Alabaaru is an intimate social drama set in the beating heart of a Lagos market. It explores invisible labour, pride, and the quiet power of chosen solidarity between women.
The story follows Ashabi a hardworking market porter who carries goods on her head and a baby on her back to support her family.
Her husband, Edafe, is an educated man who loses his job and retreats into wounded pride. While Ashabi bears the physical and emotional weight of survival, Edafe clings to a sense of dignity that slowly turns into resentment, control, and denial.
Their fragile household is pushed to the brink by their sick daughter her lifesaving surgery remains financially out of reach. Then Ashabi meets Madam Charity, a wealthy businesswoman. What starts as a chance encounter grows into an unexpected friendship kindness, mentorship, and a glimpse of life beyond survival mode. Madam Charity offers Ashabi not just financial help, but dignity she sees her intelligence, resilience, and worth beyond her labour. But Edafe sees this lifeline as a threat.
His pride curdles into jealousy and entitlement and he commits a devastating betrayal: he secretly squanders the money Ashabi saved for their child’s surgery. Now Ashabi is forced to choose loyalty to a man anchored in ego, or the survival of her children.
In the end, she finally lays down the burden she has carried for years.
Alabaaru is a story about the cost of pride, the gendered weight of survival, and the quiet revolution that begins when a woman refuses to carry what is killing her.