THE UNFILTERED MIND OF ABIMBOLA ADELAKUN
Blog post description.
Baron
7/3/20263 min read
There is a particular brand of intellectual vanity that blossoms in the sterile, air-conditioned comfort of diaspora academia. It is a posture of superiority that masquerades as empathy while harbouring a profound, almost visceral disdain for the very people it claims to champion. Abimbola Adelakun, a regular purveyor of this cynicism, has once again treated the Nigerian public to a masterclass in this elitist arrogance.
In her latest broadside, she attempts to dissect the “unexamined life,” yet in doing so, she reveals nothing but the breathtakingly shallow, unfiltered mind of the professional critic, a mind that is as divorced from the grit of the Nigerian reality as it is obsessed with the sound of its own polemics.
Adelakun’s prose is a performative act of scourging. She writes not to illuminate, but to diminish.
To her, the Nigerian woman frying akara by the roadside is not a person of agency or a symbol of resilience; she is a sordid prop in a narrative of state failure. She looks at the sweat of a mother’s brow and sees only a failure of national imagination. It is a putative approach to discourse: if a solution is not perfect, if it does not immediately transform a developing nation into an industrialized utopia, then it is not merely insufficient, it is a crime.
What is most scathing about Adelakun’s position is its inherent dishonesty regarding the nature of progress. She mocks the "day of small beginnings," dismissing the micro-economic activities that have sustained millions as "petty" and "subsistence" farming masquerading as enterprise.
One must ask: what is the alternative? Does she propose that these millions of women, while waiting for the elusive, fully-industrialized Nigerian miracle she demands, simply fold their arms and starve? Her critique of the "ladder" is a prime example of the intellectual trap she sets for herself. She frames the pursuit of micro-capital as an attempt to "trap the poor." This is the ultimate elitist fallacy.
It assumes that those who start small are doomed to stay small, and that any effort to help them grow is a cynical ploy. It is a rejection of the fundamental history of commerce. Wealth, in every corner of the globe, has always been a ladder. It is built rung by rung. To suggest that a small grant or the act of trading is "unproductive" is to display a profound ignorance of how capital multiplies. It is the language of those who have never had to build anything from nothing, yet feel entitled to judge those who do.
Adelakun’s piece is rife with the pillaging of history to suit a predetermined outcome. She attempts to invalidate the progress of my generation by claiming it was achieved in a "functioning Nigeria." This is a convenient revisionism. Every generation has had its monsters; every generation has faced its demons. The difference is that while she chooses to dwell in the darkness of what has been lost, millions of Nigerians are choosing to build in the light of what is possible.
She attacks my own journey, as if the story of a mother selling goods in Jos is somehow negated because I now serve in government. She demands to know why that mother did not become a multi-billionaire, as if the purpose of every small enterprise is to reach the scale of a global conglomerate, and as if a child rising from humble origins to contribute to their nation’s leadership is not the very definition of success. Her resentment is palpable. She is not interested in the "dignity of the labourer", a phrase she borrows and strips of its meaning, but in the humiliation of anyone who dares to suggest that the Nigerian spirit is not yet defeated. Adelakun sneers at the informal sector as a sign of poverty, oblivious to the fact that it is the engine room of global resilience.