By Kayode Samuel
The First Lady’s latest yarn on small and micro businesses has been subjected to so many interpretations and strange narratives. One of the strangest is the claim that public reactions have unduly focused on the messenger to the neglect of the message.
Well, I beg to differ.
Truth is, there was no message! Let’s stop dressing up inanities in borrowed robes for the sake of political correctness.
Nigerians have never needed an exhortation to enterprise. We spot opportunities even before they have fully sprouted – and that is a trait that is nationwide.
A First Lady truly interested in the well being of the poor and not just in chalking up soundbites would focus on the well known impediments to small businesses – task forces seizing the wares of traders, local council officials raiding markets, multiple taxation, Iyaloja levies, terrorists disturbing farmers, and so many others.
Access to credit is only one of the challenges and a lot of the people in the category that she claims to be addressing have found their way round that.
People take LAPO, esusu, and cooperative society loans only to have their businesses ruined by a single task force raid or their entire livelihood hollowed out by any of the several impediments listed above.
Those are the kinds of matters that a truly caring first lady would be concerned with addressing, not issuing garrison-like orders to herd an entire populace into certain lines of business.
The other day she was asking every household to go own a farm. What ever became of that? Now, everyone should go and fry akara and make kuli-kuli. Where, really, is the thinking – or, message – in that?
