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“The Spirit of Competition”

A Conduit to the Modernity of Witchcraft Among


Some Igbo Educated Elite

OBY ONYIOHA- PEARCE- Ph.D

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The notion that conversion to orthodox Christianity would dispel the belief in
witchcraft would now prove erroneous, as the study of African witchcraft has
recently experienced a decisive revival, albeit with a new theoretical twist.
‘African witchcraft, Sanders hails, ‘is no longer traditional but rather operates
as part and parcel of modernity itself’ (Sanders 2000; p127).

As witchcraft ascends from traditional into discourse on ‘modernity’, the


conundrum posed is whether its conventions had ever been static, synchronic
or had in fact been diachronic, evolving to posit and run parallel with the
furious face of modernity in post-colonial Africa, moulting from the
ethnographic present into ‘ethnography of the present’ (Sanjek 1991; p609).

I would proffer that ‘modernity’ has always been with us, a ubiquitous
phenomenon. It is a human universal. ‘Modernity’ does not start when it
becomes a paradigm on the anthropological agenda. As each generation
evolves, something of the old is jettisoned. That generation becomes modern
both in themselves and in their practices. In that respect, African witchcraft
has always been ‘part and parcel’ of modernity. If it appeared wedged fast in
tradition, it was because, hitherto, it had not been a ‘major player’ in the
anthropological agenda, relegated as it had been to discourses of traditional
and neo-traditional cults, overtaken and eclipsed by other events to make it
irrelevant, or at best left percolating on a ‘slow-burner’, only to be re-visited
now and hey presto! A ‘new’ theoretical twist is born!

This ‘theoretical twist’ emerged from the discourse on syncretic religions


where there is an assumed interaction, combination of two different historical
traditions or the ‘coalescence of differing religious forms’, (Fernandez, 1964;
p542) resulting in the distortion of the dominant religion labelled ‘orthodox’ (in
Africa mostly Christianity and Islam) in which the true message is lost. Given
that the state of being ‘orthodox’ is to be conformist and ‘not heretical or
independent – minded or original’ (Ed. Sykes, 1987; p721), the claims to
originality by the dominant religions become non-sequitur.
As both Christianity and Islam come mixed with pagan survivals, for example
the birth of Christ being posited on the Roman Festival of the Saturnalia, and

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Islam tainted by proxy, as it borrowed from some Christian teachings-
Abraham, Mary etc -, one could argue that paganism was the dominant
religion with Christianity, Islam and other ‘orthodox’ religions syncretic, made
so through spiritual diffusionism. Arguably, paganism goes even further to the
inception of man’s spiritual belief systems.
None the less, discourse on African syncretism carried out by missiologists,
largely focus on distortions of the ‘true’ orthodox (meaning not original as
defined above) Christian message. The prevailing patterns of scholarship on
syncretism in Africa by missiologists, according to Stewart and Shaw, adopts
a vocabulary dripped in pathos, from ‘hazard’, ‘decline’ and ‘loss’: ominous
references to “the problem” or “the dangers of syncretism”, to “syncretistic
tendencies” and to “forfeiting the essence of Christianity” recur’ (Stewart and
Shaw, 1994: p14). Prominent scholars have weighed in, with much shaking
of their sage leads, prophesying doom as independent churches,
characterised as “post Christianity” ‘”form easy bridges back to nativism”’ (p14
[Oosthuizen 1968: xi]) and another wailing ‘The syncretistic sect becomes the
bridge over which Africans are brought back to heathenism’ (pg14 [Sundkler;
1961, p29]). These ‘alarming’ observations were expressed as the realisation
dawned that the Missionary churches had failed woefully to contextualise
Christian doctrine within African life and thought patterns. The Spiritual,
Pentecostal and Charismatic movements seized on this oversight, riding and
rising on cultural relevancy, by conflating traditional religious symbols and
expressionism to the existing orthodoxy. For members of these movements,
therefore, conversion to Christianity did not result in a decline of demonology,
nor were imaginations of the latter dismissed as expressions of ‘false-
consciousness’ but rather were as Meyer noted, along with other
anthropologists ‘people’s attempts to understand and grapple with changing
conditions’. (Meyer 1995; p237).

In a bid to ‘cast out’ these demons and witches that arguably plagued
people’s lives, these movements, after years of Christian extortions that these
beliefs were imaginations, inadvertently sanctioned them back into ‘re-
existence’ by creating a platform for the exorcism of the demon and his
cohorts. This acknowledgement of the powers of the occult fuelled an ever

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increasing fear and desperation, made worse by a juggernaut of escalating
economic crisis in Africa, as people sought to escape the claws of
demonology that they perceived as, arguably, responsible for individual
economic collapse and calamity.

Why is there this fascination with witchcraft and the occult in Africa? I would
essay that man is inherently superstitious irrespective of formal education and
acquired rationality, in the process. For as Meyer argued and from various
studies (for example Tausig, 1980; Bastian, 1993; Comaroff and Comaroff
1993; Geschiere, 1997; White 1993; Fabian 1978) show, ‘belief in the
existence of demons is not confined to pre-modern cultures and societies, but
rather is part and parcel of modernity, both in the West and elsewhere (Meyer,
1995; p237).

Hitherto, earlier studies made of African religious belief systems, including


witchcraft were subjected to the imaginations of the ‘irrational, promiscuous,
and prone to magic anthropological ‘other’. Distinctions were made between
those beliefs of African origin and those of Western origin when indeed both
are based on a universal apriorism of which Pritchard succinctly exemplifies
by stating ‘why other than in faith should one accept God and not witchcraft,
since it could be held, as many anthropologists do, that the evidence for one
is no greater than the evidence for the other’ (Pritchard, 1976; p245).

Going against this grain is the notion that for the Igbo’s, the belief in witchcraft
is rooted on empirical experiences and not just accepted on faith alone.
Western conceptualisations of African witchcraft are mostly demonic, thus
making for an uneasy translation for the Igbos who view it as a duality of
powerful forces of good and evil, capable of being domesticated and
harnessed for both individuals and communal advancement. I shall return to
this later.

Obviously an exploration and analysis of the wide spectrum of African belief


systems would be both an unnecessary and monolithic task given the limited
scope and scholarship of this paper. I shall instead explore how an aspect of

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the Igbo belief system is articulated through a spirit of competitiveness,
underpinned by a cosmology whose non-rigid tenets allows the exploration of
other religious and secular experiences, resulting ultimately in the ambivalent
use of witchcraft, as they negotiate an overwhelming economic crisis.

The Igbo speaking people of Nigeria are located mainly in the Eastern part of
the country with a smaller portion west of the River Niger in what is now called
the Delta State. The term is used to define its territory, the domestic speakers
of the language and the language itself.

The Igbo world is a highly competitive one. Based on an ‘equalitarian


principle’, it means, for the Igbo, as Uchendu elucidates, a society which gives
to all its citizens an equal opportunity to achieve success. The stress is on
achievement. They recognise that “a child who washes his hands clean
deserves to eat with his elders”’ (Uchendu 1965; p19). This then underpins its
democratic socio political system where leaders are not born or made but
emerge. Hence any talented young man who can acquire wealth and
‘convert’ it into the traditionally valued status symbols (such as title taking) is
allowed to wield political power over his peers and elders. So long as ‘he
does not govern too much’ to alienate his followers, thereby compromising
their sense of individuality and independence, he remains an ideal leader.
(pg 20).

For the Igbo leader there is a dual responsibility – a high status for him as well
as ensuring the communal advancement, all achieved with minimum power
yet maximum service expected in return. This penchant for societal progress
or ‘getting up’ ensures a competitiveness that is at once individual and
communal, spreading to neighbouring villages and later, other ethnic groups.
As Green observed whilst working with the Igbo people of Agbaja in Southern
Okigwe District ‘and how often does one hear: we want to make our place – or
our market – get up’ (Uchendu 1965; pg 34) [Green 1947: p255] is a collective
sentiment among the Ibos.

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However Smock explains this recurring theme differently. ‘The Ibo’s feeling of
inferiority, promoted by Europeans and other Africans, and their predilection
for modern ways, deriving from their pre colonial cultural patterns, might have
inspired the decision to modernise their home communities and thus elevate
their status and foster self-respect’ (Smock 1971; pp14). This feeling of
inferiority among the Ibo speaking groups, Smock sums up, was constituted
by foreigners and members of other ethnic groups who, having more
sophisticated traditional socio political systems or having experienced earlier
contact with missionaries, regarded the Ibo groups with contempt because of
the simplicity of their culture and their lack of education (p8).

I however remain unconvinced by this argument. As far as I am aware, and


based on empirical knowledge, there are no Igbos, past or present, wallowing
in a vat of inferiority complex. Whilst not wishing to indulge in polemics,
Smock’s discourse on another dynamic factor in the Ibo collective
consciousness, seems more probable and relevant. In defining this
dynamism she sums up very perceptively ‘children did not inherit their parents
social status, political position or career. Individual initiative and achievement
determined the position each person assumed within the system. Following
from and giving meaning to this equality was a ‘spirit of competition’ in every
sphere of life (pg 8).

