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This a shame, when is all said and done Obusonjo hands will be in the mess. Uba is Obasanjo's inlaw how did he know to take Ngige to shrine to swore if his in-law Obusonjo is not aware of it

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The answer is yes, if the inlaws is the Obasanjo family, and the household is the Ubah family. - Enobong Umoren

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This is about Anambra not Ndi Igbo or Yoruba rituals We should all condem this ritualist behavior rather than what Obasanjo should have done. - Waypoint1Biafra

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THE police authorities have ordered a clamp down on shrines and other fetish set-ups across the country which share similarities of operations with the recently discovered Ogwugwu shrine in Okija, Ihiala local government area of Anambra State.

Vanguard gathered that the Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Tafa Balogun, who was shocked by the Okija discoveries, contacted the presidency after which he issued a directive that fetish enclaves posing threats and grave danger to the citizenry should be identified and appropriate sanctions imposed. Vanguard learnt that the police authorities also ordered thorough investigations into the background of the patrons of such shrines.

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That human sacrifice happened in Biafra is a major shame. We normally associate this with the backward Bini and Yoruba cultures

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I am glad every right thinking Igbo person across the world has condenmed this shameful discovery in Okija

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Guardian

Sunday, August 8, 2004

Ohaneze And The Shrine At Okija
By Reuben Abati

The response of the Ohaneze to the discovery of a museum of human skulls and skeletons, a den of cannibals, an evil forest (as it has been appropriately described) in Okija, Anambra state exposes the serious crisis of thought, togetherness and development facing this society. Speaking through its Secretary General, Joe Achuzie, the Ohaneze, the umbrella cultural body for all Igbos worldwide denounced the police for trying to ridicule Igbo culture and tradition. We have been told that the Okija shrine has been in existence since a remote period of antiquity and that it is a traditional Supreme Court where persons in dispute go to swear on oath.

Incidentally this is the same shrine where Governor Chris Ngige purportedly entered into an anti-democratic pact with his Godfather, Chris Uba before he became Governor. The priests of the shrine, sitting like the justices of the Supreme Court, invoke their patron-deity to inflict punishment on the guilty. There is only one punishment: death. And when the guilty dies, he cannot be buried, he or she becomes the property of the deity. The corpse is dumped at the shrine, to rot away. The only dignity that is accorded the victim is the notation of his name in a register. This is the culture that the Ohaneze is defending! Achuzie went on to fulminate: why is the police targeting Igbos? Why is no one raiding similar shrines in other parts of Nigeria among other ethnic groups? He then concluded that this is yet another case of "ethnic marginalisation", and an anti-Igbo move by the Federal Government. On the strength of these arguments, the Ohaneze has warned the police to stay away from all shrines in Igboland, and to ensure that nothing happens to the priests of the Okija shrine who are custodians of the people's culture.

The position of the Ohaneze is so predictable and cheap; it is laughable and ridiculous. Is the Ohaneze speaking for Ndigbo or it is merely expressing the opinion of certain individuals who are packaging their personal preferences as the position of the entire group? The latter is more likely to be the case. So-called cultural groups often fall into this trap, namely the tendency to ethnicise every situation and seek to heat up the polity whereas the problem is their own failure to engage in rigorous thinking. It is not the police that is ridiculing Igbos, it is the Ohaneze that has ridiculed itself. On the matter of the shrine at Okija where there is a Satanic library of skulls and skeletons, the Ohaneze cannot possibly be speaking for the Igbo. If anything, Igbos at home and abroad have been jubilating since the police uncovered the shrine at Okija. They do not see it as an attack on Igbo culture, but as the end of the road for a cult of cannibals who hide under tradition to commit atrocities.

Indeed, the Ohaneze put its foot in its mouth when it tried to pass on this incident as tradition. Is the organisation aware that we are living in modern times under the rule of law? The laws of the land do not recognize any such tradition that is repugnant to natural justice, equity and good conscience. To set up a jungle court which administers justice outside the normal courts of the land is illegal and criminal. The fact that the people take their cases to an illiterate priest in the jungle and a metaphysical being called a deity does not legalise the offence. It does not in fact matter that they do so willingly and enthusiastically. When the priests of Okija are charged to court as they should, they would discover that tradition is not one of the defences available under the criminal code. The Criminal Code classifies as a crime, the possession of fetish objects, the use of voodoo, unlawful trial by ordeal, criminal charms (Sections 207 - 213) as well as the membership of unlawful societies (sections 62 -66). Would the Ohaneze recruit lawyers to argue other wise in a court of law?

