The Origin of FAYAWO (Smuggling)

You Drink Gari And Use It For Food Purposes But Did You Know In 1944, Selling Gari was illegal in what became Nigeria? 

The British colonial Government made it illegal for anyone to sell Gari privately, Gari became "Government treasure”

This actually happened during the era of the second World War. As we know the British were suffering at the hand of Germans and they were desperate to win the War, they needed money and resources so they pulled as much as they could get from their colonies, including Nigeria.

They built roads, Airfields, hospitals etc, anything to make their exploitation easier. This is because claiming to build infrastructure is an easy way to appropriate funds.  Nigerian Men were recruited by the  British colonial Government into the Army to fight in the war. Even at that, they still needed more.

The British imposed some monetary policies and they rationed food so they could have enough to export for their wars. The Colonial government was in charge of food distribution and people would have to queue for days to buy Gari.

They wanted to tax market women. Then we had Alimotu Pelewura, a Yoruba woman who led a protest to curb this action. British Colonial Government were like "British women pay tax, why should Nigerian women be any different" and Pelewura replied... "All of Nigeria's wealth was being taken to Britain hence the British women could pay tax because they were Rich". She organised the market women and told them to boycott sales of Gari to the colonial Govt. This made the colonial Govt and the security agents "declared war"

The Colonial Government started arresting those who sold Gari privately but people are very resourceful so the Fa-ya-wo got involved (Fa-ya-wo is what the Yorubas call Smugglers). The Fa-ya-wo would crawl on their bellys(hence their name) to steal Gari from colonial government stores and sell in private. Gari had it own black market. 

The colonial govt found it hard to solve this problem, they tried to bribe Alimatu Pelewura to come to their side but she didn't sell her conscience.

So when next you see gari, show some respect oo 🫡😂😂

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