Thought Picnic: In triumph beyond the memories

An ordeal called life

I called the matriarch for a chin wag just after work and what a conversation we did have all down memory lane into streets and avenues I never knew existed. Paths and tunnels couched in stories that have probably never been told to anyone else, the wealth of experience in a world where the loved have the darkest hearts known to man.

The things I learnt were hair-raising leaving me tingling with sensation that the saints lain under tombstones long ago were anything but, the evil they perpetrated lives in the tales that get told in remembrance of them.

At a point, I thought, should all these reminisces be jotted down and then told for if not one for non-fiction, it exuded the elements of fictional thrillers, but for the grace of God, here we stand, and they are long gone.

Grace and enduring peace

Then you wonder about the inability of people to capture the zeitgeist, the things said in jest that have become the definition of people in whom we once laid trust. They have forgotten taking umbrage at strained relationships they in their careless talk forsook.

Yet, in not any one of them have we been left blinded or in their shadow, for in the deliverance of great favour and fortune with the goodness of people as angels we have risen. We would tell stories of amazing triumph that leaves the slights way behind in the completely forgotten, for we have been blessed and that prayer has been a living stream from the mouth of the matriarch.

For all her faults even amongst those who have sought to besmirch and assail her, she remains faultless, navigating the strangeness of this world with premonition and insight, guided by the divine through the many valleys of the shadow of death to new still waters beside green pastures, her soul restored, her peace enduring. I smile thinking, I do love my mum.

Opinion: Save the children from these people - Part III - Helen Ukpabio's removal from the UK

A nasty woman

Nothing could have pleased me more than to hear that the self-styled apostle Helen Ukpabio had been bundled out of the UK with no option for future entry.

Helen Ukpabio is notorious for the absurd pseudo-Christian ministry of stigmatising helpless children as practitioners of witchcraft in Nigeria and then conducting macabre exorcisms that brutalise the so accused in ways too evil to depict.

Blog - On the rise of juvenile witchcraft stigmatisations

Blog - Nigeria: No Country for Vulnerable Children

What is most repugnant about her sorcery is having trained as a nurse, she propounds that if children are distressed at night, crying and running high fevers, the said kids are in the employ of Satan.

A religious quack

That anyone would believe this, let alone act on this criminally contemptible quackery is indicative of the mesmerising hold her atrocious doctrine in the name of religion has over an easily manipulated and vulnerable people who can be cajoled into ascribing every misfortune in their lives to some agency of evil spiritual forces.

In the process, stigmatised children have been abused, violated, brutalised, abandoned, starved and sometimes murdered. It sickens beyond anything tolerable that such barbarity finds adherents, supporters and proselytes.

That is why she was in the UK to promote amongst us unconscionably superstitious and animist-like rituals suggestive of questionable Christian provenance.

Frustrate this evil enterprise

From the moment she landed for her odious campaign, activists got onto her case, and had the venue owners hosting her meetings rescind the arrangement, then agitated to have her removed from the country.

Some children suffer enough in the UK due to all sorts of unfortunate, unforgivable and avoidable issues in parenting, care and the system than to have that compounded by the likes of Helen Ukpabio.

Her breakaway from the cultish Brotherhood of Cross and Star to form a ministry that trades in fearful stigmatisation along with the thugs in her ambit who foment violence on those who oppose her views makes her a danger to any community at home or abroad.

Prosecute this to all lengths

The ideal situation would be to close down her theatre of the absurd along with finding ways to make her responsible for the grievous harm committed against children as a result of her influential and abhorrent teachings.

Failing that, deportations, discomfort, disruptions and anything to arrest the abuse of the helpless and innocent in the name of religion must be done.

Helen Ukpabio must be persona non grata in any civilised setting and especially in Nigeria, her activities must be trammelled and supervised to ensure no other child comes to any harm.

She is evil, there are no better words to describe her.

Yet, it is imperative that we save the children from people like Helen Ukpabio who acts irresponsibly with the power she has to convince people of religious absurdities that gross atrocities are committed against defenceless and innocent children.

Thought Picnic: The Power of Desire II

The path to it

It was a path I never walked for almost 16 months of my being there and it led to a house that looked decrepit, visited by some who wore drawn faces and made you wish the world had something to offer besides waiting for God and heaven.

Indeed, at Sunday school we had learnt of the sweet by-and-by taught by teachers whose sadism pretending to discipline would have made the devil smile with glee.

This was a different crowd, almost hip and quite urbane studying art and exhibiting creativity that just blew you away. How they did it, I could not tell but I found myself walking up the path with them and for all the African initiated histrionics I had seen and heard my mother display, calling names of angels from beyond a place yonder comprehension, these guys were in a different place.

Rituals and victuals

They knelt to pray and suddenly started speaking in languages I could not phantom but it sounded Middle-Eastern, the questions came later and with that came a conversion from the faith I once knew.

