A lot has been said about the Ogbonis but what is fact and what is fiction? I have written this piece on the Ogbonis for your reading pleasure. Have a nice time with it.

1.Like Freemasons and the Illuminati, the Ogboni Fraternity is a secret society.

As a matter of fact, it is one of the foremost secret cults in Africa. Brotherhood is believed to be extremely important in the fraternity and members will always go to any length to protect other members even if that means going against the laid-down conventions of the society. In September 1959, Nigerian journalist, Nelson Ottah, carried out his investigation on the Ogbonis and wrote:
‘A member of the Ogboni Fraternity, for example, is always safe in an office in which a fellow member is in charge. Inefficiency won’t lose him a job. Neither will insurbodination. He is safe in every possible way, as long as the big man at the head of his department is a member of the Ogboni Fraternity too, and takes his membership more seriously than his job. He could even steal from his employers and get away with it, because the police would not be called in without the sanction of the head of his department, with whom he is in cahoots by reason of their membership of the Ogboni Fraternity’.

2.Members of the Ogboni Fraternity are taught certain secret signs which they use to communication or to make their membership clear or send a signal to others.
This is done without a non-member even knowing what is going on. Ottah continued:
‘…even in court I have seen a member of the Ogboni Fraternity, brought up to the dock between two policemen, look around casually and then knock loudly three times on some resonant surface. That is an Ogboni sign. Who was he trying to influence by showing that he was a member. Perhaps he had never met the police prosecutor before, and perhaps he thought that the prosecutor was a member who might help him by presenting his crimes more leniently than otherwise to the court…’

But that is not all to the secret signs and symbolisms of the Ogbonis (Ogbonis means ‘the Elders’). The complementary nature that exists between males and females is always highlighted in the Ogboni society. This is reflected in their unique gesture where the left fist (considered feminine) is placed on top of the right fist (considered masculine) with the thumbs concealed, in front of the stomach.

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Ogboni ni, aboniki ko