By Prosper Mene
Sandra Aguebor never fit the mold. Growing up in Benin City in the 1970s, she traded dolls for engines, dreaming of a life under the hood rather than in the kitchen. Today, at 50-something, she’s not just Nigeria’s first female mechanic—she’s a trailblazer who’s handed wrenches to hundreds of women, defying norms and rewriting futures through her Lady Mechanic Initiative (LMI).
Aguebor’s journey began at 13, sparked by a recurring dream she says came from divine inspiration: Jesus teaching her to fix cars. Her father balked; her mother beat her for tinkering instead of cooking. “They thought I was mad,” she recalls with a wry smile, her hands still stained with grease. But in 1983, she stepped into a local garage in old Bendel State, a teenage girl among men who’d fixed Peugeot 404s for generations. “They laughed at first, then they taught me,” she says. Six years later, she was a pro.
The road wasn’t smooth. “I had to work five times harder than the men,” Aguebor told CNN in 2020, recounting the skepticism and outright dismissal she faced. After stints at Edo Line and the Nigerian Railway Corporation, she launched Sandex Car Care Garage in the mid-90s. Success brought attention—and demolition. When authorities razed her first workshop, she turned her car into a mobile repair unit, proving grit outlasts concrete.
In 2004, Aguebor channeled that grit into the Lady Mechanic Initiative, a mission to empower vulnerable women orphans, trafficking survivors, former sex workers with the skills to fix cars and reclaim their lives. “I wanted to teach them how to fish,” she says, echoing a philosophy of independence. Over two decades, LMI has trained more than 1,000 women across five states, from Lagos to Kano. Graduates like Joy Amuche, now a mechanic in Edo, credit Aguebor with their transformation. “She made me who I am,” says Mary Sunday, another alumna.
The impact is tangible. Clients flock to LMI-trained mechanics, drawn by their precision and determination. “They’re better than some men who take the job for granted,” Aguebor notes, pride in her voice. Her vision stretches further: to mentor 100,000 women across Africa by 2030, smashing gender ceilings one oil change at a time.
Yet, challenges linger. Nigeria’s bureaucracy has uprooted her garage more than once, and cultural resistance still brands mechanics’ work as “unladylike.” Aguebor shrugs it off. “The obstacles became my opportunity,” she told Al Jazeera in 2015. Recognized with awards from Lagos Governor Akinwunmi Ambode and a national merit honor, she’s no longer an oddity but an icon.
Today, as she patrols her bustling Lagos workshop, Aguebor sees more than engines. She sees women like herself—defiant, skilled, and free. “My Nigeria is where women do what men say we can’t,” she declares. For her and her trainees, every revved engine roars a truth: stereotypes don’t stand a chance against a woman with a wrench.
