A few weeks ago, an outburst of then aspirant for Nigeria’s presidential office, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, marked its third anniversary. On 2 June, 2022, in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, Tinubu bit the bullet in what has now become an epochal ad-lib commentary. In a retort to attempts to deny him the Nigerian presidency, he had said, “Èmi l’ó kàn, ẹ gbé kinní yìí wá” – It is my turn, bring this thing. At a meeting with Ogun State governor, Dapo Abiodun, as well as leaders and delegates of the APC at the presidential lodge, Ibara, Abeokuta on that same day, Tinubu rained subtle invective on Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s then sitting president. He had come to meet the party’s delegates in Abeokuta ahead of its presidential primaries slated for about a week to that day.
Like Sango, the Yoruba god of thunder, lightning and fire or an enraged cobra, Tinubu spat out the magical words. “If not for me who stood behind Buhari, he wouldn’t have become the president,” he began, in an audacity many believe was sterner than Barack Obama’s. “He tried the first time, he fell; the second time, he fell; the third, he fell… He even wept on national television and vowed never to contest again but I went to meet him in Kaduna and told him he will run again. I will stand by you and you will win, but you must not joke with Yorubas and he agreed. Since he became the president, I have never got ministerial slots, I didn’t collect any contract, I have never begged for anything from him. Èmi l’ó kàn, ẹ gbé kinní yìí wá”; it is the turn of Yoruba, it is my turn.”
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Anyone in alignment with the Nigerian political barometer of this period in time would know that, as at the morning of June 2, 2022, Tinubu was not in the reckoning of the powers-that-be for a Buhari successor. For his presidential dream, in the words of immortal Nigerian nationalist, K. O. Mbadiwe, the come (has) come to become. Or better put, from the tone and timbre of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s saxophonist, “rẹrẹ (ti) run” – a political calamity was afoot. Shortly after the outburst, however, what was thought to be a speech fiasco morphed into a catapult that shot Tinubu up. In spite of his visible opposition to his candidacy, Buhari almost instantly got sucked into it, inexplicably. You could feel the grudge and reluctance in Buhari thereafter. The gang-ups against Tinubu thereafter melted like ice in the sun. Not long after, a major stumbling block, Godwin Emefiele’s Naira re-denomination, fell face flat on the floor. Before you could say Jack, what was thought to be Tinubu’s baggage became his greatest wattage.
What actually transpired in Abeokuta that day? Scholars have since then subjected that audacious and epochal Tinubu statement to different analytical studies. Was it a pure biting of the bullet? A daring Tinubu owns its patent since he hopped into third republic politics? Or, was it an omnivorous appetite for things magical that many claim cannot be divorced from Tinubu’s politics? After all, Yoruba say a child’s behavioural manifestation propels him to seek anti-machete protection charm (Ìwà omo l’óń mú omo se òkígbé). In other words, was that Abeokuta statement a product of unscience and metaphysics (òògùn ab’ẹnu gòngò), a flavour that has been known to be part and parcel of African politics?
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In April 2024, during the beginning of the travails of former Kogi State governor, Yahaya Bello, a similar pronouncement, thought to have spiritual implication, went viral in a video. It had an enchanter recite an incantation with utmost fury. It went thus: “River Niger and River Benue, the confluence is in Kogi State. Except say River Niger and River Benue no come meet for Kogi; if River Niger and River Benue come meet for Kogi, dem no go fit arrest Bello… Dem dey use EFCC pursue am, dem no go succeed o. Dem go lay siege for im house for Abuja… Except say I no be born of Igala kingdom… EFCC dey front, you dey back; you dey back, dem dey front; you dey left, dem dey right; you dey right, dem dey left; you dey centre, dem come there, you jump dem pass!…a lion cannot give birth to a goat…”
Those in the know claim it would be ludicrous to claim that, since 2007 when he left the governorship of Lagos, Tinubu has welded his leadership of Lagos together only with political sagacity and tons of cash. Extra-terrestial intelligence in the form of occult practices, membership of a cult of leadership where allegiances are suborned in blood oaths, are alleged to be interwoven into the much-touted Lagos hold of power. In Africa as a whole, empirical evidence given by practitioners often interviewed to give participant observations of the phenomenon has shown that, while the electorate sees the formal practices of voting, primaries and elections, unseen, chilling, blood-curdling informal recourse to black magic is an unwritten but potent credential of African political practices. So, the question is, does metaphysics influence outcomes of electoral practices? Or put more succinctly, do politicians’ occult and traditional magical practices have any bearing on voter behaviour or electoral outcomes?
