Daily Independent Online.
*
Tuesday, August 24, 2004.
Ogwugwu deity as a
metaphor
By Ikechukwu
Amechi
[email protected]
Nigeria’s Inspector-General of Police
(IGP), Mr. Tafa Balogun is no doubt basking in the euphoria of the smashing of
the Okija predatory shrines by men of the Nigerian Police. Last Wednesday, the
IG visited the Okija shrines for the first time since the scandal blew open. It
was a well choreographed visit with all the pomp and ceremony that can be
arranged. To borrow a street parlance, Balogun stormed Okija with lorry loads
of mobile policemen armed to the teeth.
According to media reports, the IG who
arrived Okija at about 2.27pm had over 200 heavily armed mobile and regular
policemen led by the state Commissioner for Police, Mr. Felix Ogbaudu guarding
the place. To underscore the significance of the visit, the police boss went
with other members of the police high command including the Deputy
Inspector-General (DIG) of Police, Mr. Sunday Ehindero and former Commissioner
for Police in the state, Mr. Adanya Gaya.
Balogun enjoyed every bit of the limelight,
which the Okija debacle afforded him, just as he rhapsodised in the photo
opportunity. His picture on the cover page of Vanguard newspaper last Thursday
which was taken at the Ogwugwu-Akpu shrine where he was walking with his
swagger stick only reminded one of the monstrous Idi Amin Dada (of cursed
memory), former Ugandan despot.
But beyond the photo opportunity, Balogun
talked tough. As the ‘smart cop’ he is, he saw in the Okija ruckus
a window of opportunity to burnish the sullied image of the police. The IGP
said he could not believe what he saw and vowed that the police would not allow
any “barbaric deity” in this age. Balogun no doubt needs all the
image laundering that he can afford to snatch at any given opportunity, not
only for the beleaguered institution he heads but also for himself. So, I do
not begrudge his holier-than-thou Okija posturing.
But at the end of the day, I have a hunch
that the Okija debacle will only succeed in exposing us (Nigerians) as the most
hypocritical and duplicitous people that ever lived on the face of the earth.
It is bad enough that a country that deserves an entry into the Guinness Book
of World Records as having perhaps the highest concentration of churches per
square kilometre in the world also boasts of such evil shrines where depraved and
vile characters carry out sundry pernicious and devilish crimes against
humanity. Nigerians in a poll conducted early this year in Britain were voted
the most religious people in the world. Granted, the word religion could be
used in a generic sense in which case, it includes the orthodox, unorthodox and
even traditional religions. But it is scandalous that in a country where
“pastors and men of God” are churned out on a daily basis, where
churches are mushrooming at an incredible rate, where the fastest growing
industry is religion and where anyone who does not lay claim to being a
“born again” is seen as the devil’s doppelganger, the horror
of Okija thrived till this moment.
And make no mistake about it, the Okija
evil business has thrived all these years simply because the shrines had and
still have patrons. If you ask any of the arrested priests, he will tell you
that in most cases, they had more clients than they could effectively cope
with. In fact, more often than not, the sheer number of Nigerians in desperate
need of the malevolent and iniquitous wares they were hawking overwhelmed them.
I dare say too that if their patrons were only their ilk, that is, fellow idol
worshippers, the “Okija business” rather than blossoming would have
died naturally eons ago. It is no secret that majority of those who go in the
dead of the night to genuflect and curtsy in the presence of the ill-educated
Okija chief priests are not the so-called devout Christians and Muslims in our
midst but the well-heeled in our midst.
Because this is a nation that thrives in
pretence, all of us are today wringing our hands in animated shock and mock
disgust. For very obvious reasons, some Nigerians would wish that the Okija
brouhaha continues to enjoy the prominent media attention it is enjoying
presently. For one, it will help sustain the image of the Igbo as a nation
peopled by cannibals living in pre-historic era. Suddenly what should have been
viewed from the prism of a national disgrace is being passed off as a heritage
of the Igbo.
But how many Nigerians, both the wretched
of the earth and those born with silver spoon in their mouth, but most
especially the power elite can swear they never visited the “Okija
shrine” which has become a metaphor for all the evil in our society? The
hue and cry that has suffused the land in the past few weeks over the gory
discoveries in Okija mangrove borders on hypocrisy. As Tafa Balogun rightly
pointed out, there are specific sections of our Constitution that deal with
membership of secret cults. How many Nigerians have ever been prosecuted for
their membership of such societies, which is an infraction of the
country’s grundnorm? Didn’t Chief Olu Falae, the presidential
candidate of AD/APP in 1999 drag General Olusegun Obasanjo, PDP’s
presidential candidate who was declared the winner of the polls to court for
being a member of a secret society, precisely the Ogboni, a condition, which he
said automatically disqualified the later from becoming a president? Did the
president deny being a member of the Ogboni society? Is Ogboni not a secret
society? What became of the case? How many of those who are screaming their
heads off today said then that membership of such societies is part of our
culture? How many Nigerian politicians are not members of secret cults? Can the
top civil servant or company chief executive who is not a member please raise
up his hand to be counted? Can that judge sitting on the bench and dispensing
“justice” who is not a member of a secret society or patron of the “Okija
shrine” please stand up to be counted? Can that top police officer that
has not visited any evil shrine to seek for power so as to keep his job cast
the first stone?
It was amusing watching Tafa Balogun
straining to assure that the register of patrons which the Okija chief priests
had the presence of mind to keep would be published. That promise has been made
for the umpteenth time and you ask yourself, why the stress? Were the entries
in the register made in a strange language that nobody can decode? I dare say that
at the end of the day, the “Okija Register” like the Oputa Panel
Report, like the Okigbo Report and many others will not see the light of the
day. I will not be surprised if the same Tafa Balogun comes back tomorrow to
tell Nigerians that the registers were missing.
In the event that their contents are made
public, be assured that they would be doctored. Some names must have gone
missing. It is only then you will appreciate that the Okija debacle has become
a veritable tool of political vendetta. And the Tafa Balogun we know, a man who
would write an interim and final report drawing from the same premise but
arriving at diametrically opposing conclusions will have no qualms doing that.
When and if that register is published, I bet you, the chief priests whose
property they (registers) were in the first place would be shocked. That is, if
many of them live long enough to read the publication. It will be a surprise if
many of them don’t die mysteriously in detention or declared rave mad
anytime from now. By the way, what has happened to Clifford Orji, the alleged
cannibal arrested at the Toyota Bus-stop on the Oshodi/Mile 2 Expressway some
years back?
Truth be told, this is a nation where the
merchandise of evil has a ready market and Okija is only but a tip of the
axiomatic iceberg.
Even as our Inspector-General of Police
revels in the limelight, which the Okija expose affords him, the fact remains
that the Ogwugwu shrine is a veritable metaphor for our collective depravity.
