VOODOO :A MISJUDGED RELIGION?

 By Pumza Fihlani

While many African traditions and cultures are under threat from modern life, there is one which is holding its own - voodoo.

It has suffered from a bad press internationally but is an official religion in the West African country of Benin.

In the voodoo heartland of Ouidah, the sound of drums fills the air, while men and women dressed mainly in white take turns to dance around a bowl of millet, a freshly slaughtered chicken and alcohol.

These are the day's offering at the Temple of Pythons.

They have an audience of about 60 people who have gathered from nearby towns for an annual cleansing ceremony.

Inside the temple, where more than 50 snakes are slithering around a custom-made pit, local devotees make amends for sins of the past year.

Blood, snakes and power

In voodoo, the python is a symbol of strength - the devotees explain they are relying on Dagbe, the spirit whose temple this is, to give them the power to change.

And to make that change happen, blood must be spilled.

The first offering is a chicken - some of the blood is spread across the tiles of the temple and the rest is mixed into a communal bowl of millet - which the devotees eat as it is passed around.

Voodoo is rooted in the worship of nature and ancestors - and the belief that the living and the dead exist side by side - a dual world that can be accessed through various deities.

Its followers believe in striving to live in peace and to always do good - that bad intentions will not go unpunished, a similar concept to Christians striving for "righteousness" and not "sinning".

{Voodoo believers communicate with their gods through prayers and meditation}

Modest estimates put voodoo followers here at at least 40% of Benin's population. Some 27% classify themselves as Christians and 22% Muslims.

But expert on African religions and traditions Dodji Amouzouvi, a professor of sociology and anthropology, says many people practice "dual religion".

"There is a popular saying here: 'Christian during the day and voodoo at night'. It simply means that even those who follow other faiths always return to voodoo in some way," he tells me.

To illustrate the closeness of the two faiths, there is a Basilica opposite the Temple of Pythons in the town square.

"At the moment many people here in Benin feel let down by the establishment, there are no jobs," Mr Amouzouvi.

"People are turning to voodoo to pray for better times."

But how did voodoo get exported to places such as New Orleans and Haiti?

At the edge of the sea in Ouidah stands La Porte du Non-Retour "The Door of No Return" - a stone arch monument with carvings of men and women in chains walking in a procession towards a ship.

It was from this point that many thousands of African slaves were packed into ships and taken to the Americas - the only thing they took with them was voodoo, which they clung to as a reminder of home.

They continued to practise it, at times being beaten if caught by the slave masters.

This made some even more determined to keep it alive, according to reports.

Some practices in voodoo can appear threatening to the outsider - the slaughtering of animals have in part earned the faith its unflattering image, some say.

But Mr Amouzouvi says voodoo is not all that different to other faiths.

"Many religions recognise blood as a source of power, a sign of life. In Christianity it's taught that there is power in the blood of Jesus," he says.

"Voodoo teaches that there is power in blood, it can appease gods, give thanks. Animals are seen as an important part of the voodoo practice."

Regine Romaine, an academic with a keen interest in voodoo, agrees.

"The African experience is open for all to see - people are invited to witness the ceremonies, the slaughtering and that same openness has been judged whereas it isn't in other systems like the Islamic and Jewish faiths," she tells me.

"Slaughtering animals is not unique to voodoo. If you go to the kosher deli or buy halaal meat, it's been killed and allowed to bleed out before being shared.

"Ultimately, the gaze on voodoo over the years has not been one of love - that's why it's been given a bad image."

Ms Romaine is of Haitian and US heritage.

She first learned about voodoo from her aunt in Haiti - she travelled on a pilgrimage to retrace the "slave route" and her last stop was here in Benin where she has been living for more than a year.

'Voodoo is not evil'

According to Ms Romaine, voodoo's bad image abroad has a lot to do with what people have seen in Hollywood films.

"The image of voodoo went wrong from the first encounter - from the first visitors to the continent, the anthropologists who didn't understand what they were seeing and from that came a lot of xenophobic writing," she says.

"It was also worsened by the US invasion of Haiti much later, which gave rise to Hollywood's fascination with the horror stories that all had voodoo."

