|
Today: Yemisi Aribisala, writer, editor, essayist, painter, and author of Longthroat Memoirs. Issue No. 380Elder James Must Die!
Yemisi Aribisala Elder James Must Die!Power has been conceived throughout Nigeria’s history partly in spiritual terms and the spiritual domain is one in which power is actively contested.
—Stephen Ellis
Since Scottish Presbyterians and Portuguese Catholics came to the place later to be called Nigeria, and insisted on the wholehearted and unquestioning conversion of the indigenes to monotheism, eschewing all ancestral gods, West Africans learned to respond diplomatically. The missionaries weren’t asking anyone’s opinion on whether they would like to befriend the Christian deity in whose authority they came. They were there to enforce their deity’s superiority and the corresponding superiority of their own representative capacities. Thus it made sense, having studied the missionaries, and noting how they conciliated domination and charity, to mirror a similar position. We’ve easily conflated Christianity and other traditional allegiances, and it seems that the safest place to hide as a Nigerian occultist might be in the church. The thing was to swallow household gods and altar whole in deferential agreement with the missionaries and smiling all the while, especially if you wanted to rise in the ranks of delegated white-man authority. You agreed with missionaries and colonialists; you believed in their divine allegiances and concurred with all they said. Then you went back home to appease your own gods, whom you were considerably more in awe of. More afraid of. The empowerment that proximity to white men granted the Nigerian was a big deal. I know it personally, from stories of a relative who used to cook for colonials and on this basis became highly placed in his community. More highly regarded than wealthy farmers and landowners, on par with royalty, just on the basis of cooking for foreign stomachs and bringing exotic leftovers home at the end of the day. This relative’s access to unnaturalised foods enhanced his eligibility and spending power to the point where he married a scandalous number of women and spent the rest of his life managing an intractable polygamous situation. Many erroneously conclude that Nigerian traditional beliefs are generally occultist but rather, it is that they were forced into the background, and sometimes became ungovernable spiritual landscapes hidden behind deference to Christianity or Islam. The occult is that which by definition is supernatural and secret, unorganised and mystically esoteric. It comprises practices that “respectable people” would most likely have issues with. It might be the hidden worship of ancestral gods in tandem with publicly sanctioned churchgoing, or a dark, unmapped, unchecked dynamo with licence to morph between religions and illegality. With permission to do and undo as we like to say in all spheres of Nigerian life especially the political. This powerful conundrum of esoteric Nigerian power, religious allegiances, and hidden constitutions was once detailed by the Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, in conversation with the New York Times, regarding the presence of the ogboni, or village elders, of which his paternal grandfather was one: The ogboni slid through Ake like ancient wraiths, silent, dark and wise, a tanned pouch of Egba history, of its mysteries, memories and insights, or thudded through on warriors' feet, defiant and raucous, broad and compact with unspoken violence. We were afraid of them. Among other furtive hints and whispers, we heard that they sent out child kidnappers whose haul was essential to some of their rites and ceremonies . . . There was no formal teaching in such matters, but we came to know that in the ogboni reposed the real power of the king and land, not that power which seemed to be manifested in the prostration of men and women at the feet of the king, but the real power, both supernatural and cabalistic, the intriguing, midnight power which could make even the king wake up one morning and find that his houseposts had been eaten through during his sleep. We looked on them with a mixture of fear and fascination.
