Not everyone likes to cook. I’d personally rather soak Garri for a week than enter my kitchen to boil rice. But if you are a Nigerian with a kitchen, it’s only right that you have these things
More plastic packs than you’ll ever need in a lifetime.
Throwing away a plastic pack after you use it, instead of washing and keeping it is criminalized in Nigeria. Somehow the day you need them all the covers will disappear but that won’t matter because you have at least a hundred.
Even more plastic bags than plastic packs.
Say what you want but Nigerians invented recycling. That’s why you still have plastic bags you got from Shoprite in 2014 in your kitchen. You are saving the environment in your own small way.
This brown and white plate because it’s practically a Nigerian citizen now.
You never have to use it. It can sit in one of your cupboards gathering dust year in year out, but you must have it.
If you don’t have any other spice in the world you must have Maggi or Knorr.
If you like have all the spices from the farms of India to Italy, none of them count until you buy Maggi or Knorr. You’ll tell me whether it’s tarragon they use to make fire Jollof.
Indomie. Not just any noodles, but Indomie specifically.
Another day we’ll argue about how if it’s not original or onion chicken then it doesn’t count as Indomie. But today is not that day.
Eba stick aka Omorgun aka Turning stick.
Whether or not you like to eat eba, it must be in your kitchen. You might have never even bought it in your life, but we can bet if you check your kitchen right now you’ll find it there.
The obligatory ice-cream bowl filled with stew.
You don’t even know where it came from. It’s not like you have money to be buying things like ice-cream, but there it is in your freezer.
Rice because ‘there is rice at home’ is not just a long running joke.
We know we joke about it a lot, but if there’s no rice at home there is a problem o.
A set of pots, even though the only one you ever use is the smallest one to make Indomie.
Everyday Indomie and you are still wondering why you had malaria 5 times last year.
Empty bottles of groundnut oil you’ve been storing for years now.
You have no idea what you want to use them for, or if you’ll ever do, but you’ll rather die than throw them away.
Coolers whose origins you can’t trace.
Whether you used it to pack takeaway from your friend’s house and never returned it, after promising on your mother’s life that you would. Or you stole it from your parents’ house, you’ll never know.
If there is anything on this list that’s not in your kitchen, go forth and fix up. We’ll be reviewing your citizenship status meanwhile.
