A bold African woman from Benin City, Nigeria, has demonstrated that ‘ What a man can do, a woman can do better.’ Sandra Aguebor, popularly known as Lady Mechanic, single-handedly started a revival movement in the Nigerian auto mechanics industry by first dominating and then successfully pulling other women into a field traditionally dominated by men. As a mechanics enthusiast, she became interested in auto mechanics and fell in love with fixing cars while growing up.
Auto Mechanics was considered a ‘too technical’ field for a woman back then. Due to the archaic belief that women were meant to be subjected to easy-to-perform, low-paying, menial jobs – her peers, relatives, outsiders, and family couldn’t wrap their heads around the picture of a female mechanic. This led to frequent jeers and laughter from many whenever she was seen dressed in mechanic overalls after school.
However, in a newspaper interview with Punch Newspapers, she shared an encouraging experience she had as an apprentice in the workshop: “…when the other men saw my enthusiasm, they started encouraging me. They loved me for it. I was like their little sister,” she said. Moreso, her father, who had seen female mechanics during his travels in the United States of America, equally encouraged her.
After her secondary school education at Benin Technical College, she studied Mechanical Engineering at Auchi Polytechnic, Edo State, Nigeria, where she eventually graduated as the first Nigerian woman to be certified as an auto-mechanic engineer in 1991.
Ignoring naysayers who thought auto mechanics was a man’s field, Aguebor proved everybody wrong, securing her first appointment with Bendel Transport Service, now known as Edo Line, in Benin City, Nigeria. There, she worked for three years before joining the Nigerian Railway Corporation in Lagos State for another three years.
After this, she took a bold step and started her mechanic garage – Sandex Car Care. For over 22 years, Sandra Aguebor has been running her garage and has been privileged to serve a large client base, cutting across prominent high-networth individuals and brands nationwide.
“For me to become the first female Nigerian mechanic, I had to work five times harder than men to prove myself. Now many people don’t know my name; it’s ‘Lady Mechanic’ everywhere I go,” Aguebor said in a 2020 interview feature by Great Big Story.
In 2004, she realised she could do much more for women by teaching them to become mechanics, so she started the Lady Mechanic Initiative (LMI). This non-profit organisation trained young ladies to fix cars.
For the past 20 years, LMI has taken ladies off the streets, reaching disadvantaged women ranging from ex-commercial sex workers, victims of sex trafficking, and school dropouts down to stay-at-home mothers and wives in search of a means of livelihood.
Sandra Aguebor has created the opportunity for Nigerian women to attain financial independence. Over a thousand female mechanics have since graduated from her Lady Mechanic Initiative, which now operates in five Nigerian States.