Back at the ceremony, the processing of devotees has now moved to the town square for the final stage of the rituals.

There is more drumming, singing, dancing and after four animals are killed and cooked inside three large flaming pots of clay, the meat inside is shared by all those who have attended the day's proceedings.

The Regional High Priest of Voodoo Daagbo Hounon is presiding over the day's rituals.

He is dressed in ceremonial robes, with a striking top hat, and holding a staff made from cowry shells.

He is a big man with a booming voice and speaks passionately about their belief system - he tells me that their faith is misunderstood.

"Voodoo is not evil. It's not the devil," he says.

"If you believe and someone thinks badly of you and tries to harm to you, voodoo will protect you. Some say it is the devil, we don't believe in the devil and even if he exists, he's not here," he tells me.

He is keen to welcome international visitors.

The small town offers an "initiation" from people from all over the world to come and learn about the practice - from how to use herbal medication, how to pray and meditate, how to perform rituals for the gods.

High Priest Hounon says the programme is popular with tourists from the US, Cuba and parts of Europe.

For many West Africans in the diaspora, voodoo has become a symbolic coming home.

Ms Romaine, who is also member of that diaspora, believes voodoo is successful because it provides a connection to a neglected identity.

She tells me that voodoo is gaining appeal in the US amongst young people.

"There is a shift especially in the Americas. The younger generation now want to proclaim their identity in a way that the previous generation was perhaps more intimidated to do and spiritual identity is a part of that. For some voodoo meets that need."

The government here in Benin is committed to upholding the practice.

In the mid 1990s it built a monument to voodoo in a place known as the sacred forest - an ancient place of worship on the edge of town.

Life-sized metal and wooden totems have pride of place amongst the towering trees - this place is meant to help teach young people here about their voodoo heritage.

With the government supporting it at home and the descendants of slaves embracing it abroad, the ancient voodoo tradition has found a place in the modern world, where other African belief systems are often struggling for relevance.

source 

BISHOP GODFREY ONAH :CONDEMNS INJUSTICE & VIOLENCE-- by Rev. Fr. Vitus Ugwu.

Bishop of Nsukka   

 Leave Bishop Godfrey Onah Alone

One of my parishioners just sent me a link showing a tweet of one Salihu Tanko Yakasai said to be a media aide to the Governor of Kano State, His excellency Abdullahi Umar Ganduje. In the said tweet, Mr. Yakasai dared to incite the government against Most Rev. Prof Godfrey Onah over a video clip in which the Bishop decried the injustice meted out against Christianity by the Nigerian government.  The Bishop had in that short video clip called for equal opportunity and treatment to both Christians and Moslems. Weeks after the video clip made the rounds, a Hausa Moslem youth attacked an Igbo Tricycle rider, Mr. Kelly, over the latter’s insistence on the complete payment of his money. It was said that the altercation ensued between the Mr. Kelly and Aisha and the latter put a call to her son, Sabiru. The report had it that Sabiru ran to the scene and attacked the Keke driver.  The actions or reactions that ignited or trailed this unfortunate occurrence are worth looking at. Although the riot was short-lived thanks to the intervention of security agents and the timely press statement of Bishop Godfrey Onah, Saturday the 31st of October, 2020 came like any other day but ended differently from other normal days in Nsukka.  As we thank God that the riot was nipped on the bud, we have to condemn in its entirety the skewed narrative currently peddled by some mischief makers who masked their ill-will, anti-national cohesion and anti-democratic tendency in a veneer of patriotic posturing. From last Saturday till now, varied reactions ranging from religious bigotry, to tribal sentiments, and to political threats have been expressed. The worst of it all is a bungled attempt to blame it on a seasoned homily of our firing Bishop.  We will attempt below to put the records right for the sake of posterity and to disabuse the minds of the misinformed persons out there.  

