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Village Headmaster, 176 Blanchland Circle, Monkston, Milton Keynes (2026)

04/09/2026

This is simple👀

04/09/2026

The Nigerian village where you mustn't fry akara (bean cake)

There is a village just 10 minutes from Gwagwalada, Abuja where you can EAT akara but you cannot FRY it!

Chukuku Village sees this as a taboo. You can buy akara from Gwagwalada or other neighbouring communities and bring it into Chukuku to eat or resell, but no one is allowed to fry or bake it inside the community.

The village head, Malam Bikko Usman, says this particular tradition was handed over by their forefathers, but he does not seem to know why. "We relocated from one part of the Chukuku village, where we don't fry Akara to this part, that is why we still don't allow the frying of Akara. I can't tell the reason it's førbidden because it's been like that from the other part we relocated from. It has been from generation to generation," he said according to reports.

On the ground, people give two spiritual explanations:

1. To stop witches: The founding fathers stopped frying akara to stop witches from using the oil used in frying to perpetuate ev!l and k!ll people at night. The second version of the same story says they stopped it to prevent witches from using the smoke from the frying as a channel to enter the community.

2. The missing woman story: An indigene, Mrs Junmai Leda, said she was told by her grandparents that a woman who used to fry Akara in the olden days disappeared without a trace, and the Chief then decreed that akara should not be fried in the community again.

Because of this, most residents won't even talk about it on record for fear of offending the gods of the land, and there is no record of anyone daring to break it since the creation of the village.

While it's not a government ban, it's an ancestral Gbagyi tradition that the community, which is mostly Gbagyi farmers with other settlers, still respects despite modernity around Abuja.

If you live there and want to do akara business, you have to go outside Chukuku to fry.

ℹ️Ethnic African Stories