The Reality of The Nigerian Political Underworld

By Akin Osuntokun

Given the unacceptable reality that Former President Donald Trump was on course to defeat President Joe Biden in the American November Presidential election, I had shut off myself from news regarding American politics. When the former won the election in 2016 against Hillary Clinton, I started avoiding the CNN and any cable TV news channel that are substantially obliged to carry the news of the American President. Excited at the subsequent growing American alienation from his self-destructive presidency, I returned and enjoyed watching him unravel.

In the belief that he was a fluke, and certain that Americans would collectively sigh never again, I joined in saying good riddance to bad rubbish. Tragically, it was premature optimism. He was about to be gifted the American Presidency again by Joe Biden, and then Kamala Harris emerged. Harris is all that Trump is not. I can put the contrast no better than Nate White “he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief”.

“Now, polling conducted in the immediate run up to this week’s Democratic convention in Chicago shows the vice president entering not just with momentum, but with a slight advantage over Trump nationally and in most key battleground states — a dramatic reversal from the big hole President Joe Biden was in before he abandoned his candidacy just four weeks ago”.

After reading an article written by my close friend Reuben Abati titled “RITUALS, BLOOD AND DEATH, THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF ASO VILLA”. my sisters called me to verify the experience Abati had narrated- in the light of my related experience as political adviser to President Olusegun Obasanjo. The gist of the article was that the presidential palace politics under President Goodluck Jonathan was demonology personified.The inquiry coincided with my revelry at the dramatic entrance of Kamala Harris into the race for the American presidential election and how it had turned things around for the Democrats.

The change of baton bore semblance to a peculiar occurrence in the 2003 governorship contest in one of the Yoruba states (as alleged). The spiritual consultant to the governor (seeking reelection) had requested the names of all the candidates who would be contesting against him. The governor dutifully provided the names of all those who had indicated their participation in the governorship contest. The spiritual handler then assured the governor that he had binded all the fellow contestants and rendered them of no consequence. At the last minute, one of the political party platforms was compelled to change the candidate contesting on its platform. Now, the new candidate was not among those who have been thwarted by the spiritualist. The net effect was that the new candidate went ahead to win the election.

Abati recalled “I was given an apartment to live in inside the Villa. It was furnished and equipped. But when my son, Michael arrived, one of my brothers came with a pastor who was supposed to stay in the apartment. But the man refused claiming that the Villa was full of evil spirits and that there would soon be a fire accident in the apartment. He complained about too much human sacrifice around the Villa and advised that my family must never sleep overnight inside the Villa”

“I thought the man was talking nonsense and he wanted the luxury of hotel accommodation. But he turned out to be right. The day I hosted family friends in that apartment and they slept overnight, there was indeed a fire accident. The guests escaped and they were so thankful. Not long after, the President’s physician living two compounds away had a fire accident in his home. He and his children could have died. He escaped with bruises. Around the Villa, while I was there, someone always died, or their relations died. I can confirm that every principal officer suffered one tragedy or the other; it was as if you needed to sacrifice something to remain on duty inside that environment”.

I had a tangentially comparable personal experience. I was in Lagos when I received a call from one of the political bigwigs in the inner circle of President Obasanjo. In the belief that I was in Abuja, he requested I should come and see him right away. When I told him I was in Lagos, he was flustered. Why should this man become so agitated on account of my non availability, I wondered. So I called an Aunt who usually prays for me and told her of what had just transpired. After praying on it, she called back to tell me that something bad was about to befall the man’s son and wanted to transfer the danger to me. Two weeks later, the man, indeed, lost a son.

I had worked closely with a President who would occasionally wondered aloud how he could have signed off on some memo he objected to especially those with monetary implications or a significant political appointment. You might have heard of members of political cabals who uniformly lost their first born. In my town, all the seven kingmakers who colluded to install a king who was not the choice of the oracle died one after another within a year. There is equally a fable that a decline in the population of hyena in the Kaduna-Abuja forest portends a bad omen. Apparently, hyena is a core element in the preparation of charms targetting somebody’s life at the top echelons of government.

