“The Spirit of Competition”: A Conduit to the Modernity of Witchcraft Among Some Igbo Educated...

“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

Language” (2) 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.

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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).

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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).

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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

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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.

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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

Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe NCNC’s religious wing. Chief K. O.K. Onyioha (1) 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-

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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

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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

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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

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‘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.

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‘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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

Handbook (4) 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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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“The Spirit of Competition”: A Conduit to the Modernity of Witchcraft Among Some Igbo Educated...

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