country cannot fry its way out of underdevelopment and corruption.

Frying Akara is not an economic policy. If it were, our city boy would have been exporting Akara to the west by now.