Native Politics: Okija Shrine and Ngige
A familiar political face in Nigeria is gubernatocrat Chris Ngige. He is now a minister in the government of President Muhammadu Buhari. Ngige is the man credited with bringing ghoulish acts to the mainstream. He takes g an oath naked before a juju shrine. Then promises total compliance in satisfying his kingmakers/patrons and do their bidding when he gets into power with their backing. It is the genesis of the infamous “Okija Shrine” saga.
However, Chris Ngige became governor of Anambra State. He did quickly defy the wishes of Chris Uba, his political patron and election backer. Uba wanted him to hand over the full contents of the State’s treasury. Ngige’s refusal did not make the juju kill him; he is alive and prospering politically today.
Investigators from the New Scotland Yard even found conclusive scientific evidence on the dead “victims” of the Okija juju. They were all poisoned with an identical substance and not killed by some ghoulish “Angel of Death.”
If juju works, why did Chris Uba have Chris Ngige kidnapped by the police? And further do everything within the constitution to get him thrown out of office? The juju as an “enforcer of compliance” turned out to be an abysmal failure.
As the psychic sceptics, James Randi and the late Basava Premanand, have tried emphatically to tell humankind, superstition has been fooling people in vast numbers. And at an enormous cost for centuries and millennia. All claims of psychic powers claimed by marabouts, pastors, gurus, mentalists or jujuists are false.
Chris Ngige should be a great example of how baseless and useless the awe-inspiring myths of juju and similar phenomena are. Their use in politics and all other spheres of human life is fraudulent.
Grimot Nane
The irony for the typical Nigerian “Christian or Muslim or Jujuist” is that they all believe in something that is really nothing. This is why there are factions, doctrines, denominations, sects, diverse oracles as there are carved and molded representations of imaginary spirits gods, goddesses and messengers of God. No one believe in God but everyone believe there is God. They couldn’t find God in them, they are always looking to the outside – in their anxiety and impatience due to unconsciousness, they create their own gods. The gods they can see, speak to and throw incantations and libations at.
The murderer, thief, robber – including political and civil service robbers, the 419er, the fake bride and groom and so forth – do seek the protection of the same God in their their acts as does the Imam, the Bishop, and the Pope.
Which one is your God?