Debunking Weird Lies We Were Told as Nigerian Kids

Every Nigerian child grew up under a special kind of psychological warfare. Our parents and aunties didn’t do “gentle parenting” they did strategic misinformation, and honestly? Some of us are still unlearning it in adulthood. Abeg, let’s finally set the record straight.

1. Drinking cold water after eating hot food will give you appendicitis

Haba! from where-to-where naaa. As kids, we swallowed this lie, hook, line and sinker.

Appendicitis is caused by a blockage in the appendix, not how chilled your Fanta is. Your Cold drink was never the villain; your mother probably didn’t want you to have it.

2. If you eat unripe Mangoes, you might Die

Thinking of how unripe mangoes frightened me as a Nigerian child, makes me want to laugh! How did our parents even think off coming up with very creative lies like this.

True, unripe fruits are not bad, but you’re definitely not going to die instantly from tasting unripe mangoes like they made us believe…chill.

3. Stepping over someone lying down will stunt their growth

There’s no biological mechanism by which your legs passing over a sibling affects their height. This was purely crowd control for a small room with too many children in it.

And yet again, I’m marveled at how this was made into a stunted growth tale.

4. Don’t whistle at night, you’ll call snakes/spirits.

I’m not even going to lie, I still make sure I never whistle at night, because even if it’s a lie, I definitely do not plan to find out! Thank you

But scientifically speaking, there is no scientific link between pitch and reptile summoning. What actually happens at night is darkness, which makes everything scarier, including your own whistling.

That’s it, that’s the whole conspiracy.

5. If a cat spits in your eyes, you’ll go blind

Even as an adult, cats still look and act a bit Sus to me, all because of the overload of weird lies we were told as Nigerian kids!

We all actually believed that cats could get us blind right? And whenever we would pass a visually impaired adults as kids, we would assume a mean cat spat in their eyes and made them that way.

There is no scientific proof that the saliva of a cat can get you blind!