From social media outrage to exam question: First Lady’s akara, kulikuli remarks land in Kogi University paper

The controversy sparked by First Lady Senator Oluremi Tinubu’s remarks encouraging Nigerian women to embrace akara and kulikuli businesses has entered the academic space, with students at Prince Abubakar Audu University in Kogi State asked in a Mass Communication examination to produce an advocacy advertisement copy themed around the comments.

Nigeria’s most mocked economic soundbite has officially made it into the examination hall.

The debate over First Lady Senator Oluremi Tinubu’s widely criticised remarks encouraging Nigerian women to embrace small-scale businesses like frying akara and producing kulikuli has taken an unexpected turn — landing as a 30-mark examination question at Prince Abubakar Audu University, Anyigba, Kogi State.

The question, sighted by PUNCH Online after it was shared on Facebook by the Northern Nigeria page, appeared in the Advertising Copy Writing (MCM 214) second semester paper for Mass Communication students in the Faculty of Communication and Media Studies.

Question one read in part: “The First Lady of Nigeria, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, has asked you to do an advocacy ad copy with the title, Beyond Akara and Kulikuli Empowerment, with the sole aim of encouraging Nigerian women and youths to embrace small-scale businesses.”

Students were required to identify four factors for writing the copy, name three body copy styles, justify the most suitable style and sketch the full ad with images and text — all for 30 marks.

The question’s appearance in an academic setting follows weeks of national debate after the First Lady urged women at a Renewed Hope Initiative meeting in Abuja in June to consider low-capital ventures like frying akara, roasting corn and producing kulikuli, describing them as businesses sustainable with grants rather than loans.

The remarks drew swift backlash online, with critics accusing her of trivialising widespread economic hardship amid rising inflation and unemployment.

The First Lady subsequently defended her comments, clarifying that government empowerment programmes extended to tomato, pepper, vegetable and roasted plantain traders, and disclosed that N100 million had been allocated to Jigawa State to support 2,000 petty traders with N50,000 each.

Presidential aide Dada Olusegun also defended her, describing the criticism as a “performative circus of selective amnesia.”