Thought Picnic: Enemies present to see me blessed

In the grip of superstition

Sometimes, I find myself at that point of conflict between traditions and beliefs, the things we find ourselves doing because of fear, premonition, superstition, or customs we think the good and good fortune that comes our way is under constant threat from bad forces or persons.

We live with a tendency to believe that ill will exists at every turn, both in its proximity and in its distance, we inadvertently limit agency and facility because we give over the wealth of grace made available to us to the control of possible malevolence than trusting in unassailable benevolence.

Whilst one understands that there is no glory or praise in adversity, any adversity is essentially part of the construct of life, the more consequential matter is how one deals with adversity. For instance, when I was asked how I could avoid conflict from arising in some setting, I posited that avoiding conflict is rarely a function under our control, but addressing the issue in order the resolve it is one we need to have the skill to do.

Enemies present to see me blessed

It is against this backdrop, from the deepest recesses of my beliefs and faith, that I found that some advice I was receiving did not sit well with me. I can attest to many circumstances where I have found assurance, comfort, and solace from a verse of scripture that overwhelms and brings to naught the effect of something that in other situations would be damaging and impossible to overcome.

(Psa 23:5 NLT) You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies. You honour me by anointing my head with oil. My cup overflows with blessings.

My understanding of this verse is that God blesses you for the observation of your adversaries and detractors. They are to see and know that you are blessed and blessed abundantly. The blessing of God is not something to be hidden. To enjoy the blessing of God is not a thing of personal pride, but one of glorifying God as it pleases God to bless His people.

The irreversible blessings of God

(Num 23:20 NLT) Listen, I received a command to bless; God has blessed, and I cannot reverse it!

In this Bible story where the prophet Balaam was spoken to by the ass he was riding, Balaam was being engaged by a king with the promise of a great reward to curse the people of Israel. What is fundamental here is that what God has done in His goodness cannot be repudiated. To the frustrated king procuring Balaam’s services, the clear message was, that what God has blessed cannot be reversed.

(Psa 118:6 NLT) The LORD is for me, so I will have no fear. What can mere people do to me?

(Psa 118:7 NLT) Yes, the LORD is for me; he will help me. I will look in triumph at those who hate me.

As I was writing this blog, the verses above came to me, even as others that I will further meditate on have percolated into my consciousness. This challenges many premises, but until you know your station and status, it might well be meaningless. The fundamental here is that the LORD is for me and with that confidence, I should not fear what people can or think they have the power to do to me.

This is reinforced in the next verse, confirming that the LORD is indeed for me, not just idling, but helping me so that I get to look in triumph at those who do not wish me well for whatever reasons they might have.

Goodness and mercy fully attached

The focus really should be on God rather than them, regardless of what they might be up to. I lay hold of this assurance receiving the honour bestowed on me by the one whose blessings no one can reverse. As always, the issue is getting to appreciate the powerfulness of your standing against the powerlessness of any assailant.

That is what gives the last verse of Psalm 23 its grounding in faith and reality. I remain convinced that famines pass for times of abundance beyond every means or measure of understanding. We only have to trust in the unfailing love of God to know that we always win.

(Psa 23:6 NLT) Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house of the LORD forever.

Thought Picnic: I know I do not need a cure for who I am

Whose deliverance is it anyway?

Earlier today I received a WhatsApp message linked to a YouTube video of a person whose life had been changed to a normative hyper-Christian existence from a time of use and abuse in terms of sex, for his identity and livelihood.

There was a time when religious instruction and influence dictated more of what was wrong with me than what could be right, what I did not understand or what I should accept about myself. For decades, one was in this inordinate quest for perfection, the constant proverbial self-flagellation that fed guilt, need, low self-esteem, a sense of failure and a yearning for things that always felt impossible.

Then, a time came when on reviewing many of the things that drove my warped religious experiences created and framed from my mother’s religiosity through personal experiences that should have elicited professional psychiatric help rather than African Initiated Church rituals of incantation, recitation, and pseudo-shamanist acts, I rationalised and began to compartmentalise issues.