This ‘spirit of competition’ in the pre-colonial era was articulated through


achievement in individual prowess. Thus individuals strove for excellence in
their chosen professions. Whether a hunter, warrior, wrestler or farmer one
was constituted from the cradle as it were, for excellence. This is exemplified
by Okonkwo in Achebe’s ‘Things Fall Apart’, ‘who had won fame as the
greatest wrestler in nine villages and was a wealthy farmer with two barns full
of yams, and had just married his third wife. To crown it all, he had taken two
titles and had shown incredible prowess in two tribal wars. So although
Okonkwo was still young, he was already one of the greatest men of his time.
Age was respected among his people but achievement was revered’ (Achebe;
1986, p6). This then encapsulated the Ibo socio-political ideology –

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achievement, success, culminating in contributions to community
development and prestige.

But what underpins this ideology? First, is to understand how people perceive
the world around them and its impact in their evaluation of life. For Uchendu
‘a people’s evaluation of life, both temporal and non-temporal, provides them
with a “chapter” of action, a guide to behaviour’. Hence the Igbo world in all
its material, spiritual and socio-cultural aspects is made intelligible by their
cosmology which explains how everything came into being. It is at once an
explanatory devise of the origin and character of the universe from which a
prescriptive ethic is derived, culminating in an action system, which reveals
what the Igbo actually do as manifested in their overt and covert behaviour
(Uchendu 1965; pg 11).

As narrated to me by Chief K. OK. Onyioha (1), ‘the origin of the universe was
constituted when Chineke, God The Creator, created the first man ‘Ife Nta’
(Junior or little light) and first woman ‘Obu-Omaranya’ (Beauty-in-the-
Distance). When I asked for elucidation, Onyioha explained this: ‘Beauty-in-
the-Distance is composite of the transient qualities of a woman. In the
distance, a woman shimmers resplendent beauty and is very attractive to a
man. The man brings her into his house, she soon looses her shine as she
falls into her environment and the man looks outside again for another
shimmering beauty in the distance. Tested against this our experience of
man to woman relationship in human society everywhere, this legend of
ancient Ibos about the Obu-Omara-anya (Beauty-in-the-Distance) as name of
the first woman created by Chineke (God the Creator) tends to look logical’.

After showing them the fawn and fauna he had created for their good and well
being, he bade them to look after all. None was intended to harm them. If
mixed in appropriate cosmic relationships, the result will always be to
enhance their happiness on earth. He would not show them everything at
once else they would devour all and terminate their existence on earth. He
did however allow them, through experience and trial and error, to discover
the rest, whose value they would come to know and respect, thereby

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enhancing their welfare on earth. Furthermore they had ample time for this
search – eternity because man cannot die. Man has two cosmic aspects: one
corporal and the other a metaphysical aspect – the soul that is immortal. The
corporal may wither with age and time, collapsing to allow the soul to assume
a new physical frame in reincarnation, and continue its existence on earth.

This belief nurtures the notion of eternal life with constant interaction between
the world of man and the world of the dead, the visible and invisible forces.
As Uchendu elucidates ‘Existence for the Igbo, therefore is a dual but
interrelated phenomenon involving interaction between the material and the
spiritual, the visible and the invisible, the good and the bad, the living and the
dead. The latter are a part of the Igbo social world’ (Uchendu 1965; pg12).
Hence souls of ancestors hover around, from their metaphysical existence to
protect against evil forces and to influence fortunes on earth.

Enjoined to explore the gifts of the universe by Chineke (God-the-Creator) an


imbued sense of independence and freedom was psychically formulated,
each free to seek and compete for its largesse. The world, therefore, as a
natural order that inexorably goes on its ordained way according to a ‘master
plan’ is foreign and alien to Igbo cosmological philosophy. Instead, it is a
dynamic one – a world of moving equilibrium (p12). With the constant
interaction between the material and spiritual, this equilibrium is constantly
threatened, resulting in natural and social calamities. The Igbo believe in
reining in these cosmic forces that cause the social calamities threatening the
equilibrium of their world, by manipulating and thereby controlling them, to
man’s advantage. The maintenance of social and cosmological balance in
the world becomes a dominant and pervasive theme in Igbo life. This balance
is maintained through sacrifice, divination, appeal to counterpoising ancestral
influences and powers, against malignant forces. A contractual relationship is
thus constituted with attendant uncertainties, each fearing that the terms of
the contract might not by fully honoured. Hence his alertness; hence his
preparedness to invoke the aid of a more powerful force in his bid to
manipulate the cosmic forces to his advantage. His world has become a
marketplace and is subject to bargain, with the spirit world.

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‘Each world is peopled with ‘interested’ individuals and groups and much
buying and selling goes on in each.’ People go to the market-place for
different reasons but the common motivation is to make a profit, as is
manifested in their everyday behaviour. This is dramatised according to
Uchendu every time a mother goes to the village market and her off springs
give her a ‘market wish’ by spitting in her upturned palms which she ritually
cleanses her face with, as they enjoin her to gain from the market and not the
reverse. Thus ensuring a good face and imbued with the spirit of
competitiveness or perhaps ‘combat’, she departs. (p13).

It could be misleading and perhaps erroneous to interpret this spirit of


competitiveness and desire for achievement and success as crude
individualism. Rather, it is an individualism rooted in group solidarity. For the
Igbo, human interdependence is of the highest value as their cosmological
beliefs stresses beneficial reciprocity and ‘realisation that no individual or spirit
is self sufficient’ (pg 14). Overt competitive individualism is subsumed for
group advancement. It is only applauded when it is articulated through
contributions to communal advancement and helping others ‘get-up’. A man
or woman who through a spirit of competitiveness and achievement helps
others to ‘get up’ commands much respect and gains much prestige.

This cooperative yet competitive trait sustains and facilitates the parallel
ideological urge to achieve whilst helping others to economic advancement. It
was in this spirit that the program in ‘human investment’, in a bid to keep
apace with modernity, was evolved.

With the advent of Christianity, colonisation, and the subsequent struggle for
independence, came a realisation that Western educated leaders were
essential to the dual process of ‘getting up’ and being posited within the newly
emerging ruling elite. The program for ‘human investment’ was constituted –
the training for the modern elite began. The educated elite would become the
conduit through which urban linkages flourished.

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The prestige of the son educated abroad was not just shared by his family but
by the whole village group. To have a son or daughter educated abroad, in
the ‘white man’s’ country, a ‘been-to’ became the aspiration of children,
parents and the village group as a whole. That too became competitive as
villages raced to claim the honour of having a ‘been-to’ son or daughter.
Uchendu recalls, as most culture bearers, the common refrain in village
meetings and Progressive unions, ‘It is a matter of shame that we have
educated nobody abroad. Other towns are ahead of us and we shall soon be
their slaves – we must have educated heads – the mouths that can speak for
us’ (pg 37). These mouths that ‘can speak’ for them were in turn expected to
help the less fortunate. This cooperative trait and attendant expectations as
mentioned earlier, is not novel amongst the Igbos.

Indeed, in slave plantations in the New World of the 17th to 19th centuries,
Igbo’s were noted for this specificity. Highlighting this trait Herskovits wrote
‘The Ibos were found excellent for work in fields, yet difficult to manage.
‘Their strong communal and tribal ties made it advantageous for those who
owned them to obtain more of them since newcomers were accorded help,
care and instructions by those who had preceded them (Herskovits, 1931;
p20-1). This observation underpins their skill at adaptation and communal
cooperation.

This can also be explained in cosmological terms. Their religion rationalises


an individual’s ability to improve his status either through bargaining or
manipulating supernatural forces to his advantage with an inherent willingness
to adapt in order to achieve this goal.

Secondly, the tenets of his cosmological beliefs are not intransigent; therefore
they do not fear change and are ideologically receptive to experimentation.
Horton, among his set of ideas which constituted his Intellectualist Theory
proffered that ‘just what is accepted and what is rejected will be largely
determined by the structure of the ‘basic’ cosmology, and by the limits which
this structure imposes on the cosmology’s potential for response to social
change’ (Horton 1975; p220). Hence the Igbo belief that change is part and

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parcel of a successful realisation of long term goals. As Uchendu concluded,
‘whatever improves the individual’s and community status is acceptable to the
Igbo’ (Uchendu 1965; p104).

This then is the dynamic force in Igbo receptivity to change. Such cultural
traits accounted for a higher degree of selectivity – in other words, there were
not confined by religious dogma to limited selective powers in what they
needed. They were able to accept or reject certain innovations, modify
certain elements of their social, economic, religious and political structure to
accommodate the new order whilst retaining other basic aspects such as their
strong communal character, achievement orientations and dislike of autocratic
rule. It is no wonder that paradoxically, as Ottenberg commented ‘Of all the
Nigerian peoples, the Ibo have probably changed the least whilst changing
the most’ (Ottenberg, 1962; p142).

Another factor of Ibo receptivity to change was the nature of European


contact. In Uchendu’s words ‘they were not overwhelmed by it’. The long
association with European as trading partners in the Palm produce trade, as
agents to middlemen, and later in the slave trade operations of the 17th to 19th
century, ensured a slow but steady awareness of an alien culture, well before
the periods of political domination.

