Okija and beyond: How did it come to this?
The bizarre case of 21st
century human
sacrifice in the Okija forests of Anambra state, where the skulls and corpses of more than 50 people were discovered, is a chilling reminder that all is not well with this nation. Considering the regular reports of ritual murders in the Nigerian media, perhaps it is apt to start by observing that the Anambra shrine killings may simply represent a tip of the iceberg. It is apparent that these murders have been going on across the country in the secretive wombs of dense forests and behind fortified mansions. Just some few days ago, for example, the Daily Trust reported that suspected ritual killers had murdered a 12-year old girl, Habiba Usman, in Bauchi state.
In recent years, Nigerians have even started exporting such ritual murders to other parts of the world. For instance, about three years ago, the torso of an unidentified boy simply named ‘Boy Adam’ was found floating in the River Thames in London. The British police investigating the case believe that the boy was a victim of a ritual killing after being brought from southwestern Nigeria to Britain. While cases of ritual murders are not strange to this nation, the Okija shrine killings represented one of the most horrifying examples of this national malady. It is a wake up call on a complacent nation. In retrospect, we must continue to ask ourselves: how and why did it come to this? I consider some reasons why.
First, over the years, many innocent people, especially children, such as the late Habiba Usman, have been disappearing with alarming frequency and nothing tangible seems to be done by our law enforcement agents to track down and punish the criminals. In the absence of any plausible police explanations as to why, how and where “missing people” have been going missing, it is safe to conclude that such people, particularly the children, have been victims of coldhearted ritual killings. Contrast the tepid attitude of our security services to the frightening cases of ritual murders, with the determined efforts of the British police to track down and punish those suspected of murdering ‘Boy Adam’. The laxity of our security services in dealing with horrendous cases of ritual murders may be partly explained by professional incompetence, partly by lack of proper equipment and poor motivation, and partly by police corruption. More often than not, these factors mutually reinforce each other, creating an atmosphere of lawlessness.
The main explanation may however be located in the fact that the criminals and their accomplices often belong to the cream of society. And in Nigeria, those who make the law are often the first to break and get away with it. Consider, for example, the shocking revelation that some of those who patronised the dreaded Okija shrines in Anambra state, where the recent ritual killings were discovered, included businessmen, civil servants, high ranking members of the security forces and of course, politicians! Similarly, some twenty- four years ago, the report of the Tribunal of Inquiry into the Kano Maitatsine disturbances made a poignant observation: “Evidence before the Tribunal indicated that some people benefited from the spiritual services of Muhammadu Marwa (Maitatsine). Looking at the number and position of people who patronised him, there was no doubt that Maitatsine considered himself immune from being touched or challenged by anybody, and this encouraged him to continue with his acts of terrorising people”. Maitatsine and his bunch of vicious followers were believed to have slaughtered hundreds of innocent people; and they were able to perpetrate their atrocities partly because, as in the Anambra case, the cream of society constituted the chief clients.
Secondly, another fundamental issue arising from the Anambra killings (and the Maitatsine episode of the 1980s) is the question as to why and how Nigerian Christians and Muslims, who have supposedly professed a firm faith in God, turn their back and worship in fetish shrines or seek spiritual powers from murderous cult groups? Apparently many of those who patronise the Okija shrines “in respect and fear” also profess to be Christians; just as many of those who were found to be seeking spiritual powers from Maitatsine, claimed allegiance to the Islamic faith. Nigerians are a bunch of deceitful people. They preach piety while practicing impiety. They claim to be men and women of God while dining and wining with the devil. But they deceive none other than themselves.
Thirdly, the Anambra killings showed how crass materialism has consumed this nation, and the endless struggle for power has drained the faith of its people. In this nation, the end justifies the means and nobody seems to care how wealth is accumulated and power is bought with it. Which is why people are ready to go to any extent to enable them better their economic and financial conditions or destroy perceived rivals. And the nation appears to be in dearth of sincere moral shepherds. Indeed, the shepherds have wandered away with the herd, and got lost in dense and frightening forests of moral perversion, where hungry for the dross of this world and driven by a capricious herd instinct; the people feed on each other. The citizens go on struggling day and night trying to outdo each other, thinking that it is the way, the only way to happiness. Yet, as the British philosopher, Bertrand Russell, reminded us many years ago in his The Unhappy American Way “There is a general theory as to what makes for happiness and this theory is false. Life is conceived as a competitive struggle in which felicity consists in getting ahead of your neighbour...” While competition is not bad, and indeed, should be encouraged if it is a healthy one; the sort of competition, which has uprooted all sources of morality and gnawed at the very foundation of society can only lead us to a dead-end.
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