Freedom from superstition

Being a product of many cultural influences, much of the knowledge I had gained and had become ingrained in my psyche borne of superstition, the paranormal, the esoteric and the bizarre needed unlearning when set in a Western environment. This is not to discount the potency of those belief systems, but to ensure that my thinking was not beclouded by the inexplicable hand of fate if other plausible explanations existed.

Why at one time on a visit to a witch doctor with my aunt we both were able to chew razor blades and swallow our mastication without internal harm to our organs, I would never be able to explain. I know that it happened to me as true as any other reality I have had that is neither hallucination, dream or trance. I have through my life guarded my sobriety with care except for when hospitalisation required opiates that deadened the pain without rendering me delirious.

Yet, the biggest thing in the discovery of self is acceptance. The acceptance of the many things I am and what I represent without disagreement in my mind. Not only that but also to have the courage to stand for who I am in spite of the cultural and societal strictures that could easily place me in a persecuted and prosecuted minority.

What I do not need a cure for

In my life, I know I needed a cure from cancer, I do not need a cure from my personality or the expression of it. In coming to terms with the many facets of my personality formed from a life of circumstance and situations that contribute to the completeness of who I am, I know there are things I might never be able to do or experience and they have not been allowed to distract me or burden me with a sense of failure, where there is a life ahead of me to live.

I cannot drive, it has not diminished my mobility, I have no children when many of my mates have grandchildren, our lives are enriched in different ways, I do not intend to live the life of another person.

More pertinently, I am grateful for the opportunities and privileges my parents granted me as part of my upbringing, however, thankfully, I learnt a long time ago that I have my own life to live, I am neither here to fully their aspirations, live their perspectives of the life they expect I should have and sadly for them, I am not here to please them.

I espouse the virtues of humanity that I hope would make my parents proud of my achievements, my successes and consequently the person I am as their son, who he is and what he is. So, what I am saying, after not even watching that interesting and possibly life-changing YouTube video sent to me on WhatsApp, is I do not need a cure for my sexuality and my open, proud, and accepted expression of it. Thank you.

Thought Picnic: In search of the rational mind

Winning the freedom to be

It is becoming clear that the greatest battle to fight is one for the rational mind, one that is open to ideas and engagement, one that is willing and ready to jettison orthodoxy, tradition and beliefs for a newer understanding of things.

To be able to free oneself from the norms and chart a path of individuality risks ostracism and excoriation. Unique as we are in our beings, the need to belong even if belonging is inimical to our well-being is one of the poor sacrifices we make in conformity and securing ourselves in our comfort zones.

We create insurmountable boundaries in our minds and imagination, narrow our horizons to the perfunctory and limit our expectations to things either already in our grasp or the old laurels that gather dust in a backwater of irrelevance.

Slaves of superstition

Rather than unlearn, we reinforce the subjective at the expense of the objective and idle the mind to being spoon-fed the witticisms of lesser people we have given the power, means and authority to lord it over us and abuse us in our fawning subservience.

Our minds have become the raging mob with those readily incited to the reprehensible and in our subconscious that eventually gets acted out, we diminish the greatest resource of our humanity to becoming mere humans.

We are, by terms, the slaves of superstition – the widely held but irrational belief in supernatural influences, especially as leading to good or bad luck, or a practice based on such a belief.

Beyond reason

In that, we lose the trail of reason, out of which we could find a reasonable purpose of exercising every latitude of reasonableness. A mind governed by superstition cannot be questioning, inquiring, challenging, inquisitive, and precocious or ever dare to be irreverent.

We accept things as they are beyond which there is no other progress but to repeat the vicious cycle of bad traditions disabling our capacity.

It has to be a conscious decision to break free, to ensure that in seeing we observe, in hearing we listen and learn, in touching we feel, in interactions we begin to understand and appreciate other views. When presented with the prism of life, every incident of light brings new perspectives, if we are seeing just one thing, it means you, the prism and the source of light are not moving, we might well be glass-eyed.

Seeking the rational mind

The beginning of rationality in plotting the course from being steeped in superstition is to read and to comprehend. Comprehension requires exposure to mechanics of language, inflexions and intentions, context and usage, there is a world of ideas that would not fall off the trees onto our heads jolting us into conscious revival.

We need to desire that sense and determination of individuality that can change not only ourselves but those around us. Nothing is sacred or sacrosanct, facts must be scrutinised constantly for flaws, data is a jumble to be made sense of and opinions are just what they are opinions.