A bad doctor treats symptoms instead of cause. This is what the ilk of Salihu Tanko Yakasai have done. To avert this mistake, we have to trace the causes of the rift. The first is the behavior of Aisha and her son, Sabiru. How did we get to the level where our police officers are not trusted and invited in the moment of misunderstanding? How inefficient has this institution become that the aggrieved do not look the way of police for justice? The Aisha’s reaction to these simple feuds tells us something about our dwindling or dead security apparatchiks. It is either the people are not civilized or the police are too tardy in responding to situations like that or both reasons are conjointly responsible. The woman is not alone in that mess. Many who had problems with their neighbours had used cultists, or the disbanded SARS to intimidate their opponents to submission.  In a civilized world, one who feels his right was trampled on by another immediately dials the police number. In Nigeria, we call our family members because either we are still at the brute level where might is right or the police system is moribund or both. In the same vein, look at the offense of the invited son, his action! From which part of the world is he? This question has no derogatory intent because he is a typical Nigerian and many would have acted the way he did. But we have to interrogate this way of acting. What level of reasoning makes us believe that our relative is always correct in a ruction? That was the mindset that led Sabiru to come against Mr. Kelly, the Tricyclist, without patience for dialogue. Should he not have patiently asked what the matter was? Why would he go to such scene with weapon? The fact of possession of weapon means a foreclosure of dialogue. The Keke man had no sword or harmful instrument.  How on earth would someone run into such feuds to maim without first listening to the matter. The ill-fated decision of Sabiru was the sole catalyst of the unfortunate event of the last Saturday of October. There and only there you find the necessary connection between cause and effect. Critics should leave Bishop Godfrey Igwebuike Onah out of this!

Look at the jungle justice of the mob! It is not different from the mental hue of the initial attacker. Like Sabiru who hit Mr. Kelly without much ado or dialogue, so did the mob.  The same senselessness and impatience in the face of provocation spiraled from that spot to other parts of the town. Like the attacker who appropriated the anger of his mother and acted based on it, so were the mobs who appropriated the pain of the victim and went on rampage. In this inherited or transferred anger lies the senselessness of the whole thing. A rational person is able to distinguish between his mother’s enemies and his own enemies. Only an irrational person blindly assumes his mother’s enemies as his own enemies. This is the fault of Sabiru as well as the subsequent gangsters. The former saw not just a neutral Keke Driver simply because his mother had biased him against Mr. Kelly while those who went on rampage failed to distinguish between the original offender (Mr. Sabiru) from the innocent Hausa people who were about their normal businesses. There is that tendency either in the North or the South to judge the whole using a part. This fallacy of overgeneralization is a common disease responsible for Nigeria’s trajectory. How could we destroy the property of the southerners in the North because of a felony of a Southerner? How could mobs have gone after Northerners because of the crime of one Hausa person? It is either because they are illiterates or they are ill-literates! Why the attacks on Mosques just because of the misdeed of a Moslem? Did Sabiru hit Mr. Kelly at the prompting of a Mosque or because he is a Moslem? None of these. So, you see how senseless a mob can be? 

There are commentaries on the sad incidents. First, we return to the tweet of Salihu Tanko Yakasai. He seemed to have attributed the brief riot to a juicy homily of Most Rev. Prof. Godfrey I. Onah. Thus, he wrote: “This will be a good scapegoat for security operatives to make example of. You CANNOT use place of worship be it Mosque or a Church and incite violence…. I call for the arrest & prosecution of this man.” This appears uncouth, disrespectful, abrasive and a tout-like daring insolence on the highly revered and widely sought-after Bishop reveals something about our colossal decadence. Yakasai seems to epitomize it all in his tweet. His somewhat rude verbal diarrhea contains the germ of intellectual asphyxiation similar to that which blighted the mental contour of the mobs.  Certainly, his position may have taken him out of the street, but his tweet did not reflect it. That is why he was unable to analyze the contents of the homily instead he chose the easiest part, namely, cast slur on the purveyor. It appears he wrote with that gestapo venom congenial with despots who would rather raise sycophants at all cost than listen to priceless voice of a prophet. He tweeted from the same spirit of autocracy that made Ambassador Coomasie to instigate the government to use iron fist against peaceful protesters. The same spirit that called for the silence of the peaceful protesters is calling for the muzzling of a peaceful prophet.  I understand that ranting is now a lucrative business for some social misfits who sacrifice every modicum of decency in their morbid craze for insalubrious relevance. That should be least expected of a person of Yakasai’s status. He should not be a good specimen for the discernible rot in our system where mentally deficient individuals with connections are promoted while the best brains go down the drains as jobless. Nigerians should expect better things from people like Yakasai and not cheap instigation. 