There is also involved in this, a question of human rights. The most basic principle here is the dignity of the human person. At the Okija shrine, this has been violated. Corpses are left to rot away, humans skeletons are turned into furniture, and the Ohaneze is saying that this is good? The reaction of the international community can be easily imagined. Photographs of those skulls evoke only a set of familiar images: Rwanda, Hitler's death camps, crimes against humanity! The existence of such shrines as the ones in Okija devalues our humanity. And I hope the Ohaneze after a fashion would not respond to this by arguing that there are terrorists in the Middle East, and worse atrocities in Sudan!

Tradition. Culture. Religion. Now, these three words have become unto themselves a kind of fetish with persons who would like to remain natives instead of citizens of a progressive society. They behave as if they are trapped in a post-modernist, post-colonial society whereas where they truly belong is the pre-colonial, indeed pre-historic, society. When these people talk about tradition, they make the past sound like an idyllic age when everything African was proper and purposeful. But the truth about that past is that it was imperfect in many ways. Human sacrifice and the romanticisation of human rights abuses (including widowhood rites, discrimination against women in general, and occultism) are some of those imperfections. For African societies to grow and play a more meaningful role in the world, these imperfect practices have to be abandoned, otherwise the African would continue to remain a victim of his own traditions. We need cultural re-orientation, and clearly, the Ohaneze leadership requires some urgent education.

I want to add that the Ohaneze needs to do some soul-searching. It is precisely the kind of comment it has made about the Okija shrine that encourages the view that there is a crisis of leadership in Igboland. But having said this, let me move on to some other preliminary conclusions. A tip-off from one fellow who has said he led the police to the shrine because he is prepared to lose his life in the process made the role of the police in the Okija event possible. A member of the Hare Krishna sect, he does not believe in the deity at Okija and he thinks the police should have a look at the death camp in the village. The import of this is simple: police work would be made a lot easier if people are willing to trust the police with information.

All over the world, the fight against crime in society is facilitated by the co-operation of members of the community. The man who blew the whistle on Okija has demonstrated some level of trust in the Nigeria Police. That trust must not be abused. Many Nigerians lost confidence in the Nigeria police in the past because of the way informants ended up. There are persons out there who know a lot more about other centres of evil and crime in our society who would be willing to assist the police. They would be interested in how this case is handled. The informant must be given adequate protection (already I think a mistake has been made with the disclosure of his identity so early in the investigations!) but even more important is the will of the police and the authorities to see that justice is done and expeditiously too.

The police has been receiving a lot of commendation for its pro-activeness in this case, but the integrity of the institution is also on trial. The public is already expressing fears about how the case is likely to be handled; those fears must not be confirmed. The three registers containing the names of the victims of Okija shrine must not suddenly develop wings and vanish into thin air. The Anambra Commissioner of Police must protect those registers, with his life if it comes to that! The investigation must be thorough and only the best men in the police should be assigned to this case. In previous criminal cases in court, judges have been known to express despair over shoddy investigation by the police and the disappearance of useful evidence.

And what about the blood-thirsty deity? There has been no news about it in the various media accounts. The deity should also be arrested; the shrine should be declared a crime scene and kept under vigilant watch. The priests must be made to name all their clients in high and low places. This must not become another Clifford Orji case which first drew our attention to the existence of cannibals trading in human parts in our midst. Clifford Orji was soon declared insane, and there has been no news about him since then. This must also not become another Otokoto trial. That particular case dragged on meaninglessly and the accused persons were almost escaping justice, until the people of Owerri insisted on justice or nothing and the state felt compelled to do its duty.

The people of Anambra have a role to play in this instance. In the last five years of democracy, there has been one bad news or the other from Anambra. The state has acquired a dubious reputation as the centre of election rigging, rituals, armed robbery, and the sanctuary of head-hunters and professional assassins. This is worrisome considering that Anambra is also the home of some of Nigeria's leading thinkers and citizens (Achebe, Emeka Anyaoku, Emeagwali, Chike Obi, Chukwuemeka Ike, Ojukwu, Zik, Nwafor Orizu, Ukpabi Asika, Okigbo, Okadigbo, Ume-Ezeoke, Ekwueme, Ekene Dili Chukwu). It is also, and this can be said matter-of-factly, the headquarters of Christianity in Eastern Nigeria. Fr. Cyprian Tansi, who was beatified a few years ago by the Pope and Francis Cardinal Arinze who is one of the likely successors to the present Pope, are both from this state. This irony explains the complexity of the Nigerian personality and the grey areas of human life. But the civil society in Anambra must stand firm, as the people of Owerri once did, and insist on justice, and by so doing reject the bad label that a corrupt leadership (cultural and political) is imposing on them.