Other factors have also been proffered in the conundrum that is Igbo
receptivity to change. Amongst these was the growing population and
consequent quest for land. In the limited scope of this discourse, exploring
the above issue would be an unnecessary diversion but suffice it to point out
that population pressure or not, a society that was not culturally constituted to
accept and even revel in change and innovation, may not have acted on those
pressures.

All this is not to imply docile acceptance by the Igbo of alien political
dominance. There were political protests to a system of direct administration,
where Igbo land was arbitrarily carved into Native Court areas, formed by an
amalgamation of disparate village groups that were traditionally independent

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and sovereign political units. With the British administrator as district
commissioner (later to be known as District Officers) and president of the
court, Warrant Chiefs, hand picked by the D.O., and who were not
representative of the village group that they purportedly served, caused anger
and resentment. It was the action of one of these Warrant Chiefs, Okugo
from the village of Oloko that sparked the well documented Aba Riots of 1929,
as he attempted to assess the women’s property in his area. The women
protested and went on a rampage that left thirty two women dead and dying
with thirty one wounded (Uchendu, 1965; p47).

Another form of resistance was in the religious realm. In 1857, Bishop Ajayi
Crowther, having successfully established the Church Missionary Society
Mission at Onitsha, the Catholics, not to be outdone, established theirs – The
Roman Catholic Mission.

Initially the Igbo’s fought this alien religion, a fight that has been well
documented in the novels of African writers, notably Achebe’s ‘Things Fall
Apart.’ Early converts to Christianity and often recipients of its twin, formal
educational and literacy were the ‘Osu’, cult slaves who were deity servitors,
sacrificed and dedicated to a deity by a dedicator. The dedicator is thus
ritually cleaned, having relinquished his sins into the body and spirit of the
Osu, absolving the dedicator or all guilt. The ‘Osu’ was thus ostracised from
society, despised and hated as a ‘sin-carrier’ and because he remained a
symbol of absolved sins and reminded the ‘diala’ or ‘free-born’ of his guilt.
Other early converts were mothers of twins; the unambitious in a society that
revered achievement and success, and other disenfranchised individuals.

It was the missionaries who arguably facilitated the British military penetration,
preparatory to colonial rule because no military colonisation would have been
complete without the colonisation of the mind, which the missionary education
perpetuated.

Furthermore, that the Igbos were one of these so called ‘stateless’ societies
created problems for the colonial administration. Unlike empiric states like the

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Fulani/Hausa a caliphate of Sokoto in Northern Nigeria, where their
aristocratic and feudal over lords had authority to make formal surrender, no
one had the power to make such overt gestures in Igbo land. Instead it was
based on individual decisions to cooperate with the new rulers. The new
rulers on the other hand, found that effective control could only begin with a
majority acceptance. Hence the military expeditions to demonstrate the might
of the colonial power, setting up along the way administrative posts for
officials to begin the ubiquitous tax collection, enforcing now a new kind of
social order. Along with these were some rudimentary health services and
missionary schools to propagate the advantages of peaceful surrender of
autonomy.

The missionary school provided the pen that became mightier than the sword,
but the catalyst for mass ‘conversion’ was ironically through the Igbo outcast.
Denied status in some form or the other, they were the first, as mentioned
earlier, to embrace Western religious ideas, education and consequent
economic advantages in the fast changing social order. Envisaging a social
order where the ruler could become subordinated, the ruler becoming the
ruled, the process of conversion began, as a conduit to formal education and
wealth accumulation among the ‘diala’ or free-born. Uchendu summed it up
by stating that ‘it was the mystery of the written word, the psychology of the
“bush-schools” founded by them … rather than military might or the ‘content’
of the Bible that assured their success among the Igbo’ (p4). Ekechi, a
historian puts it thus ‘it was the desire for education, coupled with the
competition between the denominations, rather than ambition to embrace the
new faith that led to the rapid spread of Christian Churches in Ibo land’
(Ekechi 1971, p104). As evidence, in 1953, the Ibo divisions of Onitsha and
Awka were recorded as having high literacy but low Christianity ratios (Ifeka-
Moller, 1974; p69).

Seeing ‘conversion’ as ‘a means to and end’ and coupled with a spirit of


competition that was underpinned by a cultural ideology of achievement and
success, western education became ‘de rigueur’.

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However, the real colonisation began in the schools – that of the mind. Soon
the new ‘converts’ were bombarded with an educational campaign that not
only colonised the mind but threatened to subsume native traditions in a
presumed superiority of the contact culture.

This writer was a recipient of this cerebral enlightenment. In school we were


exposed to bewildering paradox. We were taught African History but told we
had no history and were primitive. We were taught Igbo language but banned
from speaking it in school, often threatened by the Form or House Mistress to
‘beat the “Igboticness’’ out of you’. Excelling in tests in Igbo language only
incurred derision. However excelling in English lessons, her history and
geography brought ‘prestige’, respect and admiration from both teachers and
students alike, and the likely attainment of form captain, prefect or other
school offices. One was even encouraged to adopt English names so English
missionary teachers could remember more easily who one was. Indeed the
French-Canadian French teacher insisted on it and gave everyone French
names. Mine was Odile. I hated it. I preferred Odette.

This disassociation, which Ngugi labelled ‘Colonial alienation’ became


reinforced in the teaching of history, geography, music (folkloric songs
jettisoned for Bobby Shafto, Peas Porridge hot, Peas Porridge cold etc.)
where bourgeois Europe was always the centre of the universe.
(Ngugi, 1997:pg17). Thus this deliberate devaluation of a people’s culture,
their art, dances, religion, history, geography, education, oratory, literature
and language, this mental control, completed the colonisation of the mind.
English became the language of progress and modernity before whom all
‘others had to bow in deference’ (p11). One’s conceptualisations of one’s
own culture and tradition became mired in confusion and conflict on the one
hand, whilst the certainty of the superiority of the foreign culture is elevated on
the other. Achebe’s 1964 speech entitled “The African writer and the English
(2)
Language” laments this state of affairs succinctly ‘is it right that a man
should abandon his mother’s tongue for someone else’s? It looks like a
dreadful betrayal and produces a guilty feeling. But for me there is no other
choice. I have been given the language and I intend to use it’ (p7).

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This alienation from one’s culture was ever more devastating as Ibos went
and came back from further education abroad, their competitive spirit
unleashed and articulated through a predilection to mimic the modern ways of
the foreign culture. The colonisation was complete.

Humorous tales abound of the ‘been-tos’ who had only gone for two or three
years, coming home and needing interpreters to communicate their gratitude
at village meetings. Or the ones who left for six months and returning to ask
for directions to their father’s compound. The ones that stayed longer,
married and returned with their foreign spouses, were looked upon as having
performed a minor miracle. If their off springs did not speak a word of Igbo
they acquired almost god-like status.

Songs were composed in praise of the educational achievements of these


elite, elevating them to the god-like status of the ‘white man’. ‘Nwa jelu
Obodo Oyibo’ (the child that has been to the white man’s land) became the
constant allusion to sons and daughters of proud fathers and members of the
village group alike.

Thrown into this mix however were those elite who rejected this variety of self
formation. They were the political activists and writers, of whom Dr. Nnamdi
Azikiwe, Nigeria’s first President in the first Republic and Achebe are
examples. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, with the purpose of reinvesting a denigrated
African tradition with dignity, formed, along with Chief Prophet K. O.K
Onyioha,(1) the National Church of Nigeria and the Camerooons, albeit also
the religious wing of the NCNC, a political party of both the colonial and post-
colonial era. Later and after Azikiwe became President and had disassociated
himself from the organisation, for political reasons perhaps, Prophet K.
O.K.Onyioha ‘ran with the ball’ as it were, synthesizing its original dogma to
become the Godian Religion that is still going strong globally.

Later as more Igbo students travelled abroad and witnessed and experienced
discrimination and identified with the wider issues of racism in the diasporas,

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the self was reformed – a Foucaultian subjectification where external forces
were exerted, only not by humans, but by ideology.

This ‘new’ ideology was pitched on two fronts – a reclamation of ‘Africanhood’


that gave birth to an African based notion of nationalism, led by Western
educated elites, a movement that Curtin describes as being different from the
European sense of nationhood because they ‘were united by their colonial
experience as Africans not that of a particular ethnic group (Curtin et al 1995;
p517). Second and running parallel to Curtin’s sense of nationhood was the
ideological awakening of the Ibo’s to their common identity through the forces
of modernity unleashed by the colonial administration.

Smock suggests that prior to the establishment of colonial rule, there were no
Igbo people but rather several hundred village communities, each of which
usually consisted of no more than eight thousand people. ‘Each village
community constituted a separate political unit and a socially endogamous
grouping with little interest about the outside world. With increasing
penetration of the colonial administration, began a realisation that cohesive
ethnic unit was necessary for greater opportunities in political participation
and economic accumulation’ (Smock, 1971; p7).

Led by the educated elite, ethnic unions originated in urban centres, first as
the overarching Ibo State Union, in a bid to provide a sense of security for the
new immigrant. As with other ethnic unions in most parts of Africa, political
parties ‘utilised the existing network of ethnic associations as the basis of their
organisations’. (p12). As a result the NCNC was accused of being an ethnic
party for absorbing and utilising existing network of the Ibo Unions as the
nuclei for its party branches. However vociferous these accusations and
condemnations of the NCNC for ethnic factionalism and favouritism, the fact
remains that most political parties of the era were not exempt from such
‘shenanigans’. Examples include the Ego Omo Oduduwa Society of the
Descendants of Oduduwa, inaugurated in 1948 by Chief Obafemi Awolowo
for the Yorubas, the NEPU and NPC for the Hausa and Fulani elite
respectively; all were intimately connected with ethnic unions.