Yet, we can dare to be original, take initiative even in a crowded field without fearing to think differently from the accepted or what has been deemed the acceptable. We have to battle our idols, our anxieties, our misgivings, our doubts, slaughter the sacred cows and barbeque the steaks for a feast of emancipation.

We war against the superstition that has held us hostage for too long and set out on an adventure into the unknown, searching for new truths, debunking old myths and laying the legends to rest where they belong, in stories, in fables and in fantasy.

Nigeria: The need to arrest the spate of religious vampires

The gospel meeting needs

The airing on Channel 4 in the UK of Seyi Rhodes' Unreported World - The Making Of … Nigeria’s Millionaire Preachers [1] did not include other footage that would have been more representative of the gospel because it did not appear as spectacular and outlandish as the subjects in that show.

In an accompanying article [2] that should have had a modicum of proofreading [This is a blog, Channel 4 is a professional news channel, such must be better catered for.] the ministry of Rev. Mrs. Chika Oluchi is spoken of.

She is the overseer of The Mountain of the Lord Ministries International: Centre for Liberation which runs a widow’s fellowship catering to the needs of these women who apparently have no means of material or spiritual support.

Almost inexcusable gullibility

Most touching is the story of Therese who is mistakenly identified as a widower rather than a widow, just as the confusion of numbers is used to describe Rev. Oluchi as a remarkable women [sic].

Therese lost her husband some years ago and apparently fell into the hands of rotten preachers who convinced her that her husband was a member of a devil worshipping cult persuading her to dispose of all her late husband’s property and give the proceeds to the church leaving her and her children destitute.

To crown this wickedness they said God will kill her and her children if anyone found out. Those preachers have now been apprehended and Therese appears to be rebuilding her life untouched by the supposedly wrathful God ready to murder her and her children for being inadvertently married to a devil worshipping husband.

Held hostage to their ignorance

Herein is the deeper problem with religion in Nigeria, the ability for the unscrupulous, dishonest and Machiavellian to prey on the gullibility and apparently vague dread of the supernatural of people to exact them money, property, blind allegiance and followership.

People get held hostage to their fears perishing in their ignorance and inability to independently seek out the truth of their beliefs many of which have been foisted upon them by merchants of deception masquerading as religious leaders.

Sadly, there is no indication that many can emancipate themselves from this enslavement as these religious confidence tricksters trot out every kind of corporate or personal message along with false prophecies purporting to be of God to feed on the anxieties, fears, uncertainties and doubts of the sometimes vulnerable, sometimes stupid and usually both.

Taking advantage

Religious vampires with fangs long enough to sink deep into the heart to feast on the blood of those beholden to their whims, drawn away from the truth by the spectacular and paralysed by the fear of the retribution of blood thirsty animist gods in the misrepresentation of the Christian God.

It takes one back to those unsightly but horribly truthful paragraphs reproduced below from Lord Lugard’s book, The Dual Mandate that I covered in my Apes Obey Series [3].

Revisiting Apes Obey

In character and temperament, the typical African of this race-type is a happy, thriftless, excitable person; lacking in self-control, discipline, and foresight; naturally courageous, and naturally courteous and polite, full of personal vanity, with little sense of veracity, fond of music and loving weapons as an oriental loves jewellery.

His thoughts are concentrated on the events and feelings of the moment, and he suffers little from the apprehension for the future or grief for the past; his mind is far nearer to the animal world than that of the European or Asiatic, and exhibits something of the animals’ placidity and want of desire to rise beyond the State he has reached.

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.

He lacks the power of organization, and is conspicuously deficient in the management and control alike of men or business; he loves the display of power, but fails to realize its responsibility; he will work hard with a less incentive than most races.

He has the courage of the fighting animal, an instinct rather than a moral virtue; in brief, the virtues and defects of this race-type are those of attractive children, whose confidence when it is won is given ungrudgingly as to an older and wiser superior and without envy.

Perhaps the two traits which have impressed me as those most characteristic of the African native are his lack of apprehension and his lack of ability to visualize the future.

