Governor Chukwuma Soludo should be commended for his clampdown on the self-styled native doctors whose utterances and misdeeds pervert and undermine African traditional religion and mislead young and undiscerning people into committing heinous crimes.
Religion is a way by which people try to reach their God or gods. Each religion has its own doctrinal teachings and form of worship. In Nigeria, Islam, Christianity, and the African traditional religion are the predominant religions.
In Anambra state and most Igboland, native doctors are perverting the practice of African traditional religion to realize their selfish and pecuniary goals. For example, they brazenly claim that they have charms and amulets, which can make streetwalkers thrive in their trade of prostitution. Armed robbers visit them for spiritual fortifications, which will ward off bullets and charms for people to become stupendously rich without hard work.
Consequently, impressionable young people who are indoctrinated and brainwashed with the idea that one can become wealthy by perpetrating money-making rituals are rushing in their thousands to the shrines of native doctors and medicine men for money-making rituals while some others are frequenting rivers to take a dip and make sacrifices so as to become rich.
The reprehensible practice of money-making ritual has gained a foothold and the claims of the medicine men that their fetish practices can make people rich are being sewn onto the tapestry of the African traditional religion. So now that the Anambra State Homeland Security Law has come into force and the Operation Udo Ga Achi and Agunechemba have been activated, the onus is on the native doctors to prove that their practice is benign, and not a smokescreen or ruse for fleecing desperate people of their hard-earned money.
The deeds of the native doctors have negative impacts on everybody. One of the corollaries of their acts is the pollution of the water, including ponds, lakes, and rivers- with sacrifices, which are made of animal offals and innings, yams, and other unhealthy things. They spoil the aesthetic of the environment by placing their unsightly sacrifices on road intersections, too. The decomposition of their sacrifices causes stench which has negative implications to health.
Perhaps, the more worrisome implication of young people’s resort to money-making rituals is that it leads to abduction and killing of other people and reliance on fetish practices as a short cut to amass wealth, instead of learning trade or acquiring quality education, to become financially independent and self reliant in future.
So Governor Soludo deserves kudos for his clampdown on the self-styled and evil-minded native doctors who encourage and mislead young and undiscerning people into embracing criminal life-styles. His resolve to run spiritual charlatans out of town will save African traditional religion from further assault and perversion
Ndi Anambra and indeed Nigerians should thank Governor Soludo for winnowing the chaff from the wheat. It is a highly commendable and timely intervention that will save Anambra state from drifting into a bogus mystical bondage .
CHIEDU OKOYE
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