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With the Ibo State Unions thus embroiled in political morass, parochial unions
began to emerge. ‘Communities autonomously, as Smock noted, launched
ethnic unions in response to local initiatives, needs and motives’ (pg 13). In
this atmosphere the competitive spirit was once again operative, with Home
Associations becoming agencies for ‘getting up’. As the realisation that
education was the ‘gate way’ to insertion into political and economic
accumulation, it became elevated as a conduit for self, social and ultimately
communal enhancement. Communities competed with one another in
concentrating efforts and resources on building schools and endowing
scholarships to educate the future elite so much so that educational facilities
expanded at a faster rate in the Eastern Region of the Igbos than anywhere
else in Nigeria (Smock 1971, p12).

One such ethnic union was the Abriba Community Improvement Union,
officially constituted in 1944 and which had made major contributions towards
the development of their community. Their motto “Self help is the sure path to
success” translated into the dredging of creeks for easy navigation of trading
canoes, financing free primary education for the three initial grades in the
Church of Scotland Mission School in Abriba, constituting scholarship
endowments for students to attend and attain higher education to provide
teachers for their ‘piece de resistance’ – The Enuda College that was formally
opened in 1954. This was followed in 1963 by the girls’ school – Egwuena
Girls Secondary School, built by the Egwuena Age Grades and the main
tarmac road running through the town and other community projects. (Smock
1971; pgs 31 and 33).
In addition to the above projects, other educational programmes beginning
from the time that Ibo Unions were inaugurated in the 1930’s, to 1957, when
the Eastern Region Government established a primary education program,
owe their very existence to the efforts of these ethnic Improvement Unions.

Furthermore, their efforts sparked the massive self-help and ‘getting up’
programs through which the Igbos caught up with the groups who had
experienced earlier contact with missionary education.

Page 17 of 44
Hence members of this ethnic group produced one of the largest numbers of
educated elite in Nigeria and were well represented in all professions,
scientific and artistic. Indeed their scientific innovations and improvisations
during The Nigerian Civil War between 1967 and 1970 have been well
documented.

Their resilience was demonstrated in how, during the war years, they coped
with the shortages of food and medicine, designed make-shift weapons, as
fondly recalled by the Igbo secessionist rebel leader Col. Odimegwu Ojukwu.
‘It did not matter when they bombed our airfield because we had it functioning
in three hours. One day I was called out of a cabinet meeting to see the first
attempt at testing a rocket. The test was in the garden; it took off and landed
in the garden. By the end of the war we had a homing device that was
accurate at six and half miles. It was exciting for anyone’ (Maier 2000, p286).

In seeking success wherever it may reside and sanctioned by a cosmological


ideology that exhorts ‘seek and ye shall find’ the Igbo have been adjudged
restless, too pushy, too industrious and with too much wanderlust (p284).
Ojukwu elucidating further states that ‘under the British, it was how to
accommodate the uppity Igbos. Then after independence it was how to
accommodate these Igbos who don’t stay in their area but wander around
everywhere. That is why it was easy to think that the answer was to kill them
off and prevent them from ever coming back’ (p285), the last statement a
reference to the pogrom against the Igbo’s in the North that precipitated the
secessionist Biafra. Nor were they loved elsewhere in Nigeria for their
‘aggression’. Concurring, Professor Osy Okanya, the Dean of the Faculty of
Social Sciences at Enugu State University, adds ‘Anytime you mention that
you are an Igbo man, you awake certain feelings. The Hausa man sees you
and says “Ah, this man has come to grab”. The Yoruba man sees you as a
‘dankawaro’, an ant; the Igbo’s will get to places where it is thought no one
can go. The other nationalities see the Igbos as people who will do the
impossible – by hook or by crook’ (pg 273).

Page 18 of 44
Alas, these sentiments were further reinforced following the collapse of the
Biafra.
Following an outbreak of unrest in various regions of Nigeria with factions
seeking to resolve their struggle for regional powers through violence, a coup
on the morning of January 15 1966 comprising a group of mostly Igbo officers,
attempted to overthrow the civilian government. In its aftermath, the Prime
Minister Tafawa Balewa, 2 regional premiers, the powerful northern leader
Ahmadu Bello and a federal minister were left dead. Coincidentally, Ibo
leaders including Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe all happened to be abroad, ostensibly
for medical reasons. The military, still controlled by Igbos, assumed power. A
revenge coup in July by Northern Officers, fuelled by bitterness over the killing
of its political leaders, and frightened by a threatening disappearance of its
feudal autonomy, was followed by the massacre of Igbos living in the North.
Nigeria was on the precipice of a civil war. It is however arguable that ethnic
politics alone would have pushed her over the edge. Maier has another
coupling reason - ‘The vast oil reserves of the Niger Delta were the ultimate
booty. The Igbos believed that the oil would ensure the viability of their
Biafran State, but the rest of Nigeria refused to part with the oil-rich region’
(p13).

The war raged for almost three years when Biafra surrendered under
Gowon’s (Nigeria’s then Head of State) ostensibly generous ‘No Victors, No
Vanquished’ directive. This generosity then proved hollow when ‘the savings
of an entire people was wiped out with the stroke of a pen’. Irrespective of the
amount accumulated in savings before and during the war, the then Finance
Minister Obaferni Awolowo, allowed each person to recover only the
equivalent of £20.’ (Maier 2000; pg 284).

Traumatised, treated as second class citizens with little representation in


government or the military, denied insertion into the national economic boom,
desperate but resilient as ever, they sought other methods for economic
accumulation. Maier records Ojukwu wailing that ‘youngsters readily
abandoned school and turned to market trading to make quick money “Even
in the bush, the deepest villages, young men are thinking how to make their

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millions overnight. You can imagine the frenzy with which the Igbo people
went into the struggle for survival and after so many years, it has become
almost a reflex’. (pg. 284). Even before this heightened state for survival, the
Igbos were held up as a model of a hard working ‘go ahead’ people but
paradoxically held in contempt by their neighbours who claimed the Igbo’s
were willing to do any type of work to survive. Hence the ambivalent attitude
toward the Igbos - ‘a hard working people but people who are willing to do
demeaning work’ (Uchendu 1965; p105). Maier agreed that almost all
Nigerians thought that Igbos were extremely hard workers. ‘Although the
major cities elsewhere in the country were filled with the downtrodden
approaching motorists for a hand-out, they were a rare sight anywhere on
Igbo land. Those Igbos who did pop their heads onto one’s vehicle almost
always had something for sale. In every corner of Nigeria, from Kafanchan to
Kano, from Wukari to Lagos, the Igbos were prominent players in local
commerce’ (pg 273).

With the defeat in the civil war leaving the Igbos with no influence, Professor
Okanya conceded that ‘it is to their credit that they have found a profession
which no government can take away from them. It is part of the survival
strategy to no longer count on the government.’ (pg. 273).

For the educated elite it was particularly difficult. From independence until the
revenge coup of 1966, they had held the commanding heights of the economy
and had dominated the officer corps in the military. Now they were without
influence. Nonetheless they understood its processes. From the heights of
dominance to subordination, they came to a realisation that the general
wisdom concerning these processes and as laid down by Marx, was that
power could not be retained unless it was firmly anchored on material base.
Much has been made of some Igbo educated elite seeking patronage from
the ruling elite, military and civilian. Professor Osy Okanya underpinned this
current predilection by stating ‘Those who control power know that the Igbos
at any time would be there for their bidding. The Igbo elites have remained
the military’s willing tool’ (p274).

Page 20 of 44
Examples and most visible Igbo presence at the national level were
‘Comrade’ Uche Chukwumerije, Walter Ofonagoro, two former Biafran war-
time propagandists, honing further their skills on behalf of the Babangida and
Abacha regimes, Arthur Nzeribe who tried to convince Babangida to scuttle
the 1993 electoral process and Daniel Kanu, who, on the ticket of YEAA –
(Youths Earnestly Ask for Abacha) campaigned for Abacha. Thus it went on,
patron-client relationships that compromised ethnic pride, sacrificing it on the
altar of tenuous success at accumulation of wealth and power. Hence Maiers’
comment that ‘Igbo politicians squabble among themselves, prepared to cast
their lot with whichever power broker managed to secure Aso – Rock’ (pp
274).

Such seemingly betrayal of the ‘idée reçue’ about the Igbo modes of thought
and social ideology may appear strange to the uninitiated, but such social
actions are purely pragmatic as is reflected in their riposte ‘Eneke the bird
says that since men have learnt to shoot without missing he has learnt to fly
without perching’ (Achebe 1986, p16).

However it must be stressed that it is only a minority of the educated elite that
have successfully been inserted into the economic cog of reciprocal patron-
client relationships. Others, less successful, frustrated by acute competition
for scarce material resources and excluded from the rewards of political and
economic power, sought spiritual solace in the Aladura and Pentecostal
churches where individual good and bad fortune is explained as the effects of
spiritual forces.

