This eating culture and tradition became popular in the late eighties with the introduction of the World Bank supported Structural Adjustment Programme implemented by the regime of the former dictator General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida whose regime took Nigerians on an eight-year maladministration and wastefulness.
It was an eight-year case of suffering from destination myopia and lack of will and purpose. This World Bank programme destroyed the then emerging middle class and sent the majority of the Nigerian youths to the dump sites to scramble for survival and means of livelihood.
Living became mere existentialism. The cost of living overshoot the sky as more and more people became poor. The race of capital flight ensued as the value of naira is devalued over and over again. The rich most of who have benefited from petro-dollar inspired economic crimes against Nigeria and her people moved their money out of the country to show their loss of confidence in the economy.
Up till today, this has become a national hobby; hence the economic crimes former state governors are accused of. The intellectuals left the shores of Nigeria in their droves causing an unprecedented stigma of brain drain. Nigerian universities undergraduates are today said to be half-baked.
It is either you are poor or you are rich. The gap has widened so much that the poor devised a way of surviving in the face of living below $1 per day.
Mama Put became the answer. Here you get food for any amount you can afford. The dishes are well cooked and spiced to meet the nutritional needs of one's demanding body. The fun of Mama Put is that it is food for the upwardly mobile members of the Nigerian workforce at very affordable prices. Children of school age berth there for a helping before running off to school with their tasty and spicy booty in their food pack. The ingenuity of Nigerian food vendors came to the rescue of the pauperized Nigerians and put holes to the offensive statement made by a then cabinet minister that Nigerians would be dining with the pigs in no distant time in our various dump sites.
Today smart Nigerians have exported this food tradition to various countries of Europe and the Americas. Anywhere you see the letters saying Mama Put, do not hesitate, go in and give yourself a treat to Nigerian nutritional, tasty and well-spiced foods. This is our way of life. As McDonald's is to the United States of American citizens and the Europeans, so is Mama Put to Nigerians. Today we call it "meals in your mother tongue."
Bon Appetite!
Good article,
Onflame