The rest of us as Nigerians must be worried about Ohaneze's argument that many persons in the East rather than go to the regular courts of the land prefer to patronise shrines for the resolution of disputes. It is even a matter of public record that the incumbent President, General Olusegun Obasanjo as he then was once publicly asked that the "juju" option be applied to drive the racists from power in South Africa. One other Nigerian "big man" also once suggested that public officials should be made to swear with Ogun, or Amadioha or any other local deity on assumption of office as a way of stamping out corruption. These recommendations are made, and ritualism survives in our society as an expression of lack of confidence in due process, the modern state and its institutions, and particularly the administration of justice in our land. This is the bigger dilemma and challenge that the priests and cultists of Okija and their yet unknown clients have brought before the entire nation.

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MONDAY QUARTER-BACKING: The Barbarous Acts at Okija

Mobolaji E. Aluko, PhD
alukome@aol.com
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INTRODUCTION

On November 15, 1957, during colonial Nigerian time, a group of Nigerian policemen from the Criminal and Investigation Department (CID) of Northern Nigeria and Lagos surreptitiously descended on Abakaliki, Eastern Nigeria, posing as ordinary people. They were trying to find out about the murder of one lady called Nwamgbo Igbeagu, the first among more than one-hundred wives of one prominent , local chief, 64-year-old Nwiboko Obodo. Originally the key-holder of monies kept in hundreds of safes in Obodo's care by various people in the society, Nwamgbo had not only aroused the suspicion of her husband when some of the money got stolen, but was also suspect when Obodo's son Sunday by another woman died mysteriously. A tribunal under the superintendence of Nwiboki found Nwamgbo guilty. However, the traditional executioners, unwilling to carry out the capital punishment because "We cannot take the life of our dear chief", were relieved by Obodo himself, who strangled his own wife with a bicycle chain.

It was this heinous act - reported by Nwamgbo's mother who had reported her daughter to be missing - that brought the CID into Abakaliki six-months later, with one Mr. Anoruo posing to Obodo as a medicine-man able to prevent the police from arresting Obodo.

On February 28, 1958, Anoruo arrested Obodo and seven members of what turned out to be the Odozi Obodo Society. It turned out that Nwaegbo's murder was the mere tip of an ice-berg: flaunting several "juju houses", the Odozi Obodo Society had terrorized Abakaliki and the environs for nine years, allegedly killing as many as 400 people in the guise of exacting punishment for sundry evil deeds of those people. Nwobiko's Odozi Obodo Society was allegedly the "watchdogs" of Abakiliki, to "safeguard [its] peace and morals. It punished severely any person who stole, committed adultery or was guilty of any anti-social activities." Chief Obodo had naturally became rich in the process.

A few months after their arrest, the criminals were sentenced to death by hanging, and after exhausting their appeals, were hanged by their necks until their death in about June 1959.

So ended one phase of the Odozi Obodo Society.....until these latest murderous discoveries of the Ogwugwu Shrines of Okija.


CORPSES EVERYWHERE AT THE SHRINES AT OKIJA !

I shall spare the reader the gory details, but the brief sketch is as follows: on August 5, 2004, Nigerians woke up to the horrid news that the Nigerian Police had recovered as many as 20 human skulls, 50 corpses, some still fresh and headless and in their coffins. Thirty suspects were also arrested including the priests of two of the shrines - Ogwugwu Isiula and Ogwugwu Akpu.. [Other shrines are Ogwugwu Mmili, Ogwugwu Apunama, Ogwugwu Ahaya Afa, Ogwugwu Idigo and Ogwugwu Idimgo in various hamlets strewn around Abakaliki.] The 80-man-strong police operation led by the Commander of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) in the state, CSP Mr. Gabriel Haruna and the state commissioner of police, Mr. Felix Ogbaudu. The case blew open at the specific instance of a modern-day Anoruo, but this time not a policeman but a Hare Krishna convert posing as a medicine-man: Chukwumezie Igwe of Umuhu Village, Okija.