These expressive type of religions, as argued and formulated by Fernandez


has ‘the emphasis upon escape by symbolic displacement from the situation
which is causing frustration. This is done by means of symbolic forms in ritual
and ceremony; song, drama and dance. Intense involvement of the
participants in these activities draws their attention away from the frustrations
and deprivations of their everyday situation’ (Fernandez 1964, p535-6). Maier
demonstrates this brilliantly in his experience in the Synagogue Church in
Ikotun-Egbi, on the outskirts of Lagos, Nigeria, under the founder and general

Page 21 of 44
overseer, Pastor Joshua, who is ‘one of these modern day pastors and so-
called prophets who practice faith healing and sometimes magic to prey on
the gullibility of their wealthier adherents and the desperation of the poor.’
(Maier 2000; pg252).
In Pastor Joshua’s Church, festooned as it were with banks of television sets
and loud speakers, the good Pastor, amidst an audience gasping with
astonishment, hunted down the demons, burning them with ‘holy fire.’
The first recipient of this spiritual benevolence was a Nigerian Super
Heavyweight Wrestler, Armstrong Louis Okeke, who hobbled in on a walking
stick due to a badly burned left haunch. His career was finished, he testified
through a microphone and doctors were powerless to help. He had therefore
come to the good Pastor for divine healing. A happy recipient, he dropped his
walking stick, claimed a miracle and declared the Pastor ‘the prophet sent by
God’. Next were assorted sinners whose confessions caused him to remove
the ‘”contrary spirits, witches and wizards”’ plaguing them, thereby healing
them by commanding “Fire all over all de body’ several times. The sinners
duly wriggled on the floor, claimed redemption and hailed him a prophet.
Then there was the German woman who had been beset by stomach cancer
and back injury sustained in a car accident. She too got cured, pronouncing
herself fit and released from pain. AIDS patients all miraculously were cured,
fit and released from pain (pgs 254-60).

Thus these churches, hell bent as it were, and determined on the destruction
and denunciation of dark evil powers afflicting all and sundry and ‘where the
Holy Spirit would restore healing and riches’ (Meyer 1995, p236) inadvertently
sanctioned the belief in witchcraft.

As Stewart and Shaw discerned, by accepting and not denying the existence
of witchcraft and other personified evil forces, people found these churches
more acceptable as they provided an alternative to the consultation of
traditional priests. (Stewart and Shaw 1994, p50), an institution and habit the
churches had hoped would be eradicated with the relentless march of
modernity.

Page 22 of 44
The hoped for dichotomisation did not happen. The expected decline did not
materialise. Instead it was a short, hop, step and jump, back into the
unabashed insertion of witchcraft into modernity, and there are a few reasons
for this development.

As we now know from numerous anthropological discourses, the general


belief in witchcraft never really declined. What had declined was overt
interaction with witchcraft practices by the educated elite who feared being
labelled the anthropological ‘other’ who is ‘primitive, irrational and prone to
magic.’ There was however a ‘magic’ – the ‘magical’ rediscovery and defiant
appreciation for things African and traditional, as more travelled abroad and
related more and more to the injustices of racial discrimination in the
diasporas, through individual experiences. The educated elite started to
question the notion and conceptualisations of evil being purely a phenomenon
of African traditional religions, vis-à-vis Western orthodox religions. This is a
resurging and growing cultural phenomenon that is neither politically
nationalistic nor religiously separatist but rather a reawakening of beliefs long
held but entombed under religious fervour and formal education.

So far, there has not been a solid cohesive movement but for the moment
they run under the banner of the Godian Religion. ‘Reformative in the
direction of separatism’ (Fernandez, 1964; pg 541), its origins in 1950 was as
(1)
Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe NCNC’s religious wing. Chief K. O.K. Onyioha who
became the Lagos District Superintendent later synthesized elements of its
African beliefs and dogma into the Godian Religion of which he became the
Spiritual Head. In his words ‘Godianism is a philosophical rendering of
African religious habits and practices; and the practices which distinguish
African Religion from other religions of the world including Islam and
Christianity are that the African speaks to his God directly without passing
through any medium and has no religious prejudices. In dispute he would not
mind swearing by his opponents ‘juju’. When he passes by his neighbour’s
shrine – he drops a piece of chalk or kola in reverence, if he holds any. On
important clan festivals, our fathers left their family idols, came to the clan
square, sang together and worshipped and prayed to Chineke (God-the-

Page 23 of 44
Creator) together, directly, without passing through any medium. Standing
before his ‘God – symbol’ in Igboland, a symbol which exotic religions decry
as idol, he raises his hands above his head and prays ‘Chukwu Obioma (God
the Good), Oseburuwa (the Universal God), Obasi D’Elu (God Above),
Chineke (God the Creator) bia (come down, descend), yerem aka (and help
me). They never said ‘Site na agbara nkaa, yerem aka (Help me through this
idol)”. True, you see God symbols in Africa’s religious practices but the
African does not regard the God symbols or ‘idols’ as having any intrinsic
power, and therefore does not send the idol on any errand to God’ (Onyioha;
1980, pg 10).
Here then is a religion whose configuration sanctions African traditional
religious symbols and practices so much so that it has even permeated the
political arena. During the 1998 gubernatorial elections in Abia State, an Igbo
State in the Eastern part of Nigeria, one of the candidates initiated a
masterstroke. Whilst others were iterating their goodwill and honourable
designs on state finances, swearing on their relatives’ heads and stacks of
bibles, this gubernatorial candidate declared he would swear on ‘Ofo-n’Ogu’ –
the Spirit of Conscience. The electorate declared that anyone who was so
confident as to dare the ire of a spirit was good and honest enough to become
their Governor. He won by an overwhelming majority, one of the few times in
Nigeria when there was no electoral rigging! This demonstrates the continuing
grip of the traditional religious beliefs on the Igbo psyche and consciousness.

The second reason for unabashed insertion of witchcraft into modernity is the
economic burden of relatives. Unlike the West where family is often nucleic,
amongst the Igbos it is pluralized. The extended family is an extremely
important factor in their lives. As Meyer explains in her treatise on Ghanian
families, which is parallel to Ibo notions of same, ‘people use the term ‘family’
in two ways: firstly to refer to ones blood relations, with whom one does not
necessarily live, and secondly, with whom one forms a single household, that
is one’s spouse(s) children and other relatives’ (Meyer 1995, pg 247). In the
harsh economic reality that is in Nigeria, many relatively prosperous men and
women experience the conflict of demands of blood relatives on the one hand
and marriage partners on the other, all of whom one is expected to ‘help get

Page 24 of 44
up’. With most people finding it difficult, including the educated elite, to
provide themselves, their spouses and children with such basic needs as
food, shelter, clothes, education and medical treatment, the quest for
economic accumulation becomes acute. Satisfying the financial expectations
of the extended family becomes problematic. ‘Economic problems thus
translate into family conflicts, resulting in the paradox that the family is a
refuge for those in need as well as a burden to the more prosperous who are
then unable to accumulate wealth because of their family obligations’ (p248).
The conflicts often arise from the inability of university graduates (whose
families had invested heavily in their education) to find sustaining
employment.

As the pressure to accumulate wealth escalates, stress levels soar. Nor are
the Igbos living abroad exempt from these pressures. Though no figures
have been documented, there is empirical knowledge of large numbers who
hold down two to three jobs, to satisfy family financial expectations. The
result has been escalating death tolls from stress, stroke and over-work; and
all, young men and women in their forties and even late thirties; all in their
prime of life.

The third reason for witchcraft insertion is that Igbos are notorious status
seekers, a social condition sanctioned by a social culture that revere success
and achievement. They believe the world a market place where status
symbols can be bought. It institutionalises natural leadership, with leaders
rated according to how many or how prestigious the acquired titles. These
title societies, however involve heavy expenditure of wealth, as ‘a person’s
title “pecking order” indicates his prestige; his membership in a title society,
indicates his social status’ (Uchendu; 1965. pg 91).

With scarce material resources, pressures from family for economic largesse,
unrealistic social expectations for acquisitions of status and prestige, denied
insertion into the nations economic boom for accumulation of wealth, the
educated elite found their lives characterised by chronic lack of money and
consequently, stress ridden. Competition for a competitive spirited people

Page 25 of 44
became ever more fierce as they sought other avenues for wealth
accumulation.

One of such avenues was through witchcraft, as reawakened interest in


African traditional practices, including witchcraft, grew, and historical Mission,
Spiritual and Pentecostal churches perceived too slow and increasingly
ineffectual in offering real economic solutions to their adherents.

Earlier accounts of illiterate barren women, unsuccessful men and those on


the economic fringes of the social structure as sole users of the services of
native doctors, who are versed in the art of witchcraft, are somewhat
misleading. The services of native doors have ever been in demand from the
pre-colonial to colonial era, by titled men, successful hunters, heads of large
households, ‘diala’ and outcasts. It was only later, as the Igbos marched
inexorably to the beat of modernisation that, that fact was suppressed as too
distasteful a knowledge in a nation purporting to have become ‘civilised’ in a
bid for equality with former colonial masters. However, as growing economic
inequality between Africa and the Western world grows ever wider, coupled
with national governments that do not care to narrow that gap, quite a few of
the educated elite have resorted to witchcraft for accumulation of wealth and
consequent power.

