Only a man who has never been hungry will say jollof rice is just rice

My daughter came from London last December and we went to a party in Ibadan. She saw the jollof and said, 'Daddy, it is just rice with stew.' I did not answer her. I just looked at my wife. My wife looked at me. We both knew.

This is not about food. This is about memory. The jollof that we ate in 1974 at my cousin's wedding in Ogbomosho, the one cooked in a big iron pot over firewood, that one had no competition. The rice was not even fine. But the taste stayed in my mouth for three days.

Now everybody is arguing about Ghana and Nigeria. I have eaten Ghana jollof. It is good. But it is not our jollof. The Yoruba say, 'Ile ni abo sinmi oko' , the home is where the husband rests. Our jollof is the home.

So when I see young people on this platform fighting about who owns jollof, I just laugh. The real question is not Ghana or Nigeria. The real question is: why does jollof taste different when your mother cooks it, and different when you buy it in a restaurant for ₦5,000?

Abeg, answer me that one.