Of a truth, science has denounced the validity of the above reasoning. Austro-British philosopher of language, Ludwig Wittgeinstein, was one of those who rubbished it. In his Tractatus which contained criticisms of traditional metaphysical investigation like the Èmil’ókàn outburst, Ludwig considered such as “abstract speculations” and meaningless linguistic confusion. He even said that such engagements were “metaphysical chatter(s)”. It must be said that three centuries before Wittgenstein, that is the seventeenth century, were a period in which philosophy and science could not be sharply demarcated from the occult. There, occult and reason existed side by side.
To thus think that Nigeria’s electoral politics is solely what transpires in the physical will be naivety of the highest order. In my little interface with politicians in southern Nigeria, I can confirm that there is a spiritual dimension to political leadership. Indeed, there exists a seeming incestuous relationship between politics and spirituality, especially rituals. It exists in northern Nigeria as well, solely cobbled together by the marabout system brought into Nigeria by hermitic and itinerant North African Islamic Malams. Because elections and electioneering are seen as war, Nigerian politicians visit spiritualists to fortify themselves with Òkígbé, a charm perceived to insulate them from piercing machetes, guns and machinations of political adversaries. With Òkígbé, it is said that someone thus fortified, if inflicted with machete, the metal breaks into two.
In southwest Nigeria, guests visiting homes of politicians where a mass of people throng will not fail to notice grains of millet and corns splashed on roads. They are rituals which are believed to attract a motley crowd to the sides of the politicians. Those in the know also say that, as we gravitate towards the 2027 elections, there will be a spate of ritual murders known to be handiwork of politicians in need of human parts to aid their political ambitions. Non-politicians also engage in it. When you go to road junctions where three footpaths meet (orítaméta) in the southwest, you cannot fail to see ritual offerings in calabashes which are many times spiritual electoral interventions. Election times are periods rituals, libations and incantations reign. Effigies of political opponents are sometimes also made, on which are poured frightening incantations. The belief is that such political opponents are caged and their political destinies padlocked. Nigerian politicians also visit spiritualists, either the Christian variant, the Islamic-flavoured ones or traditionalists.
In earlier pieces I did, both on 26 September, 2021 and 28 April, 2024, with the headlines, “Nigeria’s huge market of blood and human sacrifice” and “The marabouts of Yahaya Bello”, respectively, I explored the themes of magical and ritual practices as a pervasive phenomenon in power relations in Nigeria. I stated that this affirms that when complicated issues and challenges of life confront Nigerian politicians, they quickly run to their traditions and origins. These syncretic practices do not affect their worship in church on Sunday nor mosque on Friday. This equally demonstrates the ease with which politicians momentarily throw away their Christian and Islamic cloaks to hold on to the utilitarian purpose that magic and sorcery serve them.
Late University of Leiden scholar, Stephen Ellis, in a 2001 article, “Mystical Efforts: Some evidence from the Liberian war” (Journal of Religion in Africa, XXX1, 2) described how young fighters in the Liberian war, sporting amulets which assumably made them bullet-proof, filled the streets with corpses. Monrovians were shocked at how soldiers “(disemboweled) the bodies of their victims and (eat) their flesh or internal organs, particularly the heart.” The art of eating a human heart is borne of a residue of practices in Africa. The belief is that a person’s essence is contained in the heart and the blood. So, once the hearts and blood of these warriors are eaten and drunk, “the one who had just eaten them acquires some of the power formerly possessed by his victim.”
In prehistoric time, human rituals and cannibalism were racial-blind. So many works have historicised cannibalism and human rituals in Africa. Milan Kalous’ Cannibals and Tongo Players of Sierra Leone gave an account of deadly cannibalism practice in Sierra Leone during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by a set of people called “were-animals” notoriously labeled “human alligators,” “human leopards” and “human chimpanzees.” Their renown was capturing and ritually slaughtering their victims and harvesting their vital organs to make wealth-producing charms.
Cannibalism isn’t strictly African as empirical documentation confirmed that during the trans-Atlantic trade, European cannibals were also on the prowl seeking the succulent fleshes of Africans to make delicacies. Andre Donelha, a Cape Verdean, who travelled in Upper Guinea from 1574 to 1585, recalled how the Mane, invaders who operated during the first half of the sixteenth century, attacked the Western coast of Africa from the eastern flank and “(ate) human flesh at any time and while at war, even that which belongs to one of their own nation. When they make war, the conquerors eat the conquered.” In fact, the Manes were reputed to bear the grisly and cruel name of Sumbas which, translated, means “eaters of human flesh,” a practice which Walter Rodney explained was “for courage and ferocity.”