Before I delve further into the practices of witchcraft among the Igbo educated
elite for wealth accumulation, I shall briefly explore the dynamics of its
constitution.

Among the Igbos, witchcraft is known as ‘amosu’ or ‘ngbasi’ depending on


which Igbo dialect one speaks. Within that are two orders: a higher order of
witchcraft known as ‘ekpinan,’ which is expensive to acquire, and a lower,
adjudged inferior order known as ‘ifut’. The higher order of witchcraft is used
by powerful native doctors who ‘acquire’ it of necessity to help their
clairvoyance, protect themselves and their clients and medicines against the
interferences of witches, usually of the lower order. For example, ‘if a
traditional healer is treating an ailment inflicted by a ‘witch’ on his client, the

Page 26 of 44
‘witch’ always puts up a counteracting fight in various ways, either by turning
the ailment on the traditional healer himself for trying to snatch from the ‘witch’
its intended victim, thereby endangering the native doctors own life, or by
neutralising the effect of the traditional healer’s medicines to render the
victim’s ailment chronic (Onyioha; 1980, p118). This higher order of witchcraft
it is claimed, is also used to elongate life. The native doctor ‘stores’ away
hearts in elephants, the reasoning being that an elephant is so big that it
would be difficult to reach its heart even when killed, at which time the native
doctor retrieves those hearts and ‘store’ them away in another.

Whilst practitioners of the superior order of witchcraft have to abide by a strict


code of ethics and practice, the lower order allegedly are not bound by any
such ethics. Considered the ‘poor’ mans witchcraft, ‘ifut’ is acquired by eating
a particular type of leaf, and is practised by people adjudged wicked and
whose main aim is the joy of exercising supernatural powers to wreak
vengeance on real or imagined enemies, a vengeance they never would have
been able to do in normal waking hours, since they only operate at night,
sucking blood and sometimes killing their hapless victims.

To the lower order of witchcraft are attributed strategies for demonic rituals for
acquisition of satanic riches, generally wreaking havoc and associating with
unscrupulous clients. Worse, they have been known to deliberately inflict
witchcraft on unsuspecting and innocent individuals by giving them a
particular leaf to chew or putting it in their food. These unfortunate individuals
become witches without knowing how and why, finding themselves going into
astral travels every night to ‘attend strange meetings in strange places among
strange fellows, sent about like poor messengers of the company, to commit
havoc, here, there and yonder.’ (pg 119).

For further elucidation I have categorised its practice into two (a) the dynamic
or satanic witchcraft and (b) its benign form, as practised by the powerful
native doctor. For the satanic, the connection between the devil and material
profit hold central plot. Meyers narrative of the confessions of the Nigerian
Emmanuel Eni and the Ghanian business man, amply demonstrates this.

Page 27 of 44
‘Both articulate a shared narrative about satanic riches’ (Meyer 1995; pgs
239-42). Thus the ‘satanic-riches’ paradigm involves achieving desired
wealth in exchange for blood relations, spouses, fertility or part of the body.

As she concludes those ‘who sacrifice only a part of the body will not become
really rich, those who surrender the capacity to procreate will earn more, but a
lot of money can be gained only by sacrificing a beloved, closely related
person’ (pg 280). To seek wealth by sacrificing or bluntly stated, murdering
another individual has its psychic and psychological repercussions.

Different versions abound for this mode of sacrifice. The most popular mode
is thrusting a knife into a mirror or a surface of water once the image of the
sacrificial victim appears. This kills the victim in spirit followed by corporeal
death either through car accident or unexplained illness. However the
offender would be haunted all their lives by the spirit of its victims and some
have been known to have gone mad afterwards. There are other versions
where the victims are not sacrificed by murder but are rendered mentally
unstable and are left to roam the countryside until they die from malnutrition,
or some accident befalls them. There are those who sacrifice a part of their
body, developing a scar or wound that never heals.

Another insidious mode of practice in the satanic category is the type used to
murder political opponents. It usually takes the form of a psychic attack on
one’s metaphysical ‘other’ by lower order witches or ‘ifut’ as witnessed by
Pritchard amongst the Azande. He noticed a ‘bright’ light passing at the back
of his servants’ huts towards the home stead of a man named Tupoi. ‘Shortly
afterwards, on the same morning an old relative of Tupoi and an inmate of his
homestead died’ (Pritchard; 1976, p11).

Obviously, there are many more evil acts attributed to these lower grade
witches that there is no scope for here, but it is true to assert that there is a
general belief among the Igbo populace that some of these have been used
by some educated elite in pursuance of wealth and power. As there are no

Page 28 of 44
research ‘confessional data’ of these abuses, knowledge is conjectural
although sanctioned by ‘knowing’ locals.

However by far the more widely employed type of witchcraft is the benign
mode used by powerful native doctors. As a result of their strict code of ethics
their employment of their craft is what might be labelled a ‘neutralisation’
process. It is employed to protect clients from rogue malignant forces or
those invoked by man, to impede human progress. The process involves the
acquisition of protective charms and amulets, sacrifices of animals, kola nuts,
drinks, sometimes money, that are made at specific shrines or elsewhere.
Improvement in one’s affairs should follow swiftly. Others have been known
to cast spells and charms that protect against physical harm, where the
individual physically disappears at the moment of impact. I know this. A
relative had it. I watched as he ‘physically disappeared’ and ‘re-appeared’ a
mile down the road from a tragic car accident, when the bus he was riding in
collided with another vehicle, killing everyone on board the two vehicles.

Although there are reams of discourse on witchcraft, written by


ethnographers, scepticism still drips from erudite pens, no matter how
sympathetic or sincerely accounted. Even I, a culture bearer, sometimes find
myself, reluctantly, sceptical. Determined however to delve further and
discover more about its cosmological dynamism, and in the hope that I may
perhaps gain access to esoteric aspects that would otherwise be denied a
non-culture bearer, leaving them with mere conjecture, speculation and
synecdoche expositions, I set out to see two native doctors; one with a
relative who had a medical problem and the other with a friend about possible
interpretation of recurring nightmares.

From the outset, I realised that one does not deal with witches and witchcraft
directly unless one was a witch or wished to become one. However,
employing the services of a native doctor inserts one into its orbit psychically
by allowing and permitting him to use its powers on one’s behalf.

Page 29 of 44
As my relative had medical problems, that even after years of Western
medical consultations had remained unresolved, she and I determined to
investigate any psychic barriers – in other words to discover if she had been
‘bewitched.’

On the appointed day we went with our guide to meet native doctor number
one. The guide explained that I had come as moral support for my relative.
After polite greetings and a diplomatic interval, my guide told him we had
come to ‘see’ him. He nodded his understanding and led us to a small hut
that was the shrine hut, bending low as he entered. We followed and I found
myself in a small windowless room, the only light coming from the open small
door. I sat on a bench on the right, opposite two wooden figurines with fierce
expressions. The looked caked with some dark substance. Ranged around
them were cowrie shells, an iron gong, old British pennies, some naira, a
tortoise shell, kola nuts, alligator peppers, Odo or yellow cam-wood and white
chalk amongst other paraphernalia. Seated to the right of this shrine was Dée
Mos (Uncle Jo) 3 as I came to call him later.

Clearing his throat, noisily, he asked why we had come. My relative launched
into her ‘fertility’ problem. He listened sympathetically and silently, nodding
encouragingly now and again. When she had finished, he moved closer to his
shrine, picked up his tortoise shell and began hitting some discordant notes
on it. As he hit the notes, he called out the names of his ancestors who had
handed him his practice, inviting them to come to his aid in solving the
problem. He next called on the spirit Agwunsi (whose role I shall explain
later) to assist in his divination. After a few more discordant notes on the
tortoise shell, he picked up the alligator pepper pod and split it open. He took
a few, put it in his mouth, chewed for a few seconds and spat it into this
shrine. He then broke the Kola nut, chewed a bit, and offered the rest to us,
throwing some bits into his shrine whilst imploring the spirit Agwunsi to have
some. Next he broke a piece of the white chalk-‘nzu’, threw it into the shrine
and offered my relative a piece and asked her to smear it across her wrist.
He repeated the process with the Odo or yellow cam-wood. After these
preliminaries he began his divination as a diagnostic methodology.

Page 30 of 44
He picked up his ‘Okwo’, a square object, made up of slender bamboo of
about 10” x 10”, and joined together at regular intervals with string. Holding
this in his hands he mumbled some words, sang tuneless (to the human ear
anyway) songs and all the while, calling on the spirit Agwunsi. He then asked
the ‘Okwo’
‘Did someone do this to her?
He watched the object as it slowly swayed to the right.
‘Is it something she did in this life?
It swayed upright and flopped back to the right.
‘Did she do anything in her past life that has come back with her?
It swayed to the right and then left.
‘Are her ancestors angry with her?
It swayed backwards and forwards.
‘Is the problem from the hands of spirits or man?
It swayed but to the left and then right.
‘Is it in her body?
It swayed to the right.
He dropped the Okwo on the floor. He stared at the shrine for a few seconds.
He then asked ‘what do you want me to do? Resuming his tuneless song he
picked up a mixture of dried seeds to cast his ‘Afa’ as these seeds,
sometimes cowries or pieces of dried kola nuts, are known. He stared at
them then recast them about three or perhaps four times.