Without doubt there is a need to review each of these traits as identified by Lord Lugard and see how certain who have acquired power by all sorts of means have been able to subjugate others so easily because therein lies the root of many of the problems Africans face today, a fifth of those Africans are apparently Nigerian.

[1] 4oD – Channel 4 – Unreported World - The Making Of … Nigeria’s Millionaire Preachers

[2] The Making Of … Nigeria’s Millionaire Preachers – The Widows’ Fellowship and Therese’s story.

[3] Introducing the Apes Obey! Series

Please support PACT - Prevent Abuse of Children Today

Please support this cause

In July 2010, I wrote a blog titled On the rise of juvenile witchcraft stigmatisations published simultaneously on http://akin.blog-city.com where yesterday a comment was posted on the work of PACT (Prevent Abuse of Children Today).

I generally do not promote causes but this is one that must not escape the publicity and activism it requires to save helpless innocent children from societal evils exacerbated by superstition and flawed religious doctrinal practices.

The comment left on my blog is published below and I enjoin you to support the cause. I have visited their websites and can see that the work they are involved in is useful and commendable.

Thank you.

Make a PACT: Prevent Abuse of Children Today in Nigeria

PACT (Prevent Abuse of Children Today) is a global campaign established by the UK-based child rights charity, Stepping Stones Nigeria and their Nigerian partner organisations. The aim of PACT is to bring long-term positive social change to vulnerable children in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, particularly those at risk of witchcraft accusations, abuse and trafficking.

With high levels of malnutrition, poverty, persistent violent conflicts and disease, increasing numbers of children in the Niger Delta are being forced to the streets putting them at risk of abuse, rape and trafficking.

Witchcraft is often seen as the source of problems within Nigerian society with vulnerable children being the group most at risk of witchcraft accusations. Children stigmatised as witches face abandonment by their families and communities, torture, public humiliation, disgrace and even murder.

To help end this terrible abuse we urge you to stand with us to Prevent Abuse of Children Today. There are lots of ways for you to get involved with the campaign, in particular signing our PACT, holding events and writing letters. Visit our website http://www.makeapact.org to sign the PACT and help us spread the word.

Together, we are fighting for a time when all children in the Niger Delta are free from physical, sexual, emotional and spiritual abuse and their rights are fully upheld. With your help, we can make this vision a reality.

For more information about the PACT campaign please visit http://www.makeapact.org

To find out more about Stepping Stones Nigeria, please visit http://www.steppingstonesnigeria.org

On the rise of juvenile witchcraft stigmatisations

A horrible development

It is sad and disheartening to hear that there is a rise in child witchcraft accusations in Africa [1]. I have never been able to watch the harrowing depictions on child witchcraft exorcisms that have appeared in documentaries in the recent years.

Worse still is the violence meted out to these accused children with the aim of cleansing them of their witchcraft powers.

I cannot understand if witchcraft were metaphysical, paranormal or spiritual how physical torture with increasingly bizarre rituals of unbelievable cruelty can be the means of negating the power and influence of witchcraft.

The hold of superstitious gullibility

The fact that certain of these charlatan exorcists can be religious leaders holding sway over frightened, superstitious and gullible congregations is bad enough – these crowds aid and abet childhood cruelty with the thinking that they are doing good.

Anyone who allows reason and common-sense to influence their judgement would very well know that if indeed these children were witches, wizards, sorcerers or more, they could easily have pooled their powers to wreak havoc amongst their tormentors teach them a veritable lesson they will never forget.

Helpless against a baying mob

These helpless, hapless, deprived children who are usually orphans, handicapped, destitute or different, especially albinos who for no reason of theirs have encountered misfortune and should find a more sympathetic, humane and compassionate society are rejected and what better way to reject them than to cast them as practitioners of witchcraft then engage in a public lynching of the children dressed as an exorcism.

Religious leaders themselves, frauds and agents of devilish concepts with their eyes on filthy lucre find a ready audience who are ready to believe any tale about their lot in life being hindered by the activities of their wards. There is money to be made in pointing accusing fingers and almost nothing can be done by the child to fight back against false accusations.

Either way, once accused of witchcraft, you are stigmatised and can never be innocent of it in the eyes of those who are lead to believe such atrocious claims.