Now I was caught amongst the throes of establishmentarian High-Church Anglicanism, the unschooled atrocity of prophets, psalms, potions, candles with ritualistic practices that gave evil the palpability to scare to death and a new living way that still had many scrambling to find true direction and purpose.

The incisions were too many to count and as to what one was fed, after chewing and swallowing a new Tiger brand razor blade under the supervision of a witch doctor, one probably had the constitution for anything that could be offered on a plate. Don’t contemn African animism, they don’t do illusions and once you visited the grotto, Harry Potter will be kindergarten with docile kids.

Desires that tore

With this came new friends, many challenges, serious misgivings, deep conflicts and worst of all familial friction. At a time that I really did need help I found myself alone, ostracised, abandoned and cursed – yes, cursed for deviating from what had become the norms for some but made the bizarre look tame.

From that day, desire battled with desire, the battleground being my mind and the burdens it grew to juggle between the good, the bad, the ugly, the unmentionable and much else.

You never arrived, you were always on a journey as perfection and imperfection traded with your soul and each faltering step forward seemed to bargain with a precipitous fall from grace. You were caught in the pincers of the power of desire to be who you are and be what you want to be.

Nobody told me that it would be this hard and at the same time it could be so easy. Trust is what matters and the knowledge that comes with that will help make the desire to be good come true. 

Apes Obey! Vague dread of the supernatural

Rotten reporting

When I read the 2 versions of the stories in first in the online versions the Nigerian Tribune and then This Day, I knew there was much more to the story that the journalists had not bothered to investigate further.

Usually, when such sensationalist tripe is published there is someone from some foreign media ascertaining what I would call the Veracity Index of the story such that the objective might replace the incredible.

It took a review by Ijebuman, a fellow blogger to see the real truth behind the whole story with a perspective from Reuters/Yahoo. But it highlights how even professional journalists in Nigeria can get carried away with outrageous rumours and print those as truth, but also a reflection on society that accepts such sloppiness without protest – really appalling.

The haunted house

This however is my first instalment in the Apes Obey! Series; dealing with the vague dread of the supernatural.

A man had apparently built himself a haunted house [Source: Nigerian Tribune], read into that what you may, for all sorts of reasons, after completion of the building he refused to move his family into the house because he believed it was haunted [Source: ThisDay Online].

A night vigil was organised, comprised of members of one of those ever pervasive gatherings of people calling themselves a church, with a Pentecostal persuasion to conduct an exorcism to make the house habitable.

Smoke, wind and dwarves

The story then grows legs, they prayed into the night and when it ended one witness went to the toilet and lost consciousness after first seeing a lot of smoke and mysterious dwarf figure in human form.

Another source said after the prayers, a mighty wind blew through the house and sent people crashing on the floor with many losing their lives.

Somehow, some of the bodies ended up badly burnt and in the space of 2 days the bodies were already infested with maggots – there was a time lapse between the event and the discovery.

Perceptions of great evil

However, this is where the story would have taken off – the vague dread of the supernatural had compelled people to gather to deal with a situation through fervent prayer. It would appear they were up against something they had no clue of and it overpowered them.

Meanwhile, observers would consider the house was evil, the builder was probably a crook and that the church might have been involved in other activities rather than pure Christianly service.

17 lives were lost in this incident and though there might be clear indications as to why this happened, any natural or logical explanation would be ditched for some sign, miracle, paranormal or supernatural context making the whole event more mysterious than it should ever be.

Unfounded attributions

It is interesting that the phrase “mighty wind” was used in the context of this story because it could well refer to an event in the Bible where the Apostles were gathered on the day of Pentecost – a number of versions of the Bible use rushing mighty wind [Source: Biblos.com Parallel Bible] in the Book of Act Chapter 2 verse 2 – allowing for another vague dread of the supernatural.

People might question how within two days bodies were infested with maggots but further on in the Book of Acts someone died and was immediately infested with maggots [Source: Biblos.com Parallel Bible] – supernatural or natural?

A more plausible explanation

The Reuters news agency picks up the story [Source: Generator fumes kill 17 at Nigeria prayer meeting - Yahoo! News] and highlights the fact that we have a power crisis in Nigeria that forces people to install portable generators.

The security situation in Nigeria also means that people would sometimes fail to follow a basic safety rule; such generators should not be used indoors.

As it happens, this group of people ran the generator indoors where the likelihood is that they were overcome by exhaust fumes and consequently died.

Considering they closed themselves up in the house, the meeting place was probably not properly ventilated and having been through an exhausting session of fervent prayer they would have been very vulnerable.

Fervently religious but stupid people

An apparently stupid human act that cost lives has however been attributed to forces of darkness.