President Obasanjo narrated a spectacle he witnessed. He had gone for a weekend retreat at Otta. He received a guest who was decked in suit and tie. He was playing a popular Yoruba recreational game (Ayo) with an elderly relative. For whatever reason, the man in suit started deriding the Yoruba cosmology as quackery. When he would not relent, the elderly man playing ayo asked him if he really believed what he was saying. So after a few seconds the Yoruba veteran then directed him to remove his jacket, he complied. He again ordered him to remove his shirt and trousers. He did. Obasanjo had to intervene when the man was going to remove his underwear as instructed.

In 1983 at Okemesi, it was time to conduct the primary election to choose the Unity Party of Nigeria, UPN candidate for the state house of assembly election. One was a young charismatic candidate who was overwhelmingly favoured to win the primaries. The other was a mild mannered university academic and Okemesi Prince. The latter narrated his experience at the election to me.

He had a midnight visit on the eve of the primaries comprising a delegation of leading traditional chiefs who could not countenance the idea of a prince losing the election. So they requested from him ingredients for a ritual sacrifice comprising a rat, withered fish, salt, palm oil and the like. They then assured him he would prevail in the contest.

At the primaries the following day, supporters of each candidate were instructed to queue behind their candidate. The voters behind the charismatic candidate were, at a glance, three times more than those behind the prince. When they voted, the result showed the exact opposite of the distribution of the voters. It indicated the prince defeated the other candidate by a wide margin and all of this was in the open. Because the result was unbelievable, the voting process had to be repeated thrice with the same outcome.

It will require a special kind of credulity to believe that those engaged in the desperately transactional pursuit and sustainous of political power will not prioritise a recourse to the marabou, Adahunse and false pastors and prophets in the order of Temitope Joshua as of the essence. The bigger the stakes, the longer the extent to which politicians will go to court divine intervention in their affairs. An ambassador to Riyadh once came to report that a vice president had sequestered the consulate in Jeddah to house marabou engaged to cause the death of his principal.

You will recall the drama surrounding the choice of Samuel Akinsanya, as the odemo of Isara as narrated in the autobiography of Professor Wole Soyinka, Ake. If you want to see and hear the oracle speak, all you need to do is to visit and pay homage on the Ooni of Ife. At the level of rhetoric, Nigerian politics is a reflection of the behaviour of the larger society where Newell S. Booth observed that whilst 95% of the Yoruba professed Islam or Christianity, the answer to the question of what percentage practice the traditional religion was equally 95%!.

I had elsewhere argued that among the Yoruba, there is indeed something of a paradox in the contradiction between the subconscious individual belief in the relevance of Ifa to the resolution of any resurgence of crisis in human experience and a conscious social and collective disavowal of its reality. It is a paradox that is borne out in the ambiguity of individual and private accommodation of Ifa by those who simultaneously profess Christianity and Islam.

This subject matter, however, provides the opportunity to caution against the common generalisation of the practitioners of Yoruba traditional religion as amoral. Irked at the persistent and prevailing defamation and demonisation of Ifa, Professor Wande Abimbọla retorted “There are people we call Onisegun, they are not Babalawo. Babalawo does not do evil and if they stray from the straight and narrow path they become liable to the severest punishment.

Professor Bolaji Idowu corroborated that it is laid down that a babalawo must not abuse his office in any way.. Therefore no babalawo should use his position to enrich himself in any way; he must not refuse anybody his service on account of money-if any person is too poor to pay the customary pittance for divination, the babalawo must divine for him free of charge; or if the person cannot afford the prescribed sacrifice, the babalawo must take whatever he can afford….it seems, in fact, that the babalawo is under a vow of poverty, to spend himself in service of the community…now that materialism is the order of the day, this sacred injunction is largely disregarded, and there are many who appear not to know it at all. Charlatans abound ”