There was something quite mesmerising about it all despite my scepticism. I


kept darting my eyes around in the hope of espying an ancestor, or a spirit
perhaps. I could almost sense spirits ‘floating’ around it seemed. These
feelings could have been invoked by the ambience and perhaps some
susceptibility. I remain convinced however that I was neither susceptible nor
‘prone to magic’. Dée Mos was neither intimidating nor unpleasant. On the
contrary I found his presence reassuring. Or was I, in spite of my avowal of
scepticism, being invited to rethink my conceptualisations of evil in traditional
metaphysics? He stopped singing, and asked us to write down what he was
going to say. We had come prepared as had been instructed by our ‘guide’.

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‘No man or witchcraft is standing in the way and stopping you conceiving’ he
said to my relative. Look, there is a child that is following you everywhere,
this child is standing beside you now. But there is something you did in your
past life that makes this child think you do not want it. So, you have to ask for
forgiveness: to attain this ‘forgiveness’ he prescribed as follows. ‘Go to the
market, buy a bottle of gin, one kola nut, one yard of white cloth and a hen, a
young hen. After you buy them, wait till evening, when the sun has gone
down but it is still bright. Take them to a path that people used but do not use
anymore. As you lay the things on the ground ‘say “if there’s anything that I
had done in my past life that has angered the spirits, please forgive I did not
do it on purpose. As a mother forgives her child, so I ask for your
forgiveness”. Then pour some gin into the ground but leave the bottle there.
Untie the young hen and let it go. Next time you meet your husband you shall
conceive. I have finished.’

I asked if that was all. He nodded. I told him my relative had been examined
by doctors both in Nigeria and abroad, but to no avail. ‘How could these ‘little’
sacrifices succeed where Western medical science had failed?’

“My daughter,’ he said to my relative, ‘go and do like I have said, I have
finished.’ I then asked him what his fee was and he replied we could leave
nothing or anything we liked. I threw down two hundred naira before the
shrine, surprised at this very, very modest financial remuneration. When I
asked why his fees were so modest, he replied enigmatically, that he would
loose his gift if he used it for self aggrandisement. As there were other clients
waiting to see him, we thanked him and took our leave.

When we returned home, we told her mother who then took us to the market
where we bought the things needed. At dusk we set off to an unused path
that her mother knew of. While she remained in the car, I came out with my
relative and watched her set the sacrificial ingredients on the ground, make
her speech, pour the gin and as she was releasing the young hen, she felt
something very warm drop into her palm. She let out a small scream as she
looked down to find a newly laid egg fall into her palm. What to do with it? He

Page 32 of 44
had not mentioned anything about eggs. Should she leave it there or take it
with her and consult him further on what to do with it?

I stopped by his house on our way home. I told him what had transpired and
asked what should be done with it? He barked a laugh ‘what do you do with
an egg? Eat it! Boil it with your pepper soup! And that was the end of his
prescription!
So my relative was not bewitched. How did he know this?

There are two kinds of Traditional Healers/Native Doctors. The first is ‘Dibia
Nsi’ or herbalist who may be said to be a ‘physical scientist’ in the sense that
he uses physical materials which get into physical contact with the patient he
is treating. He may not be a seer, he merely knows herbs. The other kind of
Native Doctor is the ‘Dibia Ogba Aja’ or the metaphysician. He is the seer,
versed in metaphysical sciences governed by his African traditional concept of
cosmological hierarchy (Onyioha; 1980, p116).

For the Igbo their cosmology postulates that the forces of nature are
departmentalised, with each department headed by a spirit force. In this
hierarchy ‘Anyanwu’ (The Sun) stands above all, declaring the overall powers
of ‘Chineke’ - God the Creator.

Next in the metaphysical hierarchy employed by traditional healers is the


Spirit of Justice, Ofo n’ Ogu with a priest and forest shrine dedicated to it. It is
before this Spirit that contentious dispute and criminality are resolved. The
third is the traditional healers’ structure of metaphysics is the Agwu Nsi – a
female spirit whose role is that of linkage between the metaphysical and
physical world. The spirit is the interpreter between the two worlds. All
traditional healers are under her sway. They are her conduit to speaking to
mortal man, and she conscripts them into her service. As Onyioha explained:
‘she descends and possesses the one she wants to make a native doctor or
traditional healer. The individual begins to behave abnormally and his affairs
all begin to go awry. The chaotic state of his affairs would usually compel him
to consult a Dibia Ogba Aja, a metaphysician who, on divination would reveal

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that Agwunsi has possessed the individual and wishes to be served by him.
Failure to do this would result in further chaos or worse. Upon this divination,
the victim makes preparations to be initiated, a ceremony that takes place
once a year’ (p117).

It is therefore to this spirit, Agwunsi, that the traditional healer owes


allegiance. People say of him ‘Igbakwuru Oke Dibia, Ya agbakwiru Oke Muo’
(when you run to a great healer, he runs to a great spirit). Thus when he
receives clients he engages the spirit actively in his divination.

As earlier recorded in this text, he accomplishes this by first verbally calling on


‘her’ and hitting discordant notes on his tortoise shell. He then chews alligator
pepper and spits it into the shrine. The purpose of the act was to ‘wake’ the
spirit and call the spirit’s attention to the client and to signal the healer’s
readiness to engage the spirit. Next he breaks kola nut, a piece of which is
thrown into the shrine; this it to signify a covenant with the spirit, binding her to
honest dealings.

The white chalk he offers is a declaration of sincerity, a purity associated with


the colour of the chalk and denoting a willingness to help each other. The
‘Odo’ or yellow cam-wood offered to spirit and client is symbolic of the peace
that would govern their coming together in consultations.

The other four spirits in the traditional healers’ structure of metaphysical


hierarchy are Igwe – for the sky and its forces including rain, wind, lightning
and thunder.
Ala, the custodian of land, its laws and code of ethics which the Ibo’s call Nso
Ala or Omenani, for example the code of ethics or taboo that disallow inter-
marriage within the family’.
Imo Miri with its female counterpart ‘Ekwuru Ochie’ for all bodies of water as
well as safe delivery at child birth.
Fijioku is for agriculture and wealth.

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Apart from the above, there are other spirits, deities and oracles that Ibos
consult though they do not have the same prominence in the traditional
healers’ metaphysical repertoire. His main conduit to the spiritual ether
remains the Agwunsi, a method which compared to the Yoruba babalowo-
priest – diviners of the Oracular cult of Ifa, seems more direct and less
complex. Whether this dichotomised methodology is the result of variant
conduit to professional engagement remains a matter for future discourse, for
although the babalowo and the Dibia Ogba Aja both engage in and receive
institutionalised training, the latter is called to the profession as a result of a
direct ‘divine’ intervention as it were. The Ifa priest-diviner however learns to
cast and interpret his ‘ese’, a vast number of poems, as a conduit to his
divination. As Peel explains ‘The babalawo then recites the ‘ese’ appropriate
to the figure cast, one of which will give the key to the client’s problems. Each
‘ese’ takes the form of a mythical precedent; such and such a diviner or
diviners (named by praise-names which often encapsulate the problem) is
consulted by some archetypal figure (such as one of the gods, a king or chief
named by his title or even personifications from fables like Python White Cloth
or Cactus); the client does or does not do what he is told, usually to make a
specified sacrifice; and the outcome is told, usually in the form of an extended
aetiological myth, parable or fable; finally the precedent is applied to the case
in hand. He ascertains that Ifa in effect is ‘a vast corpus of coded messages
about the past’ (Peel; 1987, pg 111) where one has their metaphysical or
physical ailments resolved and a history lesson thrown in for good measure’!
However its constitution and formulation is not the concern of this paper but
just highlighted as a variant of the ways that the profession can be formulated
and perhaps articulated.

My second consultation with a native doctor happened in another Igbo state.


When we arrived at his compound and a short wait on a wooden bench
opposite his shrine hut, later, we were joined by a fairly young man in his mid
thirties who introduced himself as the native doctor. After general greetings
he led us into the shrine hut, and asking us to pick and chew a seed of
alligator pepper from its pod, hanging by the door entrance.

Page 35 of 44
As in a previous visit to another doctor, interior dimensions were small and we
sat on wooden stools facing the shrine itself. Before us were the usual
paraphernalia of his trade, the carved figurines caked with substances,
bottles containing unidentified liquids, chalk, yellow cam-wood, cowrie shells,
dried seeds, money both paper and coins and other bits and pieces.

Without any preambles, he proceeded to tell me about his ancestral


credentials. He stated that his mother came from a village that was notorious
for witchcraft – bad witchcraft, his uncles from another village, notorious for
their strong medicine-men. He reeled off a list of relatives that were in some
way or another involved in strong medicine and witchcraft.

He then asked what had brought me to his shrine. As I had stated earlier in
this paper, at that time, I had been having very upsetting and recurring
nightmares that had frightened me badly. One half of that dream had come
true and I was worried about the significance of the other half.