I read the rant of Yakasai and initially did not want to react to it. But the reaction of the Nigerian Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) almost in the same line with Yakasai, has compelled me to debunk the lies. NSCIA in a statement signed by its deputy secretary, Prof. Salisu Shehu, referred to the innocuous homily of Bishop Onah as inciting. They alleged that the Bishop’s homily led to attacks on innocent Muslims in South East and South South zones of the country. Weird and incoherent extrapolation indeed! I was going to call on this body to stand up with CAN and defend the freedom of pastors and Imams from men like Yakasai! But because of the expressed vituperations, it has become imperative to analyze the video contents. It is noteworthy that the video was a cut-out clip from the homily of Bishop Onah for 18th October, 2020. It was posted online three days after. In that homily, he voiced the bewilderment of the people that our security agents (SSS) are efficient in mowing down unarmed Igbo boys who gathered for a meeting in Emene but leave undisturbed the armed and organized bandits in our forests and farm lands. He stated the obvious that Mosques are rising freely for example in Nsukka such that we could hear as early as 4.00am the call to prayers by Moslems from their minarets. He then contrasted this freedom of religion with what happens in Abuja when Christians go out to preach with Bible only to be attacked and killed by Islamic fundamentalists and nothing happens. He then stated that that injustice, not just EndSARS, should discontinue. He made it clear that it is about injustice and violence. He did not say that Moslems, or mosques are not acceptable, but that injustice and violence against any set of people are not acceptable.  

How do sane minds try to rope Bishop Onah into the totally reprehensible show of shame that happened on last Saturday or call for the arrest of one who in the homily showed us the way to go? Those who listened to the homily did not leave from the Church to the Mosques to attack anybody. That shows us that they understood what Yakasai and NSCIA failed to understand from the homily. It was more than two weeks after the homily that the clash came. It was not a Christian who went and hit a Hausa Muslim first, instead, the latter did. So where does the homily of the Bishop which condemned violence and injustice come into this picture?  If you call for the arrest of one who demanded an end to all forms of violence and injustice, do you prefer violence and injustice or are you a beneficiary of either or both of them? If the Hausa Muslim, Sabiru, had not attacked the Mr. Kelly, would there have been any riot? Or are these men saying that the Hausa Muslim attacked the Tricycle driver because of the homily of Bishop? It is impossible to establish that from the patriotic homily. Are they saying that the hoodlums would have swallowed the egregious offensive from the Hausa boy but for the homily? This too cannot be proved. So, where does the homily of Bishop Godfrey Onah come into this? The harmless homily had nothing to do with the attack on a Keke Driver by a Huasa Muslim but everything to do with vengeance, albeit wrong, for perceived grievance.  The people already heard the homily long before the attack on the Keke driver and none raised a finger against a Muslim Igbo or Hausa or Mosque. How then do people leave the immediate cause and attempt to connect the gruesome occurrence to a repentance-aimed homily of Bishop Onah? From the foregoing, it is safe and logical to conclude that the perpetrators of the dastardly acts of the last Saturday of October, 2020 were not Christians but hoodlums. 

Evidently, many things are not adding up in this convoluted causal link.  With the high rate of illiteracy and mal-education, mobs are handy in every part of Nigeria. I cannot recall any case of an Igbo man stabbing his fellow Igbo man and going scot-free, no thanks to mobsters. Not even a Northerner would stab a fellow Northerner in Igbo land and not risk of being lynched by a mob. The same is also true in any part of Nigeria. That is the regrettable level of the people who take the laws into their own hands. 

