I remember when my family and I were all living in sokoto. Frozen Fish was very scarce as at that time. Titus fish was a luxury because, you could hardly find a cold room or even sellers. The only readily available fish was smoked catfish. This meant that, all we mostly had in the family was beef meat and the smoked fish. Beef meet was also extremely cheap as, my mum would buy 600naira worth of meat and that would take the whole family for over a month. There was also constant light. Nepa actually told us ahead of time, if there would be power disruption and it never lasted for more than some few hours. If they had to fix something, we were also pacified (not today that they use us to do Shakara nationwide and take their light with no respect as though na them they help us pay the bills) When, the fuse is fixed back into the part of the transformer, power was guaranteed to stay for many months non stop. So, you can see how well preserved the meat will be for weeks.
I don't know the person who used meat to swear for my siblings and I walahi. Regardless of the availability, we go dey move meat anyhow, anytime and anywhere even when, we aren't eating food. My mum would complain and complain but, yinmu for her. No shaking, continuous stealing as the spirit led. The funny thing was, we weren't collectively stealing it o, we each did it without knowing the other was doing it too. My mum then resulted to counting meat before cooking. She would drag all three of us minus my then one year old kid sis and count it. Letting us know that she knows how many they are and that sort of put us in check and it reduced a great bit but, not totally.
We transfered to Lagos in 1999 and Lagos beef wasn't smiling in terms of price and for the first time, I knew that nepa could be bold enough to abuse us electrically like say we no be human being �� �� �� �� �� ��. Mum, had to buy meat on "buy as you use basis" . She would always tell us not to take meat from her pot of soup or stew unless we are having a meal.
This time, I already found out that my immediate younger bro was a participant in the business because, I caught him on one of his mission red-handed and we both chop and cleaned mouth. In order, not to annoy my mum and cause her to tell our dad, we started performing weight-loss surgery on those innocent meat. Chai, if you see what we did ehen , you will pity my mum. Meat go just tinrin gbekun like something else. My mum would wonder why her meat was shrinking after cooking. That sort of shrinking that would embarrass you when you serve a visitor �� �� �� �� ��. She would blame it on the quality of the beef and we will just be laughing in our small minds and be forming sharp shidrens