Unlike Dée Mos who called on Agwunsi and cast his Afa, this doctor only
employed his ‘Okwo’. I asked if my dream was meaningful. Using his Okwo,
he seemed evasive but would only tell me that I am lucky because God has
been protecting me from heaven. However, he could protect me even further
by making me immune to bullet, knife and acid attacks. Acid!!?? Oh, in case
anyone threw acid at me, he explained.
He explained he had done these for many Ibos living in London and America.
He showed me a diary that contained the names, albeit first names and phone
numbers of his clients abroad, all of which were recognisable telephone
codes.

In the name of anthropological empiricism I agreed to this process. Expecting


to be told to give anything that I wished in remuneration, I was shocked at his
charge of fifty thousand naira! ; to put this in context, the average salary in
Nigeria at that time was six thousand naira for a month’s work. His fee was
more than eight times that, an absolute fortune to the beleaguered Nigerian

Page 36 of 44
worker. I baulked at this and he feigned anger and stomped out of his shrine,
paced about outside for a few minutes then returned.

The good doctor sat down again and patiently explained that it could have
been more but as he knew the man who had brought me, he felt obliged, as a
favour to him, to charge so little. He claimed that the ingredients he would
require were expensive as he would have to travel to another village to buy a
special rooster, seeds and other ingredients. Stating that I did not have that
sort of money on me, I offered what I had, which was N10, 000. He agreed to
accept it so long as I promised to send the rest, not later than a month from
the day.
The important point to be deduced from the above illustration is the escalating
commercialisation of witchcraft or traditional healing, highlighting divergent
methodologies. The one with ‘Dée Mos was steeped in tradition with its
attendant constraints. Dée Mos did not veer from the problem tabled before
the spirit Agwunsi, whose assistance he implored. He did not charge
exorbitant fees nor did he offer to buy things for one’s cure. Instead one was
asked to buy the ingredients and directed on how to use them.

The other charged exorbitant fees, offered other services like an adept and
wily salesman, services of which he was aware were in demand by the
‘modern’ Ibo as evidenced by his full diary of contact phone numbers.
Whether his witchcraft works is not so much the issue here as the fact that
rampant commercialisation has left native doctors with tattered reputations
and a sceptical populace. As Onyioha said of them ‘such mechanical native
doctors were more often than not inefficient. They would not divine
successfully, they would claim to cure or do everything but without curing or
achieving anything,’ (Onyioha 1980 p13). A similar stance is taken by
Pritchard who postulated that a clever witch doctor can claim to be versed in
all and metaphysical sundry. Hence ‘he can locate and combat witchcraft.
He can cure the sick and warn all over whom hang impending dangers. He is
one of the means by which the Hoe culture and hunting may yield their fruits
to human labour, since through his magic they were freed from witchcraft
which blasts all endeavour’. Furthermore, ‘he may be a witch himself’. In this

Page 37 of 44
case he possesses ‘mangu’ and ‘ngua’, witchcraft and magic. He can harm or
protect, kill or cure’ (Pritchard; 1976, p111). Regarding native doctors who
have misused witchcraft, Onyioha concludes that ‘some of those who have
acquired the power of witchcraft have abused it in molesting their fellow man’
(pg 13).

However, over the past several years and with an increasing number of the
educated elites’ renewed and reawakened interest in African traditional
religion and healing practices, regulatory bodies have been instituted to
monitor the ‘Dibia’ or native doctors’ societies, to ensure honest
experimentation and good practices. One of these regulatory bodies is the
Organisation of the Traditional Medicine Practitioners in Abia State, with its
code of conduct and practices and all the doctors exhorted to become
members in order to practice. They are also enjoined in their Practitioners
(4)
Handbook to be ‘specific in their area of expertise and stick to and conduct
research needed to improve upon it (pg 6). Furthermore the Practitioner is
enjoined to ‘not lie and cheat patients by way of claiming ability to cure
ailments he knows he cannot cure just to get money; not to use his expertise
to destroy life but only to save life’ and not engage in ritual murder and human
sacrifice’ (p6). The above exhortations also include the practice of witchcraft
as most native doctors are witches for reasons mentioned earlier in this
essay.

Implicit in the above recommendations are realisations that traditional


medicine including witchcraft are being reconstituted to transparency and
recognised as culturally contextual and relevant, deserving its place in
anthropological discourse on modernity.

In my search for esoteric truths and knowledge of witchcraft, I realised that


those truths needed to be twinned with empirical evidence, affording me an
understanding of its relevance in modernity for the educated Igbo elite, its
dimensions and structure, a knowledge that I hoped would afford
understanding of the configuration of witchcraft and the traditional healer. Are

Page 38 of 44
those terms interchangeable or are they separate entities? Are
conceptualisations of witchcraft as purely evil and demonic, apt?

Witchcraft, perceived, conceptualised and propagated as an agency for base


ultimate power, wealth, social control proliferating the fabric of social order
and a rampant rampaging monolithic institution, an African universal, as
espoused by Orthodox, Pentecostal and Spiritual churches, is pandering to
hysteria and irrationality. All this is of course given sanction in anthropological
discourse, where anthropologists declare that ‘sorcery accusations plagued
the daily lives of Cameroonians and the works of many others (Helbga (1968);
Laburthe-Tolra (1981, 1985); De Rosney (1981); Geschiere (1982) showing
that sorcery was at the heart of village authority. Indeed they postulate that a
general consensus existed that believed sorcerers have multiplied and now to
roam at large, unchecked, destroying the social fabric (Rowlands and
Warnier; 1988, pg 121) Meyer weighs in with Accra’s hysteria over ‘the devil
and his cohorts – particularly witches, exhorting ‘these malevolent forces
through popular high-life songs and literature to … go away from me’ (Meyer;
1995, p236).

Whilst not denying that witchcraft/sorcery is generally perceived as


malevolently constituted, anthropological discourse has generally tended to
subsume its duality of good and evil, being the two sides of the same coin,
concentrating instead on ‘the devil is coming’ hysteria of its ethnographic
subjects who just happen to be all Christians.

In all the hysteria it is exigent to point out that the basic and essential purpose
of witchcraft is to serve the best interests of man. The native doctor who
understands these forces of nature bend them to his will to serve ailing
mankind. It was never meant to hurt or harm.

As Meyer noted ‘Both Spiritual and Pentecostal Churches provide believers


with remedies and protections against all sorts of illnesses and mishaps
attributed to the machinations of the devil’ (p236). So does witchcraft.
Furthermore the Igbo educated elite have grasped that fact too.

Page 39 of 44
From childhood, the Igbo has been the recipient of such empirical knowledge
– of native doctors who have access to witchcraft and have harnessed it for
good, as well as bad deeds. The past therefore is not a foreign country. As
Ingold points out, it is like our childhood, ‘irrevocably left behind. Yet... have
not the events of our own childhood played a formative role in the
development of our own capacities of awareness and response?
(Ingold; 1996, p202). The past perforce informs the present. Hence the
inability of the twin forces of Christian religious fervour and formal education,
to completely eradicate a knowledge that is so deeply embedded in the Igbo
collective consciousness.

This knowledge, now reformulated, the Igbo elite has then sought to use its
strategies to reinsert themselves into Nigeria’s economic ‘boom’, into
accumulative wealth, politics and power as the diagram below illustrates:

Ego witchcraft strategies wealth politics


Power Ego.

He could now fulfil the basic determinants of ruling elite status: education,
relative wealth and subsequent high office in state institutions and in the
process gaining sufficient status to wield power. Thus ensconced, he can
provide evidence of benevolence by redistributing persons and wealth,
helping his competitive people to ‘get up’. There is however an insidious side
to all this ‘spirit of competition’

The competitive streak is now so fierce that Ibos are now renowned both at
home and abroad as being unhelpful and even ‘hostile to their fellow Ibos, as
Ottenberg acknowledged and commented about the ‘certain malevolent and
suspicious attitudes that the Igbo hold toward other Igbo’ (Ottenberg; 1986,
p224).
Where the Yoruba and Hausa would cooperate and assist each other, the
Igbo would be reluctant for fear of being surpassed.
The irony is that, being so competitive, they fear it in others.

Page 40 of 44
Notes

1. Chief Prophet K. O.K. Onyioha is the Spiritual Head of the Chiism


(Godianism) and the Chairman of the Organisation of Traditional
Religions of Africa. A brilliant author and orator, he made several
lecture tours of American Universities and was invited to address the
United Nations Special Sessions on World Disarmament in 1978. I
spent many hours with him on discussions of Igbo basic cosmology.
His insights were invaluable to me in researching this paper. The
treatise on the Igbo cosmological origins that I have written here is very
much an abridged version. Sadly, he passed away last year in 2003.

2. This was part of the speech made by Achebe in 1962 for a conference,
the title of which was “A Conference of African Writers of English
Expression” held at The Makerere University College, Kampala
Uganda. Ngugi was also an invitee.

3. Dée Mos (Uncle Moses) was a giant of his trade as a native doctor and
was well respected. I met him through my father. I am grateful to him
for taking the time to explain some of the dynamics of witchcraft and
traditional healing to me. Unfortunately he passed away recently.

4. This thin pamphlet called the Practioner’s Handbook was printed under
the auspices of the Abia State government.

Page 41 of 44
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