There was a time when garri, Nigeria’s most popular staple meal was food for the poor.
Indigent hungry students in hostels fed on it as supplements to the regular cafeteria food that could barley feed a cat.
On the other hand, children of the rich stocked up on imported cornflakes, assorted biscuits, cream crackers, wheatabix, all manner of cereals and occasional burgers.
The affluent never imagined having it on their menus as they had servants to pound yam, prepare semovita, corn, potato or plantain flour.
However, in recent years, garri has become a more regular fun snack for the rich and the most patronised real meal for the poor as resources dwindle across all strata of society.
For the rich, it is mixed with milk, ice cubes, sugar, peanuts and sometimes given a chocolate flavour with cocoa beverages.
The poor on the other hand, drink it with bare simply sweeten it with salt if they find some.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo 
In some cases, politicians use the meal to lure impoverished gullible constituents by convincing them that they identify with their levels.
Nonetheless, most of these wealthy men rose from the ranks of those constituents and find it difficult to let go of what they grew up on.
Garri is cultivated as cassava tubers by rural farmers. The long process of transforming the cassava to the local cereal is too cumbersome for the rich.
It now comes in different flavours: Ijebu Garri, Garri Omo Iwo, Yellow Garri, White Garri.
The Ijebu Garri is the one that stings or ‘slaps’ the chin when drank.
A variant of Garri is ‘Eba’. Eba is Garri mixed with hot water until it becomes a yellow or white dough.
The dough is eaten with vegetable and protein soups.
Really harrowing is a recent video of a senior lecturer at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka who had not received her salary for 9 months.
Unable to feed or cater to the basic needs of her family and definitely looking malnourished herself, she took to cultivating and processing Garri for sustenance.
Garri has been confirmed as a lifesaver for Nigerian soldiers in the battlefield.