May God bless him and protect him. [Amen.]


THE OTHER SIDE – ARGUMENT FOR TRADITIONAL RELIGION

The general reaction of people in Nigeria and the world who have read the Okija story and seen the pictures has been one of profound horror. For example, the Senate President, Adolphus Wabara, himself of Eastern Igbo stock, has endorsed the raid on Okija shrines asking Ndigbo to rise against shrine worshiping. Nevertheless, there have also been some talk of defence of traditional religion, the most prominent (and shocking to this writer) being from one ex-Colonel Chief Joseph Oseloka G. Achuzia, Secretary-General of the pan-Igbo socio-cultural group, Ohanaeze. Hopefully speaking for himself and not for the respectable group, Achuzia, of Western Igbo stock, dismissed the police raid as “ridiculous” and stating that “worshipping at shrines is not a new thing in Nigeria.”

According to newspaper reports, Achuzia [a former Biafran military commander with the aliases “Hannibal” and “Air Raid” for exploits in the Midwest and later Okigwe inside Biafra] stated as follows:

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He said the issue portrayed the Igbo as cannibals, alleging that the police were out to rubbish the Igbo.

"Unless the police have no other job to do, then they can go on making further discoveries on things that are in consonance with ancient history. Everybody in Igboland and Nigeria knows about the existence of shrines everywhere. Go to Hausaland, go to Yorubaland, go to every part of Nigeria, there exists one shrine or another. These things are part of Nigerian tradition. So, unmasking one in Ihiala is not new. These skulls have been there long ago, and I do not see anything new about it except that the police want to portray the Igbo as cannibals. But this is not what the police should be involved in.

He said the issue portrayed the Igbo as cannibals, alleging that the police were out to rubbish the Igbo.

"Unless the police have no other job to do, then they can go on making further discoveries on things that are in consonance with ancient history. Everybody in Igboland and Nigeria knows about the existence of shrines everywhere. Go to Hausaland, go to Yorubaland, go to every part of Nigeria, there exists one shrine or another. These things are part of Nigerian tradition. So, unmasking one in Ihiala is not new. These skulls have been there long ago, and I do not see anything new about it except that the police want to portray the Igbo as cannibals. But this is not what the police should be involved in.

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At one level of analysis, Achuzia speaks for many people: on the one hand, the traditionalists, who see nothing wrong with swift justice rendered within traditional religion, and on the other hand, the genuinely non-pagan adherents of different faiths, who see the occasion as an opportunity to blow the lead off the hypocrisy which is practiced by the syncretic adherents of their own religion. The latter worship Allah on Friday and Jesus Christ on Sunday, and then crawl to the caves of Ogwugwu Isiala and other favored shrines on other days to swear oaths and drink hemlock potions before babbling “dibias” and “babalawos.”

At another level, he is wrong: whatever we wish to say, in modern days, tradition has its limits.


THE LIMITS OF TRADITION – A PERSONAL VIEW

Much as I respect many aspects of tradition and local mores, particularly as they relate with respect for fellow men, there MUST be a limit, and that limit stops at LEGAL and CAPITAL issues: matters of LAW and matters of DEATH. These two aspects are inter-twined, actually.

With respect to LAW, yes, I am in support of CUSTOMARY LAW as agreed to be locally enforced by the participants, provided the usual steps of appraising the defendant of his alleged crime, confronting him with his accusers, giving him or her an opportunity to defend himself or herself, and exerting predictable and appropriate - not cruel, disproportionately unusual and capricious punishment. The caveats however must be as follows:

(1) it must not include capital punishment; that must be left to the CONSENSUALLY AGREED LAW OF THE LAND; is that not why we are vexed about Sharia (and the amputation of hands) and its threats of capital punishment for adultery and the like?

(2) every case, particularly those involving capital punishment, must be APPEALABLE to a higher court - and again particularly those involving capital punishment - including to the highest court of the land: the Supreme Court, unless it declines to hear the case.


OF DEITIES AND HUMAN BEINGS

There are many reasons for these caveats: All these practices that involve both DEITIES and HUMAN BEINGS (as dibias and babalawos, etc.) are fraught with DANGERS of HUMAN FRAILTIES and subject to abuse. Like the modern polygraph test, it depends on who is applying a legal test and to who it is being applied. Suppose the potion drinker is so frightened that he dies of a heart attack contemplating a wrong outcome, even if he is innocent? Suppose the "dibia" favors one of the two "contestants" and unrighteously mixes different potions, killing the innocent one? Suppose even the questions asked are wrongly framed - and hence wrongly answered to?