Nothing Christian about this

From a Christian perspective, even Jesus said [2], suffer (allow, encourage) little children to come unto me and every child that suffered any affliction was humanely and compassionately healed r delivered; not brutalised as we find done today by apostles and evangelists of malevolent wickedness, gratuitous sadism and criminally actionable grievous bodily harm.

To which Jesus did say, perpetrators of violence against children can expect nothing better than drowning in the sea by hanging a millstone [3] round their necks. The preceding verses [4] talked about the need for childhood innocence, trust and humility, hardly anything about childhood witchcraft a concept that have developed for no justifiable reason than to feed the iniquitous ministries of people pretending to run a legitimate church.

Prosecute the practice mercilessly

This rotten practice has to stop and it can only stop when followers begin to follow good and sound doctrine.

Meanwhile, civil authorities [5] must not be afraid to visit the full force of the law on anybody who abuses children especially those who do it under the guise of witchcraft exorcism or some bizarre religious persuasion; the life of these children is hard enough, to make it a living hell is just unconscionably evil and an abdication of society of its responsibility to help the vulnerable.

Just because we cannot love the children or dare to like them for whatever reason does not give the license to make injurious accusations that offer the opportunity to visit the wickedest imaginations of evil violence on them.

Sources

[1] BBC News - Rise in African children accused of witchcraft

[2] Luke 18:16 | bible.cc

[3] Matthew 18:6 | bible.cc

[4] The Little Children - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[5] Witchcraft: Akpabio Warns Churches

Other references

UN publishes IHEU statement on witchcraft in Africa | International Humanist and Ethical Union

Beliefs - A Nigerian Witch-Hunter Defends Herself - NYTimes.com

Dispatches - Saving Africa's Witch Children - Channel 4

Nigeria: Congregation growth by maggot count

The stories baffle

What it takes to live in Nigeria can only have begun to be stranger than fiction in a recent conversation I had with a resident who can be identified as a true Nigerian.

Having lived in quite a number of places and with the ability to speak all the three major languages almost flawlessly, one cannot discount the insight this person brings to appreciating Nigeria, Nigerians and the different ways of engaging with people from all the different parts of the country.

Points were made that I could not discount outright but left one thinking about that we might consider logical explanations and the sinister workings of superstition and fetishism in a society where distrust and selfishness leaves everyone suspicious of everyone else regardless of their relationships.

My Western naivety towards the bizarre

It is quite easy for me to sit in my Western hemisphere comfort zone and scoff at happenings back there being exasperated by the happenings and news stories that boggle the mind, sometimes these things cannot be appropriately relayed because one has to draw on sophisticated powers of articulation and risk ridicule at expressing what can only be stranger than fiction.

The apparent religiosity of Nigeria is too obvious to be invisible to sight or not too distant to ones hearing, somebody is worshipping something but the question is changing about what is being worshipped.

Evidence in the bones

In what can only reflect an X-Files investigation I find myself wanting to dig up the grounds of the main buildings of places of worship that have their teachings outside the mainstream traditional religious doctrinal codes passed down by the missionaries of yore.

What I am supposed to or expected to find are bones of the bovine variety, however, that might not be strange until you appreciate the amazing liaison between animist fetishism and supposed religions of the book – apparently, the projected congregation growth which has both a financial and mesmerisation component is derived from the amount of maggots produced by a decaying bovine carcass.

Believing the unbelievable

Now, I have no reason to believe any of this and as an X-Files investigator I would probably have egg on my face if I ever mentioned this to anyone with any rational bearing.

But, something is self-evident in this matter; the medicine man has probably conjured up this superbly atrocious and incredible scam of indeterminate congregation growth by maggot count and enticed some nefarious but charismatic religious personality whose core business plan is of tithing the gullible looking for the spectacular and funny stories rather than saving souls.

Or there is a genuine interworking belief system that allows for this liaison of the macabre to thrive, but it is unlikely anyone would be counting maggots just as Abraham of old never went counting the sand of the sea to determine the projected growth and number of his descendants.

A shovel to the ground

If one were to expose this as a scam, do you get a shovel and dig or just allow a stratospheric rise in your sceptical quotient when a phenomenon is beyond rational insight?

