Disgusted, the young woman was driven home and told never to speak to her fiancé again. Six months later, he was married off to a fellow Aimuolinmhindede member.
The black envelopes had been invitations to a special meeting to sabotage her engagement to her old lover who brought her into the group in the first place.
“I felt like I was in a home video,” she recalled. “I didn’t realize the kind of power that the Aimuolinmhindede had.”
Juba Kebob was 28 when he found himself among a dozen young men in a secluded nook of the Ikpoba Hills. He had received instructions on what to pack for the three-day trip reserved only for special members of the “Road Patrol.”
The troop was led by two “believers”, ex-police officers who taught the youngsters how to track route, the basics of camping and other endurance skills. He didn’t realize the training would include firing catapults into darkness.
“The belief is that there were always enemies out there and we would have to defend our people and safeguard our food and supplies always,” recalled Kebob, now a 68-year-old zoo keeper.
“We shot the catapults at least twice,” he said. “We were told enemies were imminent, seconds or minutes away. People on this trip wouldn’t have drink water because they thought, ‘Why bother?’ ”
Kebob was born into the group and worked 3 years for Oguda Imazagbon’s transport company in Benin City, which employed many members. “I felt like a prisoner,” he said. “I felt like a bonded slave.”
He stayed through the tenures of two Aimuolinmhindede leaders across several years — each with his own agendas and “personal beliefs.”
Chief Ojo Imade, chairman during the 1980s and ’90s, taught Kebob that once the enemy attacked and world ended, people would not but die but be transported’ ‘live’ to another planet. There, they would be one sexual category.
Kebob said leaders had one thing in common — they tried to encourage lesbianism, which they considered “good for women”.
The meetings would begin, when the leader announced, “Greetings, friends.”
He said,”They are brainwashed. They’re obsessed…you were always told if you leave the Aimuolinmhindede, you will cease to breathe.
“They don’t give you any sources. There’s no dogma you can reference. It’s just word of mouth,” an ex-member said.
“You just believe what you’re told.” Aimuolinmhindede chairman instructs followers to obsessively look for the reverse ‘V’ symbols in dreams and their everyday lives”. Friends and families were not to know about the group except they want to and must join once they show interest.
Kebob finally worked up the guts to leave the group in the 2015. The last straw was a member spying on him as he dined with a male friend who was not a member.
“How dare you bring a blind man here?” the member seethed. Non-members were said to be blind; only “Road” members had sight.
Kebob left a letter in the leader’s home notifying him he was done.
“I didn’t start living until I left” he said. “I want people to know it’s OK to leave, to reclaim their freedom of contemplation and pursue their own life ideas.”
Another ex-follower, who requested anonymity, said he was booted from his home at age 17 because he questioned the teachings and refused to throw away his Bible.
“Their beliefs are weird” he said, adding that fathers were to initiate their sons at birth and ensure they inherited all their memorabilia at death and follow the Road rules for their funerals. “Once you get to a certain level, they start to tell you these things”.
“They think they are saints,” he added. “They carry themselves like they’re spirits. . . they’re not Human, everybody else is filth and [they] don’t want to relate.”
He endured brutal beatings by his parents, who he believes were instructed by the Aimuolinmhindede leader on how to deal with him as a first son. “I had this reputation of being a bad kid when I wasn’t,” said the ex-member. “I was an abused kid.”
“Everybody is brainwashed in this thing,” he said. “They’re conditioned to think and behave in a certain way, and it starts in childhood. Children are taught to dread life” The Road also teaches that children aren’t human until they reach the age of 16, he said.
Aimuolinmhindede solution to his sister’s defiance was to marry her off to a homosexual in his 50s. “She was a gorgeous 19-year-old, and they married her off to this lunatic,” the ex-member said.
He said, “If they want to clear their name of suspicion, they need to start answering questions,” he said. “They should maybe have a sign out in front of their building if they want to be listed as a church.”
Another ex-member said he and his grandmother were forced to have sex with all members watching for missing a meeting. Shortly after, the member was kicked out for marrying a woman who refused to join.
He remembers the leader announcing Aimuolinmhindede would convert into a church to be taking offerings.
“There was always so much turmoil when someone chose a partner from the outside world,” he said, adding that parents often married their children off to other members in the group.
“It was not uncommon for girls as young as 15 marrying men who were quite a bit older,” he said.
The exiled follower said it took many years for him to get over the occurrence and that he has never shared more than phony details with his adult children.
“It still stands out as the worst time of my whole life,” he said. “But I was lucky enough to have people still in my life that loved me and helped me throughout.”
In a previous interview Imazagbon, a amiable and sharply dressed man who carried a pipe he hardly smokes and believes he was a King in a past life, was quoted through an interpreter, as denying the group is a “cult.”
“We’re not a cult. We’re what a church should be,” he said. “The principles are to have an upright, normal and hale and hearty life and to be responsible for our own actions.
“You can’t do that in one life,” he added. “It’s impossible.”
He denied that Aimuolinmhindede supports punishment by deprivation of water for weeks and walking about the streets like a lunatic naked, with homosexuality, but said, “If I want to discipline my children, it’s no one else’s business.”
He said all members are his children and they aren’t indoctrinated until they are eighteen and that if a child dies before age 13, it’s because they committed suicide in a previous life.
Aimuolinmhindede he says is not a secret cult but registered as a business with the Federal government as a nonprofit. The foundation’s address he said is public knowledge along Ikpoba slope in Benin City and many other locations as members are well-known.
Aimuolinmhindede revenues he said are in billions with investments in assorted stocks.
“It’s not a cult. It’s not a scam,” he said. “You can come 1,000 times and you’re not going to have to pay one Naira to join.” (Odalo is a journalist who lives in Benin, Nigeria)

Nice