There can be so many "supposes..."

So, the greatest “crimes” against humanity here are three-fold:

(1) to the victims, while they were living. Justice could have been miscarried.

(2) to the dead victims: if their corpses are so mistreated by being exposed to the elements and the like, then justice to the dead is ALWAYS miscarried. If in fact the tradition of a particular place is not to bury such "bad" people in their forests, then who knows whether there are some more "tolerant" places in Nigeria or elsewhere who might accept to bury these bodies with dignity? After all, the world now extends beyond Okija.

(3) to those who do not come from this area, but who, with the world being told that such terrible things are happening in "NIGERIA", assign all of Nigeria to such barbarous deeds. Yes, I consider them barbarous, no matter what anybody says, even if they don’t agree, which they have every right not to.

Here is the point: If Okija, or Anambra State, or Igboland were one country of its own - let us call it, for the sake of argument "Biafra" - and such barbarous acts were carried out, then it would be announced to the world that "Thousands of headless, unburied corpses were found in shrines at Okija, Biafra" . Achuzia and the rest of his co-defendants of tradition could then defend the practice as being the ridder of evils in their country. Fine. But for me to be in the same COUNTRY where such barbarous acts are being carried, and to have them hailed when I so FUNDAMENTALLY disagree with them, is violent to every instinct in me. I oppose it with tremendous vehemence. It is with that same feeling that I oppose not Sharia but Sharia’s imposition of deadly punishment to victims in Nigeria.

In the very recent and apt words of Achuzia himself, “We are either one country – or no country.” And to amplify his statement: “We are either one country – or many countries.”


EPILOGUE

I hope and I trust that full justice will be carried out against all of those who engaged in murderous acts in Okija and environs, like was done to those in the Odozi Obodo Society. One hopes that the major crime-busting witness – Maazi Chukwumezie Igwe of Umuhu Village – will be adequately protected to give outstanding testimony against any perpetrators, although with Chief Bola Ige’s assassination trial and the ongoing comical saga of the Ibori identification trial, our justice system is once again on trial. The police should not rush to destroy evidence of crime, nor allow anybody to “sanitize” the scenes.

The whole world is watching - again.

I rest my case.


________________________________________________ BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://allafrica.com/stories/200408050319.html
Police Recover 20 Human Skulls, 1 Corpse in Shrines

http://allafrica.com/stories/200408050345.html
Raid On Shrines: Police Recover 50 Corpses, 20 Skulls

http://allafrica.com/stories/200408050648.html
Nigeria: Police Arrest Witchdoctors After Finding 50 Mutilated Bodies in 'Evil Forest'

http://allafrica.com/stories/200408060030.html
Police Uncover 10 Fresh Shrines, Ohanaeze Scribe Slams Raid

http://allafrica.com/stories/200408060397.html
Anambra: 4 Fresh Bodies, 10 More Skulls Found Police to Raid Other Shrines Today As Villagers Flee

http://allafrica.com/stories/200408090094.html
Wabara Backs Okija Shrine Raid - IG Sends More Policemen

http://allafrica.com/stories/200408090191.html
Raids On Okija Shrines: How Police Uncovered the Unholy Acts

http://allafrica.com/stories/200408090347.html
More Corpses Recovered - It's a Hideout for Fraudsters
http://allafrica.com/stories/200408090648.html
The Shock Finds at Okija

http://allafrica.com/stories/200408090898.html
Okija Horror Shrines: 10 Registers of Victims Found

http://allafrica.com/stories/200408080036.html
Horror Shrines: End of the Road for God of Okija?

http://nigerianmuse.com/fortherecord/?u=AbatiOhanezeOkija.htm
Ohaneze And The Shrine At Okija
Reuben Abati [Guardian, Sunday, August 8, 2004]

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Thirty suspects were also arrested including the priests of two of the shrines - Ogwugwu Isiula and Ogwugwu Akpu.. [Other shrines are Ogwugwu Mmili, Ogwugwu Apunama, Ogwugwu Ahaya Afa, Ogwugwu Idigo and Ogwugwu Idimgo in various hamlets strewn around Abakaliki.] ...Aluko

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Abakaliki is not even in Anambra State. This man makes up stuff just to make himself feel like a commentator on nigerian affairs

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