What Naijaz eat

‘Where shall we meet again? In the thunder lightening or in the rain?’ asked the British delegate as the diaries were brought out. The Naija contingent to the conference looked on with barely concealed disdain.

‘For what? You and who in lightening? Do I look like Shango’s girl friend? Please it is this same Buka, same time next week abeg’. The British murmured among themselves about how much ‘those Nigerians love their food’ on the flight back home and with good reason.

The 197 Million Nigerians featured on the Worldometer website must be eating a lot of things to have that ‘live’ number going up every 15 seconds. With about 250 tribes in Nigeria with each boasting of their own cuisine, there is such a wide variety of foods to go through and not every Tom, Dick and Garri can be mentioned.

Every area of Nigeria has staple foods. The staples can be divided roughly into the dough like meals (also called Swallows or Solids) that are eaten with soups and the ‘others’ rice, bread, beans, plantains and yams.

Beef, chicken and fish are quite popular. Game and snails are favoured by some but with the recent spate of Lassa fever infections (first described in Lassa Town, Nigeria in 1969 when the Virus killed two Missionary Nurses) the demand for ‘bush meat’ or ‘grass cutter’ is on the wane

The Swallows –

Cassava derived meals like Apku (Fermented Cassava), Starch, Lafun (Cassava flour), and Garri

Yam derived meals like Amala (Yam flour) and Pounded yam

Meals made from grains like Tuwo Dawa – Guinea corn flour, Tuwo Massara – Maize flour and Tuwo Shinkafa (boiled rice)

Durum wheat based pastes – Semovita and Semolina

Plantain derived meals – Plantain flour paste or ‘fufu’

Cocoyam meal- Ebiripo

The big combo – Pounded yam, Cocoyam and plantain all blended into one, (an Okrika/Ijaw Swallow)

The Soups-

Certain soups are well loved in different parts of the country. Pepper soups and the tomato stew cuts across most state boundaries and have become national dishes but most soups like languages tend to be concentrated in geo-nutritional zones.

The North

Miyan Kuka (Baobab leaves soup), Muyina Taushe (Pumpkin soup) Miyan Zogale (Zogale vegetable) and Miya Karkashi

Middle belt

Soya bean chicken soup

The West

Ewedu soup

Niger Delta (South south)

Owo soup and Banga Soup

South East

Ofe Nsala, Afang and Edikang Ikong soups

Due to the strong emotions that foods stir up due to their closeness to a peoples’ sense of identity, myths are bound to spring up around some certain foods which adds a degree of mystic to them.

Santana/ Apku/Loi-loi

This meal is made from fermented Cassava dough and has the power to make your visitors and neighbours ask if ‘una kill persin here as dead bodi dey smell?’ This Apku preparation is a bit like child birth. When the baby arrives, the joy takes over. This meal is eaten with a soup of choice and is famed to have Duracell battery like powers that makes the body work for twelve hours without a break and with no sign of fatigue; hence its popular name of six to six (6am-6pm staying power).

A favourite among Igbos in South Eastern Nigeria it sometimes plays second fiddle to Pounded yam which is made from the King of Crops; Yams.

Miyam Kuka

This soup is quite popular up North and best eaten with Tuwo. Made from the leaves of the most iconic tree on the planet, the Baobab tree also called the Tree of life, this is a meal that satisfies by reaching parts of the body and soul that other soups do not reach (allegedly).

The oldest trees in Africa are Baobab trees and that adds an esoteric property to the leaves.

Edikang Ikong

This soup that is cooked by the Efik and Ibibio peoples of the South Eastern part of Nigeria has an aura about it. People say that if a lady from that part of the country cooks this meal for a man, he loses his head and falls madly in love with her. It could just be that with so much variety in one pot a man is sure to have all his gastronomic desires met (my theory). The soup is more congested than a packed Molue and contains water leaves, goat meat , beef, dried fish, snail, stock  fish, cow skin, palm oil, periwinkles and crayfish. Enough to make the poor chap think, ‘I don’t get this at home, but why?’

Ukodo

At the risk of being labelled as biased I would simply say that Ukodo cooked by the right person in the right pot with the right yams and dried fish can reset your destiny. This meal is popular among the Urhobos of the South south.

Amala

For the Yorubas who inhabit the south western part of Nigeria, it might be safe to say that their world revolves around Amala. Made from Yam flour, it has the ability to make well- dressed people throw caution to the wind and risk stains on expensive fabric. And these are people dressed in white sometimes. Having observed from close quarters I am beginning to think that Amala and that Gbegiri soup has some mind altering capabilities. It gives the eater an Amala world view. Phrases like, best thing since sliced bread makes Amala aficionados laugh inwards. They know that Amala is the best thing since the records of the best things in Nigeria began and that Amala is the only Titan that exists on the plates of Nigeria. The Nass Native American tribe have a mythological giant called Amala who suspends the whole world on a stick. The day he tires and drops the stick, the world ends. For some in Nigeria, the world will surely end the day you tell them that the wooden spatula has refused to stir the yam flour anymore.

Miscellaneous

Jollof rice, moin mon, Ngwo ngwo (assorted meat in a soup), Isiewu (Goat head soup), Coconut rice, Achicha (Dried Cocoyam Pottage), Miya Kubewa and Gwaten Doya (Yam pottage) all keep the Nigerian stomachs happily engaged.

I must end with this; at every meal time an increasing number of Nigerians have been having a dish called no meal. This is due to poverty and things need to change. Apart from people who are fasting or trying to lose weight, everyone else has a fundamental human right to eat something at every meal time. Abi I lie?