Such revered body like NSCIA should be concerned that a Muslim chose violence over better alternative ways of resolving disputes just as CAN should have been concerned had Christians taken part in such sordid retaliation. One expected NSCIA to issue strong words of admonition to all Muslims and indeed, Nigerians, to eschew such reprehensible vengeance as two wrongs cannot make a right. Instead, the body chose to look away from the causal crime and the criminal and at the same time seek to impute the blame on an innocent, peace-loving, perspicacious and God-and-people oriented Bishop. This attitude exhibited by NSCIA may foster or embolden Muslims to take to violence as a way of settling scores. The silence of NSCIA over the attack on Keke driver is disturbing and may suggest tacit acquiescence to the attack. Contrary to the statement from NSCIA, Father Bishop Onah, through his Diocesan Secretary/Chancellor, Very Rev. Fr. Cajetan Iyidobi, issued a fatherly statement no sooner than the crisis erupted. It partly reads: “Our Father Bishop, Most Rev Godfrey Igwebuike Onah, the Catholic Bishop of Nsukka, therefore appeals to all sides in this agitated situation to remain calm but vigilant. He further appeals that people should avoid taking laws into their hands….” This statement came less than two hours into the riot. It was thanks to it that calmness immediately returned. His Excellency Most Rev. Godfrey Onah deserves commendation for his promptness in addressing the world that day. He remained neutral while calling on both parties to embrace peace. I expected NSCIA to do a similar thing. Southerners have lost billions of dollars in the North in similar attacks in the past and no one ever passed the buck to Imams. Is NSCIA now telling us indirectly that such jungle justice hitherto perpetrated in the North were incited by Imams? Absolutely not. On the contrary, those who constitute themselves as mobs most often neither listen to a Bishop nor an Imam. That was the case in what happened at Nsukka last Saturday.

No one knows better the ethics of a pluralistic people than Bishop Onah who has spent most of his intellectual years in the eternal and tolerant City of Rome.  He had in the past visited Imams to commiserate with them in the event of any lost or calamity. His episcopacy has healed many divisions among Christian denominations in Nsukka and opened new vistas for brotherly relations with Moslems. Bishop Onah calls both Christians and Moslems together to celebrate with them at least once in a year. He has employed Moslems to work for him.  Those who attack this angel in human person just betray their lack of knowledge of his antecedents with Moslems and indeed, people of other faiths. I am sure that Imams in Nsukka cannot make such unguarded utterances against Bishop Godfrey Onah like did Yakasai.

To Nsukka youths, I advise you to be wary. I have watched the lists of suspects caught in connection with arson and breaking of Bank ATMs during the protest-turned looting in Enugu. Those who made it to the list are mostly from a neigbouring State. We must not give hoodlums the opportunity to steal the peace between us and our Moslem brothers and sisters. We have lived in peace with our Moslem brothers and sisters and we must not allow that good rapport to slip off our fingers. In a similar way, we commend our indigenous Moslems brothers and sisters for refusing to fall for the ploy of people like Tanko Yakasai! We will never allow them to use religion to cause friction within us. 

 religious authorities, we have got to fulfil the mandate we receive from God.  Let us be vocal in condemning injustice even at the cost of being misunderstood, misinterpreted and misrepresented as our savvy Bishop is. A true prophet has never enjoyed the praises of any corrupt government and it would be stranger for men of God to kick against their own kind. We have to form a common front irrespective of our faith variance—a common front that will make it impossible for violence and injustice to thrive. It is repugnant to reason for men of God (Imams or Pastors) to essay to pitch the government against one who truly and creditably fulfils God’s divine mandate just because the unjust structures favour them today. 

Finally, I have no doubt that our government will not stoop so low as to become a stooge and puppet in the hands of anybody that seeks to use it to witch-hunt and harass anyone. Instead, a competent government should strive to look at itself on the mirror of the bitter truths such as Most Rev. Godfrey Onah has given. Besides, the government has to be aware that we have army of jobless youths today. It may not take time before these unarmed youths will arm themselves against the government that refused or failed to arm them with the means of survival. When that day comes, do not blame it on anybody. So, people should leave Bishop Godfrey Onah alone! What we see today all over Nigeria are consequences of systemic failure. 

Rev. Fr. Vitus Ugwu.