More dangerously is the extent to which either the fetishist or charismatic religionist would go to fulfil their aims to get their hands on the money of the desperate seeking quick and spectacular solutions to problems that probably could be solved if the intellect is allowed basic stimulation and exercise.

Somehow, ones upbringing in these overtly superstitious societies militates against viewing this with an open mind, but make sure you have a good story if your religious leader finds you digging up the floors of the place of worship for the sacred cow bones to place in a reliquary, better still try ground penetrating radar and suggest you are on archaeological research.

Now your suspicions have been roused, it is not too strange that in Nigeria you are schooled to live with suspicious minds.

Nigeria: Our Culture adopted for criminality

Our masquerades and culture

Those long varied conversations with Iya (my mother) the other day veered into the amusing, if not incredible but depicted the complete lawlessness that is eating into the fabric and peaceful co-existence of society in Nigeria.

We have always enjoyed the masquerades when we all come out to see the dances, the acrobatics, the drummers and sing the folk songs that make the Yoruba tribe the most given to festivities of every kind.

Our folklore or read superstitious inclinations, consider masquerades heavenly beings, to be respected and revered but they are never touched – their colourful garments sometimes identifying a clan of masquerade pedigree renowned for having powers that instil irrational fear in the onlookers.

[Reading some research material, the masquerades known as Egungun in Yoruba are considered people risen from the dead – bones (skeleton) made alive, hence the assumption they are heavenly beings – benign as people would want this to be, we do in ways worship our ancestors and give the dead a lot more reverence than the living in Yorubaland.]

The criminality of masquerades today

The masquerade festival usually lasts a week, however, it appears these heavenly beings have decided to take up abode on earth – I quipped to Iya – the masquerade has become a menacing chief of criminals that runs through the market grabbing condiments and ingredients that included two live goats - A recipe for masquerade stew?

His cohorts bear whips, harass people and demand under duress monetary gifts whilst creating traffic jams and rolling over bonnets of cars that people are so terrified of menace and aggression, they are completely pliant parting with “gifts” for idle men who can get away with it.

This enterprise has become so lucrative, the festival has been running for 3 months and there is no end in sight except when it rains – in which case the masquerade probably changes into waterproof garb to keep up the game.

It would appear masquerades are no more the harmless entertainment with some underlying traditional rituals and a public cultural spectacle; they have been co-opted into criminal enterprise and have become a lawless and menacing clique in the pay of powerful and shady masters.

Oro in daylight

This whole matter was escalated to a more terrifying spectacle when in the middle of the afternoon, the chiefs who at one time were respectable elders of the community but now have their noses in the trough of relieving people of their effects through menace, gathered in the centre and allowed Oro to come out to play.

According to the earlier research material - The word Oro means fierceness, tempest, or provocation, and Oro himself appears to be personified executive power, Oro is supposed to haunt the forest in the neighbourhood of towns, and he makes his approach known by a strange, whirring, roaring noise. As soon as this is heard, all women must shut themselves up in their houses, and refrain from looking out on pain of death.

One would ask, what is the haunt of the forest doing in the middle of town, in the bright light of day - The Oro only visits the town centre at night when surely all women would be in their homes and completely out of harms way.

Menacing the women

Iya in her car, returning from church, resolved that any Oro that comes out in the daytime wants to be seen of women and should not by any right menace women when it has violated its nocturnal cover.

How I wish other women were able to stand their ground on this matter but she talked of women abandoning their vehicles in the middle of the road and running off to seeking cover in what definitely was a completely illegal and lawless activity.

Iya safely manoeuvred through the melee but it was not a sight for the faint-hearted, it took the governor to call these criminals masquerading as custodians of our traditions to order.

Apparently, as the governor would have learnt, it is one thing to enact a law banning street parties but if it is not policed and the law upheld by law enforcement measures; it would be flouted by all those who think they can do things with impunity.

But Oro in the centre of town at 14:00 hours just really takes the biscuit, big time.

They shall not grow old

Picturing the gruesome

Kenya Burning is the name of a photo exhibition that documents the happy days of the election through to the lynching and mob violence that claimed the lives of over 1,200 people and displaced 300,000.

This tragedy came about because the political class failed their people by conducting a flawed election rigged to produce results that completely dissatisfied the opposition and was evidently corrupt.

