In search of buried amulets

                           

                                                       Alhaji Yahaya Bello

Residents of Lokoja, the Kogi State capital awoke last Friday and Saturday to find that the state government sent bulldozers during the night to destroy the city’s five major roundabouts. Lokoja residents who hit the streets early Friday morning on their way to their places of work suffered some directional confusion when they could not see the sprawling Lugard Roundabout, situated right in front of the Government House. It was erected many years ago in memory of Lord Fredrick Lugard, the British colonial potentate who once ruled from Lokoja. 

Citizens were still wondering whether the move represented an overthrow of colonial legacies by a new, revolutionary state government led by the youthful Governor Yahaya Bello when they woke up on Saturday and found that another prominent city landmark, Paparanda Square, had been demolished. Insofar as this square also dates back to colonial times, they still thought that Governor Yahaya Bello is a closet Communist who wants to erase all traces of the British Empire from his state capital.

Some confusion however set in when residents realized that the prominent roundabout called Kogi Circle, which was erected in 1995 to celebrate the creation of Kogi State four years earlier, had also been bulldozed by the Ministry of Works. Unlike the other two roundabouts Kogi Square had no link to colonial history but some residents thought that Yahaya Bello was erasing military rule legacies as well. Their confusion was augmented when they found out that the Welcome to Lokoja Roundabout, which welcomes people coming into Lokoja from South Western Nigeria, was also demolished, as was the NTA Roundabout.

It was not long before Kogites came up with an answer. For weeks rumours had made the rounds in Lokoja that the PDP state government of former governor Captain Idris Ichalla Wada had buried amulets, human parts and other juju items supplied to it by powerful witchdoctors at strategic corners and roundabouts around the capital city. The alleged purpose was to help Captain Wada win last December’s governorship election. That Wada was soundly defeated at the polls did not, in many citizens’ minds, prove the lack of efficacy of the buried amulets. Instead, many people believed that they were there to thwart the new APC governor, throw him off balance, misdirect him from his electoral mandate and ensure that Wada and PDP bounce back to power at a later date. This could be 2019 or even earlier, since juju could conceivably twist the arms and wigs of judges and they could lurch on one of the many court cases and throw Bello out of the Government House within this year.

The Kogi State Government however dismissed this insinuation. Chief of Staff to the Governor Mr. David Onoja said the roundabouts were removed as part of a beautification program for the state capital. Bello, Onoja said, will build befitting roundabouts to elevate the status of Lokoja as a state capital. Chief Press Secretary to the Governor Mr. Kingsley Fanwo also chipped in, saying Lokoja, as the gateway city to the North, East and West is supposed to be an attractive state capital in order to meet the expectations of potential tourists.

Right now Lokoja is not attractive to its own residents, not to mention tourists, with all its landmark features gone with the wind. The state government’s explanation does not hold water because Yahaya Bello inherited a state in deep financial and labour crises and it is difficult to believe that demolishing roundabouts and building more beautiful ones is his top priority.

 The former governor owed many months’ salaries to teachers, state and local government workers. Everything was at a standstill in Kogi State, plus the anxiety caused by a deep rift in the victorious APC with the deputy governor refusing to turn up for the swearing ceremony. Mr. James Faleke has since been replaced by a new deputy governor but at least two potent cases are still pending in the courts and the election tribunal challenging Bello’s ascension to the governorship when he did not contest the December election. Governor Yahaya Bello shortly added to the confusion by sacking 20 permanent secretaries and by allowing [to put it mildly] five of his allies in the State House of Assembly to engineer an “impeachment” of the Speaker when 15 members are solidly opposed to the move. The way things stand, juju is hardly needed to make Bello’s path very rocky indeed.

Yahaya Bello is not the first governor in Nigeria to be afraid of buried amulets. In 1983 when Dr. C. C. Onoh defeated Chief Jim Nwobodo to become the governor of old Anambra State, he refused to move into the Government House until a powerful team of witchdoctors from his village spent a month searching the place for sorcery items allegedly buried  by witchdoctors from Nwobodo’s village. Earlier that year at UPN’s Oyo State congress in Ibadan, Mobile Policemen on guard at the entrance fished out a delegate with a live tortoise strapped to his waist. If anyone thought that old man Onoh was just being hysterical, such doubts were erased when stories surfaced twenty years later about how the Ubah Brothers took Dr. Chris Ngige to the Okija Shrine in the same Anambra State.

No part of the country is spared from “spiritual warfare” as a major tool of politics; it can only assume different forms. There are Muslim prayer warriors and there are Christian prayer warriors but a determined aspirant for a top political office does not restrict himself to prayer warriors of his own faith. He combines prayer warriors of both major religions as well of warriors of native African religion. Despite hundreds of years of Islamic penetration in Northern Nigeria for instance, many Muslims believe that pre-Islamic sorcery or tsafi is more potent than addu’a, the Muslim supplication. It is not for nothing that witchdoctors await the coming of the four-year election cycle more eagerly than roadside printers or party thugs. Nor is it for nothing that disappearances, stealing human parts from cemeteries, plucking victim's’ eyes as well as impregnating mentally-ill women all increase when elections approach.

Nor are witchdoctors new to Nigerian elections. At the onset of the 1979 elections I was part of a student delegation that visited Alhaji Shehu Kangiwa, NPN’s governorship candidate in the old Sokoto State. He jovially told us a story about a witchdoctor that brought to him an amulet but said for it to be effective, the candidate himself must grab a live hen and amputate its right leg. The UK-trained lawyer, top civil servant and avid polo player grimaced at the suggestion, but many desperate politicians will go for it.

My only fear for Governor Yahaya Bello is that he could be in for serial witchdoctors’ blackmail. Everyday a powerful babalawo will turn up at the Government House and say that even after the roundabouts were demolished, he spiritually discovered other places where Wada’s people buried more charms. Bello’s bulldozers could end up demolishing half of his state capital. 

dailytrust.com.ng