As for the man who went to the toilet – some of the signs of carbon monoxide poisoning [Source: Canada Safety Council] would be vision impairment, mental confusion and collapse on exertion – the kind of exertion which might have allowed for the seeming high concentrations of carbon monoxide to overwhelm a group of people almost at the same time as to have looked like a being hit by a mighty wind to a confused mind.

Probably, someone fell on the generator and got burnt as the generator ran till it was out of fuel.

When people die, they begin to rot and attract flies, those flies lay eggs which hatch in maggots [Source: WikiAnswers - How do maggots get into a dead body] between 2-5 days of being laid – there might be extenuating circumstances for humid and tropical regions.

I can only thank Ijebuman again for this information about Carbon Monoxide Poisoning and Haunted Houses - Case Closed! [Source - Wikipedia]

Despite all this

Despite this clear explanation of events, it is amazing how the vague dread of the supernatural holds sway over people that they fail to realise the obvious.

Could the haunting have been a badly placed roof tile allowing for wind instrument dynamics; a creaking door or something really benign?

This is not to discount the possibility of haunted house, but in a new house? Except if it was built over an old disused cemetery, but then?

I would wager that a good number of Nigerians would take convincing of the fact that the large loss of life was due more to crass stupidity than some vague supernatural activity – Lord Lugard must have been a rather keen observer and somehow you have to agree he was right there.

And back to that quote corroborated from another source too “through the ages the African appears to have evolved no organized religious creed, and though some tribes appear to believe in a deity, the religious sense seldom rises above pantheistic animalism and seems more often to take the form of a vague dread of the supernatural” [Source: Google Book Search - Nigerian History, Politics and Affairs: The Collected Essays of Adiele Afigbo (Classic Authors and Texts on Africa) (Paperback) Page 456 – ISBN-13 978-1592213245 (Amazon.com)].

From boys to devilish young men

Spawn of evil unspeakable

The faces looked out at me with the immensity of the ugliness of their crimes, lips bloated like bodies in the process of decomposition typical of what would not be allowed amongst the living. They would live behind bars for an indeterminate period.

Diamond & Timy Babamuboni and Jude Odigie

Boys in their teens trying to be men so fast that they chose heinous crimes that would leave many without breath to air their shocking disgust and appalling rage.

In a time when the quest for more role models of ethnic origin are sought to help our youth see the dignity in labour, the pleasure of education and the joy of service within their communities; these boys give credence to another report that the United Kingdom is the worst place to grow up – it ought not be so.

Nothing could be so evil as to raid a christening, terrify the attendees with the menace of arms and with impunity murder a lady who was shielding her niece from the dastardly event.

They have been sentenced and it only appears too lenient as the news broke today.

From frying pan into the fire

As the judge noted with irony, many of the attendees had fled untrammelled violence in their homelands in Africa seeking refuge, safety and security in England only be to have the same meted out to them by fellow Africans.

It sickens one beyond expression that one of the culprits, having been partner to a murder two weeks before, on the tone and conversation of a mobile phone with a female teenager decided he had been disrespected enough to have to stab her in the heart and kill her.

Whose paps did these evil kids suckle? More so, where of the four, two were siblings who had basically given themselves over to the control of evil so horrid.

The issue of respect concerns me, indeed people need to feel respected but that comes from that person’s contributions in civility that make that person fit into the community to which they belong, it does not fall on you like bird droppings.

Decima Francis on Hard Talk a few weeks ago lamented the growing acceptance amongst young black men of manhood as being able to sire a child at 16. How could that be right?

Respect has to be earned and it is never through unwarranted and extreme violence, and what appears as respect to the seeker is really menace and terror on the part of the onlookers. Whilst you might earn respect through menace, it would not make you respectable.

Ditch civil liberties

Maybe parents, guardians, education and society are failing at making this clear to those who would be the future or if some children have become mules that they are incapable of being productive members of society and their communities, we would have to bite our civil liberty tongues, put them away and throw away the key.

We cannot wait till they have left abominable marks on our welfare and comfort before we are spurred to do what we cannot desist from doing in the name of justice having left victims in their trail.

Of these kids, three were Nigerian, they leave many of us so ashamed of things that we had no hand in, this might also impart negatively on other Nigerian youth who could be viewed capable of unnecessary violence just for the sake of lucre.

My heart is to poured out to the families of Zainab Kalokoh (Sierra Leonean) who was shot and murdered at 33 and Ruth Okechukwu (Nigerian parentage) who at 18 was stabbed in the heart for a mobile phone conversation that apparently was disrespectful to someone who was also 18 – it still beggars belief.

Eventually, these young men might earn their respect if anyone deigns to visit the grounds in which they would be lain when dead, in unmarked graves ready to be dug up by dogs and fed on by vultures – it would be a life behind bars and I would team up to protest any effort to free them – throw away the key and make sure it was done where the ocean is deepest.

References

Doubts persist over killers' ages

Teens guilty of christening death

Killer admits second murder

The From Boyhood to Manhood Foundation