As the rulers shuttled between 5* hotels and news conferences trying to win influence for their apparatchiks, the people descended into inter-tribal violence taking Kenya to the brink.

Interestingly, the report notes that no politician has visited this exhibition to see the results of their handiwork such that some have suggested the exhibition be moved into their dining room, if only to show that when the people speak and they refuse to hear, the consequences are dire.

Burning witches

The burning however has not stopped because something more gruesome has happened, 11 people between the ages of 80 and 96, eight of whom were women were burnt in a village in the western Kisli district for allegedly being witches.

They were dragged out of their houses and individually burnt, then their houses razed to the ground – apparently that is a valid exorcism.

Apparently, someone had found an exercise book containing the minutes of a “witches” meeting with indications of who would next be bewitched.Let me try a positive spin on this - a meeting of elderly concerned citizen about the state of affairs in their village where certain members of the community have been singled out for either honour or reprimand.

Our old people

Beyond the problems we have in Africa and especially in Kenya which was sadly showcased in Living with Corruption and the situation where live expectancy at birth is now 55.31, one would think reaching these amazing ages would be a sign of survival against all militating odds that fill our screens about Africa.

I was fortunate to have a great grandmother into my early 20s and she was the repository of information that allowed us to trace back our genealogy up to 7 generations considering bad record-keeping in Nigeria.

The hold of superstition

We are losing something special in our African culture if we are so held in bondage to irrational superstitious beliefs to which people react with mob hysteria and end up committing criminal acts in the name of preserving their communal welfare.

I am not discounting the supposed notion of witchcraft or witches; there is probably one under every table, if you care, but what really is the empirical test for determining if a person is a witch or an innocent person who just happens to have grown old?

I really worry that no commonsense prevails when anyone is branded a witch, you are guilty at the declaration and in many societies including before the West became as barely civilised as we are now, and the witch was strapped to a ducking stool and made to admit practising witchcraft.

Who would not confess if your lungs were forced to take in water instead of air, a confession or denial still had the same penalty – death.

The people who had the power to execute judgement wielded undue influence in the community and could abuse this power to rid the community of possible rivals whilst holding the community in terror, fear and obeisance to their whims.

Believing other things

It is dastardly to the extreme that one should read this kind of news in this day and age – one would suppose the mob was also religious possibly Christian and church-going where their belief systems are supposed to give them the confidence not to be bothered with witches having any influence over their lives.

One can only say that church-going does not necessarily confer faith on the person; I have seen in Nigeria where many really think there is an enemy everywhere working against them such that not a positive prayer escapes their lips, they are so bound to their enemies that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

They are usually their worst enemies; dishonesty, corrupt behaviour, a lack of ethical principles, a lack of integrity, shirking responsibility, bad decisions, poor judgement, illicit deals, deceit and the propensity to tell white lies could well transmogrify into some hated close relation messing up your life.

The common parlance is “someone is doing you” directly translated from Yoruba, Wake Up!!! You are doing yourself in and stitching yourself up praying the wrong prayers and offering the wrong sacrifices.

I would broaden this scope to include any other organised religious belief system and the way it gets preached in Africa it sometimes seems to replace rampant superstition with virulent fundamentalism, both of which are almost as evil as witchcraft.

For the fallen

By which time another poor hapless innocent person has accused of practising witchcraft as we rid our communities of our old and aged when we should be learning the secrets of life from them.

What shall be said for the fallen? Not the words of Laurence Binyon – They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old – rather it is sounding like – You must not grow old as the young around you might kill you – it is a sad indictment of our humanity and we are all the poorer for it.

The law in Kenya should treat these cases without sentiment as mob violence leading to murder and the leaders of these mobs must be held to account, we cannot allow our superstitious suspicions to run riot and lead to lawlessness, not in this day.

Developing News

Meanwhile in Nigeria a cat was knocked down by a car and this said cat transmogrified into a woman, apparently the woman has confessed to having changed forms but is now in protective custody in a clinic being treated for injuries inflicted on her by a mob about to lynch her having suspected the cat became the woman because she had blood on her.

The police are at a loss as to what charges to place, I would suppose such tall tales are very difficult to align to the law of evidence, it would be like letting the cat out of the bag.

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)].