The Limits of
At an evening service in a church I attended last week, the lady who led the prayer session did not even bother to quote from the Bible to drive home her point; she simply referred the congregation to the Book of Olajumoke: “How many of you have heard the story of the bread seller in Lagos and how her life has been transformed?” With several hands up, she enjoined members to pray by reminding everyone: “No matter the challenge we face either as an individual or as a country, God can instantly rewrite our story such that we can move from poverty into prosperity; from lack into abundance, just like Olajumoke. Now, pray…”
That this is a difficult period for most Nigerians is an understatement. With the prices of commodities, including foodstuff, skyrocketing as the Naira continues to dance ‘Skelewu’, life is becoming very hard for most families. Even for the rich, not only are the shelves of the supermarkets where they shop getting empty, those of them who have children abroad can no longer sleep easy. And in the absence of any coherent policy options by the current administration to deal with these economic challenges, our people are left with only the hope of divine intervention as solutions to their problems. Then came Olajumoke!
A few weeks ago, Mrs Olajumoke Orisaguna, 27, was just another bread hawker on the streets of Lagos until she encountered celebrity photographer, T.Y Bello, a genius in her craft and a maverick quick thinker who, like most creative artists, could easily make sense of something that seems ordinarily intangible. In an instinctive moment of brilliance, she matched a bread seller with a Nigerian-born British singer, Tinie Tempah and produced a photographic “duet” that caught the imagination of the world. The rest, to deploy a popular cliché, is now history. Today, the young bread seller, married to a man who reportedly fits sliding doors, has hit the jackpot of fame and fortune that has elevated her to the status of a god in many Nigerian homes.
Before I go further, I join in rejoicing with Olajumoke on her good luck but I hope she also has the good sense to know that life cannot be the same again. From now on, the men she would have to deal with are no longer the lecherous ‘danfo’ drivers, vulcanizers and sundry touts who, according to Reuben Abati, “will offer to buy bread and something else along with it”; but the Lagos Big Boys who know what they want and how to get it and I feel sorry for her poor husband. The environment to which his wife has now been thrust, albeit unprepared, would not allow her to be and there are too many sharks in the river in which she must from now swim. How will she handle such pressure? Only God can help her now.
I watched Olajumoke’s interview on Youtube and she could only speak in Yoruba with an English interpreter which confirms that she is not educated. But she is very attractive—perhaps the attribute that qualifies her to be cast as a model in the first place. The good aspect of the Olajumoke story which of course is being ignored is that fortune found her in the place of diligence. She was at work, trying to earn a honest, even if modest, income for herself and family by hawking bread, when she ran into the photo session that changed her life. That ultimately may be her redemption.
There is a lot to read about Olajumoke online but the one that stands out for me was the piece last week by Abimbola Adelakun, easily one of Nigeria’s most gifted columnists of the current generation. Ms Adelakun, who interrogates the attempt to turn a happenstance into a prescription for success, argues rather forcefully in her piece, “Olajumoke and the trouble with sentimentality” that the uncritical national hysteria over the fairy tale story of the bread seller has blinded us all to the flip side: that she actually personifies the failings of our society with shrinking opportunities for children of the poor.
Ms Adelakun raises several questions about the hypocrisy of the men and women in corporate Nigeria who are now making the