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Apr 09, 2024

6 Weird Lies We Heard About Money As Nigerian Kids

From the school of “if you pick money on the ground, you’ll turn into yam,” we present to you other lies about money we were fed while growing up. Growing up, we heard money myths and peddled them at

From the school of “if you pick money on the ground, you’ll turn into yam,” we present to you other lies about money we were fed while growing up.

Growing up, we heard money myths and peddled them at home, school, and everywhere else. Some were weird and funny, some were scary, but we ran with them until we found out they were all lies or funny tricks.

Do you remember any of these?

While dressing up for school, your parents probably hammered one thing in your head. They’d tell you to quickly walk past any money notes you saw on the floor. To drive home this point, they’d add that if you picked money on the ground, you might turn to yam or orange or a tanko football.

May we not become a kidnapper’s item.

We heard urine was a jazz neutraliser — if it touched the money on the ground, you’d have one-upped the jazzman.

All that drama over free money.

Nigerian parents, especially mums, would “borrow” money from you and say they wanted to keep it safe for you. But no one got their money back.

We’ll find out why this happened when we become parents too.

This is one of the wickedest tricks older siblings used on their younger ones. How the hell did we believe those scammers that two ₦10 notes were worth more than one ₦50 note?

We don’t know where this theory crawled out from, but we were convinced if you squeezed an original note, it’d unfold itself — the fake one would just lay there.

Some people believe that you could cash out money you didn’t work for by spending a charmed note to buy something from a vendor. When the money got inside their big bag or container of money, everything would disappear and come into your own pocket. How, abeg?