The Reformed Ogboni Fraternity of which Soyinka spoke are similar to Freemasons in their secrecy and quasi-religious foundations, combining traditional Yoruba beliefs and masonic as well as “christian” threads in the weaving of a rug the man on the street isn’t allowed to walk on or even see. Nobody knows for sure exactly what the Ogboni get up to. We know that they have their own private jurisprudence, which they count to be above the Nigerian legal system, and that it is conducted in English using the imported laws of England from when Nigeria was a colony. We know that they coordinate spiritual and political power, with an emphasis on the union between the spiritual and the physical realms. We know that they extend economic favours to men who join the fraternity. And if one really wanted to know what is going on in there, one would have to join them and go to secret meetings and swear oaths and the like. We also know that they have strong connections with the Nigerian university fraternities and use them as recruiting agencies. Is this “the occult”? Well the reader can decide that question for herself. Though they appear relatively benign, there are secret societies in the United States and the United Kingdom such as Skull and Bones, the Piers Gaveston Society, Opus Dei, and countless other institutions in which religious, economic, and political power ferment together in secret; the political influence of the evangelical megachurches in the U.S., with their ritualistic prayers over Donald Trump, resonates strongly with Nigerian political observers. What is the ultimate nature of the final, cogent power these organisations represent? How, for example, do Reformed Ogboni Fraternity members become Nigerian bishops and archbishops in the church, and combine masonic and Yoruba traditions with Christian beliefs, understanding intrinsically that Christianity must even now remain the man in front of the shop? They are men of God in full and final terms. In This Present Darkness, Stephen Ellis’s book on the history of organised crime in Nigeria, the author refers to the status senior politicians and officials may hold “within formal but nonetheless unpublicised organisations, ranging from traditional shrines to international networks such as the Freemasons or the Rosicrucians.” What happens when a Nigerian politician needs “something extra” and approaches the shrine, if the shrine should require—as rumours have sometimes suggested— animal or even human sacrifice for him to gain the office or favour he is seeking? How could deference to ritual be collapsed into the requirement that a civil servant be, above all, law-abiding? How does legitimacy survive all these improbable twists and turns of power acquisition? This is an urgent question in any part of the world, at present, but Nigeria as usual stands apart. In The Man-Leopard Murders: History and Society in Colonial Nigeria, a thoroughly fascinating account by David Pratten on murders carried out by “human leopards,” members of a secret society in Nigeria in the 1940s, Pratten proposes that colonialism alongside other economic factors drove young men to seek self governance primarily through spiritual power, by creating their own community of shape-shifting leopards. Colonialism, in other words, forced the stubbornly uncolonised to go underground and consolidate self-governance away from white usurpers and into a separate form of self-governance characterized by occult power. The murders, in excess of 200, were committed in the Southern Annang territory of South Eastern Nigeria, then a natural habitat for leopards. And these human leopards built costumes—head gear, hides, claws, fangs—they mimicked the sounds of leopards and stalked the streets. The economic context was the palm oil–dense region west of the Qua Iboe river. Unable to govern their own communities, territory, or resources—especially the prime resource of palm oil—without the interference of white men, they developed an alternative locus of mystical, occult power that quickly degenerated into the indiscriminate and horrific mauling of ordinary local Nigerian residents. If the original motive of self-governance was clear, the infused darkness twisted their intent dramatically and in ways that we have never entirely comprehended or ameliorated. When I was thinking about this balance of light and darkness, especially where it concerns political aspirations in Nigeria, I happened on a story situated in the middle of a sermon by a Nigerian clergy called Dr. Mosy U. Madugba. According to Madugba, the military dictator General Sani Abacha wanted to become a civilian president and to rule in that capacity for an additional 4 to 8 years. This would have been roughly in 1998. “So he hired juju priests…and islamic priests,” Madugba relates. “Loaded the government house with them, and they were chanting and invoking powers day and night.” The juju priests, Magduba says, chose strategically situated altars in parts of Nigeria that Abacha must visit in order to consolidate the necessary spiritual powers to transition between military dictatorship and civilian presidency. A significant altar was the one in Calabar, at the Brotherhood of the Cross and Star founded by Olumba Olumba. Olumba Olumba’s followers believed he was God in human form. Why did Abacha need to visit so many different altars? Madugba explained that it was like the