With its domicile in West Africa in early to mid-20th century, Human Leopard, Alligator and Baboon Societies were dreaded secret societies originally active in Sierra Leone. They eventually spread to Liberia, Nigeria and Cote d’Ivoire. In Nigeria, it was predominant among the Efik of Calabar and bore the native name, Mforoekpe. Their appearance was in leopard skin dresses. At midnight, they waylaid travelers and were armed in sharp instruments that looked like a leopard’s teeth and claws. Once they succeeded in killing their prey, the Mforoekpe then cut the flesh into pieces which were then distributed to members of this dreaded secret society. Upon eating human flesh, members believed they were revitalised spiritually and physically while the entire Efik tribe received vitality thereby. Late Stephen Ellis in his The Mask of Anarchy: The Destruction of Liberia and the Religious Dimension of an African Civil War (1999 and 2006) also wrote about the cruelty of the Leopard Society.
So many myths surround the Yoruba Ogboni secret cult, Sierra Leone’s ancient Mende and Temne chiefdoms’ Poro (men) and Sande (women) cults and the Liberian Vai people’s Mende-Temne Poro cult called Beri and the Sande’s Bundu. The Yoruba Ogboni society of the old Oyo Empire was a powerful cult notorious for its power to enthrone and dethrone traditional rulers, as well as powers that permeated Yoruba political organizations like the judiciary, governance among others. Last week, I cited Peter Morton-Williams’ anthropological study of this dreaded ancient Yoruba secret cult, entitled The Yoruba Ogboni cult in Oyo.
There are a plethora of metaphysical powers that initiates of blood, especially in fraternities and cults like Ogboni, wield and which entrap those in search of political authorities. Believing in the potent power of the Earth as a binding force, Ogboni use the ẹdan (a twin object of a man and woman pegged on a cylindrical brass spare) in their lledi (shrine house) and sprinkles of blood to subtly encode obedience to rules and secrets. Not only does Ogboni ensure secrecy of affairs among its initiates, esprit-de-corps that is prized out of the initiates by blood oaths suborns potential squealers off revelations of Ogboni secrets.
Blood oaths, essential component of Ogboni cult rituals, are administered to safeguard secrets and ensure they do not leak to third parties. They were also to secure loyalty of one to another. Oaths also carve brotherhood where none exists.
Christianity and Islam have sought to wipe out blood oath, human sacrifice and cannibalism to no avail. The Ogboni itself was a recipient of this rout in 1948 in Oyo by Alaafin Raji Adeniran Adeyemi II, a pious Muslim monarch, who sought to de-link the palace from ancient voodoo practices. Hitherto, the palace held a great link to and derived its existence from the immense powers of the Ogboni fraternity.
Though a great attempt is made by the present cyber age to delink secret cults from the operations of society, they flower greatly among African elite, especially among political power cabals who run to them for metaphysical shields at moments of existential turmoil. Indeed, judges, politicians, lawyers and many leaders of societies are said to belong to these fraternal secret cults, all in the stampede for power and protection against inclement weathers of life. Pastors, Imams and many society leaders are said to be card-carrying members of the cult.
The question to ask is, how then do political leaders who take this syncretic path of rituals to power bear any allegiance to the electorate? It is believed that many of them, rather than to the electorate, show gratitude to leaders of cult groups, Babalawo, Pastors and Imams after their victory. So, what is the scale of harm of this practice on Nigerians?
Students of philosophy and traditional African religion would need to help us situate Tinubu’s June 2, 2022 outburst which culminated in the world-renowned phrase, “Èmi l’ó kàn, ẹ gbé kinní yìí wá”. To be where he is, did Tinubu have a dalliance with the elderly who are known to be spiritual leaders of his domain? Having hailed from a core Yoruba area of Iragbiji in Osun State, nobody needs to teach Tinubu the potent powers of autochthonous Yoruba people’s spiritual powers. For anyone who understands the lingo of the coven, the phrase “Èmi l’ó kàn, ẹ gbé kinní yìí wá” sounds more like an incantation ritual than the outburst of an enraged politician. It is almost synonymous with the chant, “Agbe, bring goodies to me,”Agbe, being a bird known in English as the Great Blue Turaco, a vibrant, culturally significant bird among the Yoruba which has blue plumage.
I have heard a sprinkle of scholars and practitioners say that the talismanic effect of that Tinubu outburst removes it from the ordinary. So, was it science, unscience, Realpolitik or spiritual politics that brought Tinubu to power? Did he, in 2023, realising the eternal wisdom in the native Yoruba wisdom which says, if you do not have what elders fortify themselves with, you would remain a suckling, (B’á ò ní nnkan àgbà, bí èwe làá rí) decide to use what he had to get what he needed?
Festus Adedayo is an Ibadan-based journalist.
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