It was Professor Esawa Elaigwu who once said that in a meeting of one hundred people, the man who wields a gun is the majority. That point was made very poignant on Monday by President Olusegun Obasanjo when he annulled the election of a new Olowu of Owu, a first class monarch in Egbaland. As one of the eight Owu kingmakers, Obasanjo, the Balogun of Owu, had cast his ballot but sensing that his colleagues would not play along and that his preferred candidate was about to lose, he snatched the result from the returning officer and tore it before storming out with his security men who would have dealt with the kingmakers had they decided to resort to fisticuff as such action usually end up in Yorubaland.

As if to prove that he alone constitutes the majority, the president, using his official letterhead, wrote the Ogun State Governor, Otunba Gbenga Daniel, asking him to sack the panel and constitute a new one because the kingmakers had "compromised themselves, abused their positions, and are thus incapable of conducting a transparent, fair and equitable exercise." Just because they did not vote for his favourite candidate!

There are many fundamental issues here, the first of which is: does it not say something about the President if he has to resort to tearing ballot paper before his candidate can win a simple contest in his village? And is it not demeaning for a man described by his 'boys' as 'President of Africa' to be involved in village squabbles? But the point that is relevant for this piece is the abuse of power which has put one man in the position of picking a king for his people. Of course we know that Daniel will soon constitute a new panel, comprising of whoever Obasanjo wants, and another 'selection' process would be held and a new king enthroned. We also know that the disgraced and maligned kingmakers can only make noise, there is nothing they can do. But let us assume for a moment that those poor fellows have a friend who knows an Ogwugwu priest, would they not be tempted to seek 'help' to defend their honour in the face of such glaring injustice and abuse of power?

Since justice is no longer available to those who deserve it, the desire for revenge, to eliminate a rival, to steal from another, to increase personal power at the expense of others - all these naturally fuel the increasing appetite for evil in Nigeria today. And in a society where the institutions of government cannot be relied upon for equity and fairness, invoking dark forces cannot but be a way of life as we have discovered in recent days.

Again, since many people would seek political power, not to serve but to eat, getting to public office has become inter-changeable with making money because once you have power in Nigeria, then you are already in money, which means that an end has become the means, the reason why people would do anything, including appearing unclothed before Ogwugwu priests, in order to become Governor or Minister. And since these characters made no promises to us, the electorate, their allegiance can only be to the small 'gods' who would insist on milking the treasury dry.

These, I believe, are some of the larger issues we must confront as we all, even hypocritically, make noise about the 'forest mortuaries' of Anambra State and their body parts specialists who dispense their kind of justice to the unwary. Because if we miss out on those salient issues, we would not learn any useful lesson from the tragedy that has for ages been part of our miserable existence.

The story started last week Wednesday when the Anambra State Police Commissioner Felix Ogbaudu announced that men of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad of the command raided the Ogwugwu Isuala shrine at Okija leading to the arrest of 32 priests, recovery of 20 human skulls, a corpse and the discovery of over 50 bodies at the shrine. The raid on the shrine followed a tip-off earlier that week after petitions were sent to the Inspector General of Police (IGP) Tafa Balogun by Chief Chukwumezie Obed Igwe.

But in the face of the shock find, the Secretary General of Ohaneze, the Pan Igbo socio-cultural organisation, Chief Joe Achuzie, in a statement said the raid was 'both ridiculous and 'condemnable', describing it as a ploy to mock the Igbo. Achuzie told newsmen that the development, which to him is "not new in Nigerian tradition", was not worth publicising as it portrays the Igbo as cannibals. He alleged that the police are out to rubbish the Igbo. "Everybody in Igboland and Nigeria knows about the existence of shrines everywhere. Go to Hausa, go to Yoruba, go to every part of Nigeria, there exists one shrine and another", he said.

Achuzie, who recalled the history of the Okija shrine, said it has been reputed for justice in the settlement of dispute among people, stressing that never in Igboland has anybody complained that the priests killed or sacrificed human beings unjustly. He added: "Nobody has said that they kill people there. Those who go there go there to settle their matters. They take oaths and at the end of the day, anyone found guilty is killed by the shrine. But it is obvious that not all cases are taken to this shrine because it is very powerful. The human parts and skulls which they discovered are merely those who had sworn at the place and apparently found guilty and were killed not by any human being but the gods. Their bodies are usually brought to the place as sacrifice to the gods".

It is good that Ohaneze, in a strongly worded statement, has disowned Achuzie as speaking for himself and not the organisation but there are some points in what Achuzie said that should not be lost on us all and it is better captured in a Yoruba idiom: there is no place where they don't cook supper only that one pot of soup might be more delicious than the other. Because it would be terribly wrong for anybody to assume this evil practice is exclusive to Okija people, the truth is that it is not.

What is happening in Okija and its environ actually happens in several dark theatres across the country, and it is called Satanic Rituals because the essence really is for some manipulative evil minded characters to strike a deal with the devil so as to invoke fear into people and get the subservience of all who seek their help. What those who go to these shrines, however, do not know is that they are indeed giving their souls away as they are joining the group, where control and captivity are an everyday reality. That is why some young men with no visible means of livelihood would suddenly make stupendous wealth, spend it as if they have the key to CBN vault and die mysteriously only for their dead bodies to end up in the forest. Because the gods would always demand their own. But the question remains: Do the demons actually deliver to those who seek wealth, fame and power?