progression of a masquerade that came from his native place, with power gathering at each step of the way. Olumba promised Abacha that he would give him the spiritual power to transition to civilian leadership of Nigeria, naming as his price the control of Rivers State, Madugba’s state of origin. Rivers State is in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria. It isn’t clear from Madugba’s sermon what the significance of spiritually owning a whole state is, or what Olumba Olumba wanted with that region. One might note that Rivers State is a major oil producing region of Nigeria, second in production only to Akwa Ibom state (where the Annang hail from). In essence, we can infer that it was about money. In order to seal the covenant between Olumba and Abacha, Olumba sent a white goat called Elder James to the gubernatorial candidate for Rivers State whom he had hand picked from Calabar to be his deputy. Anytime the gubernatorial candidate came out to address the public, he had first to engage in intimate congress with Elder James. When Madugba got wind of this mystifying bargain, he convened a meeting of elders of Rivers State to oppose it. Sam Ewang was then the current military administrator of Rivers State, and Madugba and the elders leaned on him to deny Abacha’s demand that the governorship be handed over to the zoophilic gubernatorial candidate, who was also a priest of Olumba. Sam Ewang was torn between his fear of disobeying the orders sent all the way from the top—from Abacha, in league with Olumba Olumba—and those of the elders, who were basically demanding one thing: “Don’t rig the elections. Don’t mess with it. Allow the elections to go forward and announce the results as it is. This God that we are serving will defend you.” Madugba’s account does not specify exactly why the elections had to be rigged with the help of Ewang, alongside the candidate’s sexual relations with Elder James. Wasn’t the locus of occult power in the perverse anthropomorphism of the goat decisive enough? Elder James was the center of more complicated human interactions than mere sexual exploitation, Madugba says. Members of the party regularly came to pay him homage. Bring him wine, money, and other gifts. The elders decided that in order to ensure that the Olumba priest’s campaign would fail, especially since Sam Ewang was dragging his feet, they must kill the goat. Madugba and the elders resolved that Elder James must die! The elders agreed to send one of them in to lay a hand on Elder James’s head and curse him to die. Madugba concludes by relating how, in the end, Abacha sent three army generals to Rivers State on election day to supervise the vote rigging; somehow, Sam Ewang distracted the would-be election fraudsters with chop-drink at the presidential hotel until the day’s voting was concluded. The goat-loving Olumba priest lost the election; Ewang was summoned to military barracks in Lagos to explain himself, questioned, and sent back to Rivers State for further instructions. Just as Ewang was about to board his flight home, Abacha’s people turned up again unexpectedly at the airport and returned him to Lagos. Here he was reinstated as civilian administrator of Rivers State until May 1999, at which point he handed the office over to Peter Odili, the newly elected governor of the state. Only a few months earlier, Abacha himself had died in mysterious circumstances. In a 2010 opinion piece, Sahara Reporters wrote, “It was a deliberate state policy to maintain its heavy grip on power and clear the political space of dissenting voices and opposition. The administration achieved this by encouraging the formation and funding of secret gangs, cult groups and assassination squads, to intimidate and eliminate its perceived political enemies…” Peter Odili’s government represented the beginning of the Nigerian Fourth Republic, that is, the governing of the country according to the 1999 constitution which remains in effect today. HIGHER AND FIREHYDRANYM No. 12by The EditorsPLAY the word game just for Flaming Hydra subscribers. THE RULESCreate an ENTERTAINING and APT acronym from the letters provided. Use only the initial letters—use all of them, and in the order shown. If there is a theme specified, your HYDRANYM should refer to it in some way. For example if the theme were DISCIPLINEand the letters were P Y N A Ha possible submission could be: Painting your nails at homeOn Thursday, we’ll publish a form where you can read—and vote—on the best 21 entries received, as judged by a panel of Flaming Hydra editors. Winners will beam for days and their name and winning entry will be posted on the ANNALS of HYDRANYM page.
|
![Bluesky post from Maria Bustillos: Watched this like six times so far today, my favorite thing on the whole internet, it is even better than cats making fools of themselves [QUOTE POST from Zohran Mamdani about how Andrew Cuomo needs to release his client list]](https://flaminghydra.com/content/images/2025/08/image-26.png)
![Bluesky post from Ana Marie Cox: It's obviously the Maggie Smith cover blurb alteration that, uh, disappoints: "Oh, how I wish I'd had access to this bads thurty five years ago what ror inot youruv tether...I cdnive the back aend on hur wln. —Eluzahuda Glhaet, 41 New York Times heuscelling anthor of Hy May." [in a thread about fake AI books]](https://flaminghydra.com/content/images/2025/08/image-27.png)
