Nigeria's Government Leaves Its Mothers Selling Okpa to Survive

Twenty years. That is how long Victoria has been squatting over a pot of steaming okpa, stirring, wrapping, selling, and starting again the next morning. Twenty years of rain, heat, bad roads, and the slow arithmetic of a trader who must sell enough by evening to pay for school uniforms, exercise books, and the fees that never stop coming. She put four children through school this way. Her story is a triumph, and every Nigerian should feel proud of it. But we must also ask the question that her triumph is too polite to ask: why did a woman have to fight this hard, for this long, just to keep her children in a classroom?

Let us be precise about what okpa is. It is a steamed cake made from Bambara groundnut, ground and mixed with palm oil and spices, then wrapped in leaves and cooked until it is firm and fragrant. It is cheap, nourishing, and deeply ours. It belongs to the Igbo table and to every Nigerian who has eaten it on a hot afternoon with a cold drink. And it is sold, overwhelmingly, by people like Victoria, who work outside the formal economy because the formal economy was never built with them in mind.

That is the scandal. Across Nigeria, a vast majority of working people earn their living in the informal sector, according to the International Labour Organization's long-running estimates. These are the traders, tailors, mechanics, and food sellers who keep the country functioning while the state looks the other way. They are not lazy. They are not "unemployed." They are entrepreneurs doing the work of a government that has failed to give them a legal, affordable, protected way to build a business.

Think about what a street vendor in Nigeria must navigate. She must find a spot without being harassed by a task force that wants a bribe. She must cook without clean, reliable water or electricity that runs past dinnertime. She must borrow money at interest rates that would make a loan shark blush, because banks ask for collateral she does not own, property records that exist only on paper, and paperwork she cannot afford to obtain. When she falls sick, there is no insurance. When the rains flood her spot, there is no compensation. When a city council bulldozes her stall in the name of "beautification," there is no court she can afford to hear her case.

Now imagine a woman doing all of that for two decades and still winning. That is what Victoria did. She did it despite the system, not because of it. Every child she sent to school is a testament to her courage and a verdict on a state that made courage the price of a basic education.

We are told that Nigeria is Africa's largest economy and its most populous nation. We are told about its oil, its film industry, its tech startups in Lagos. All of that is real. But the mother selling okpa on a Tuesday afternoon is the true measure of whether that wealth reaches the people who generate it. And right now, for millions of Nigerians like her, it does not.

Who benefits from this arrangement? Not the trader. The benefit flows to the officials who extract informal fees, to the politicians who campaign on promises of jobs and then leave the markets unpaved, and to the middlemen who profit from the desperation of people locked out of credit. The vendor bears every cost. She pays the bribe, absorbs the loss, and carries the risk. Meanwhile, the people who wrote the rules are rarely the ones who have to live by them.

This is the old story of African governance: a state that taxes its people without serving them, regulates them without protecting them, and demands loyalty without offering dignity in return. We have seen it under military rulers and under civilian governments that inherited the same habits. Democracy is not only the right to vote every four years. It is the daily obligation of officials to make the rules clear, the courts fair, and the licensing process simple enough that a woman with a pot and a plan can become a legitimate business owner.

There is a better way, and Africa already has proof. Botswana built one of the most stable economies on the continent by insisting on transparent institutions, sound fiscal management, and a respected judiciary. Mauritius climbed from a sugar-dependent island to a high-income economy on the strength of rule of law, investor protection, and an open business climate. These are not miracles. They are choices, made by governments that understood a simple truth: when property rights are secure and contracts are enforced, small traders become job creators, and job creators become the middle class.

So here is what must happen. Nigeria's states and local governments should replace arbitrary street-vending bans with clearly designated, licensed, and affordable trading zones, equipped with running water, waste collection, and lighting. Licensing should be digitized, cheap, and time-limited so that no official can hold a vendor hostage with endless forms. Microfinance and cooperative credit should be expanded and regulated, so that a trader like Victoria can borrow against her track record rather than against property she will never own. Anti-corruption agencies should publish the fees that vendors are legally required to pay, and prosecute any official who demands more. And free basic education must mean free in practice, with no hidden levies that push children out of school the moment a mother's income dips.

Civil society has a role here too. Market associations should organize to bargain collectively with city councils. Journalists should document the bribes and the bulldozers. The private sector, instead of treating informal traders as a nuisance, should partner with them on supply chains, packaging standards, and food-safety training that helps okpa sellers reach larger markets without losing their identity.

And citizens must demand. Ask your councillor how many licensed trading spaces exist in your ward. Ask your state assembly why the school levies rose again this term. Ask every candidate in the next election what they will do to make a street vendor's life a legal, protected, profitable one. A vote that does not change the price of a textbook is a vote that has been wasted.

Victoria did not ask for a medal. She asked only for the chance to feed her family and see her children educated. That is the most reasonable request any citizen can make of her country. It is past time Nigeria answered it.

So we ask you, the reader: What did it cost your mother to get you through school? What did it cost her health, her sleep, her savings? And how many women like her are still standing over a pot right now, praying the rain holds off, because the state that should have protected them chose not to? Our answer must be louder than their silence. Demand licensing reform. Demand functioning markets. Demand that the next generation of okpa sellers never has to fight this hard just to be treated as citizens.

Based on reporting by ALJAZEERA