This is a question asked in a recent study on Satanic Rituals. "Does the human want a shinny new car? He shall have it. Just kill the child. Of course, the car never arrives, but the human has often delivered his end of the bargain. For instance, sacrifice or blood letting, particularly of an innocent or someone the participants are reluctant to sacrifice due to personal bonds, sets the mood. During such acts, the participants increasingly disconnect their empathy toward another, and concentrate on the self-satisfying goals that led them to the ritual. Most often the human sacrificed is a peripheral member of the group, so that the cult leader can go on a power trip. He glorifies in his ability to make friends turn on one another, at his command. Such power trips become such a drug that more and more such rituals are performed and the outcome goes one of two ways." From all the accounts we have been reading of these Ogwugwu priests, it would seem they only prey on the ignorance and fear of their kinsmen but no one can doubt the fact that they possess, like the Indian Kali gods, the sinister power to look after those who look after them and to go after those they wish to destroy. Kali, according to a 2002 TIME magazine report, does bring riches to the poor and revenge to the oppressed but the price is often in human blood such that ritual killing became rampant in India though from the statistics, it is actually not as widespread as we have in Nigeria. "In January, in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, a 24-year-old woman hacked her three-year-old son to death after a tantric sorcerer supposedly promised unlimited earthly riches. In February, two men in the eastern state of Tripura beheaded a woman on the instructions of a deity they said appeared in their dreams promising hidden treasures. Karmakar killed Manju in Atapur village in Jharkhand state in April. The following month, police dug up the remains of two sisters, aged 18 and 13, in Bihar, dismembered with a ceremonial sword and offered to Kali by their father. Last week on the outskirts of Bombay, maize seller Anil Lakshmikant Singh, 33, beheaded his neighbor's nine-year-old son to save his marriage on the advice of a tantric. Said Singh: "He promised that a human sacrifice would end all my miseries." Sociologist Ashis Nandy says: "You see your neighbor doing well, above his caste and position, and someone tells you to get a child and do a secret ritual and you can catch up." Adds mysticism expert Ipsita Roy Chakaraverti: "It's got nothing to do with real mysticism or with spiritualism. It comes down to pure and simple greed." Greed. That is indeed the way to explain what is happening at Ikija. Because our society is full of greedy and gullible men who want to make money without working for it, the Ogwugwu priests have been making a kill but it would seem not everybody falls prey to their antics as easily captured by the experience of the Chairman of Anambra State Leaders of Thought and one time lawmaker in the State House of Assembly, Dr. G.B.C. Chukwuka, who said he and his son, Obiora, would have been victims of the dreaded shrine in 1996 but for his bold resistance and reaction to an emissary sent by the priests of the deity. In his story published yesterday in The Sun, Chukwuka said: "I was at my Onitsha residence one evening when a young man came with a letter, saying that he was sent by the priests of Ogwugwu deity in Okija to summon me and my son to the shrine over a business misunderstanding between my son and another person. I did not receive the letter from him but I told him to wait. I went into my room and came out with a matchete determined to cut him into pieces with the letter in his hand. But after pleas from my wife who knew that I was burning hot, I dropped the matchete and picked up a whip. I gave him 30 lashes and ordered him to leave my house in a hurry. He did so pleading with me to spare him." But while there are men like Chukwuka who would dare the 'gods' of Ogwugwu who perpetuate a myth to make ill-gotten wealth, destroying severak lives and families in the process, there are thousands of others who would fall easy prey. What all these, however, show is that in every society, there are people who are ready to do anything in pursuit of money and power. From the report of what we hear, the patrons are not the small men on the streets, they are the high and the mighty and that is why all eyes are now on the Police Inspector General, Mr. Tafa Balogun, who is believed to have in his custody the register of people who have taken their cases before the Ogwugwu priests which includes political office holders whose oath of allegiance was not to the people but rather to characters who were speaking 'rubbish'. We must face the fact, the reality of the situation in Nigeria today is that for as long as we continue to have people who would seek wealth without work, men who would pursue politics without principle, men who would covet fame devoid of character, men to whom integrity and fear of God are mere slogans and men who would stand justice on its head because they hold ephemeral power; then the Ogwugwu priests would continue to thrive in our society. No matter what the Police end up doing with the shrines at Okija.
http://thisdayonline.info/archive/2004/08/12/20040812ext01.html

do ibos now behead people for fun such savagery

Welcome to yoruba land aka orisha juju duduwa:

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTQFrUW8v-Y&feature=related[/flash]

chyz:

Welcome to yoruba land aka orisha juju duduwa:

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTQFrUW8v-Y&feature=related[/flash]

Are you this daft!

The language is Benin, not Yoruba.

May you die UNSUNG like Ojukwu

Soyinka loves Okija shrine

^^^ So does Achebe

omongbat12:

Soyinka loves Okija shrine

finally, i came to give you breakfast in bed.

you want some?

[img]http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQPU8cwwNddv0ziTjCMVYPMrP-2svepdJWX21_bi13fH03S_gQE[/img]

i made it out of your brother's fetus from your mother. your favorite!!! enjoy!!!

justise:

Are you this daft!

The language is Benin, not Yoruba.

May you die UNSUNG like Ojukwu

It is pure yoruba go ask your daddy beccomerich

I dey laugh o

jason54321:

finally, i came to give you breakfast in bed.

you want some?

[img]http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQPU8cwwNddv0ziTjCMVYPMrP-2svepdJWX21_bi13fH03S_gQE[/img]

i made it out of your brother's fetus from your mother. your favorite!!! enjoy!!!

menh you people love human flesh look at how you thought of showing unborn child ready to be eaten shows that you people are really number one human eater disgusting i have said it b4 i will never eats in Yoruba restaurant again Zap. these

I dey laugh o

Must you guys post such revolting filth? WTF. I'm going to report that picture

Stop this madness, Jaso123, or is that an impostor attacking the Igbos like that? Yeah old men just having fun with ignorance

Lol