ALL hell was recently literally let loose when the Professor B.T.C. Ijomah Centre for Policy Studies of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, announced its intention to host an academic conference with the theme, ‘Witchcraft: Meaning, Factors and Practices’. For the organizers of the conference, it was entirely an intellectual endeavor to deepen knowledge about a widespread belief and/or practice in society. However, for the mainly Christian groups in particular, which vehemently protested against what was seen from the perspective of their faith as an attempt to accord legitimacy and acceptability to a patently evil spiritual realm, such a conference was the equivalent of consorting with forces of darkness. At the opening of the conference which eventually held under the rubric, ‘Dimensions of Human Behaviour’, to assuage the feelings of those opposed to it, its convener, Professor Egodi Uchendu said, “We have for too long glossed over this matter of witchcraft but it has persisted even as people pray against witches and wizards…For this reason, the B.I.C. Ijomah Centre for Policy Studies and Research, has attracted men and women of diverse intellectual backgrounds to explore, investigate and critically evaluate belief about witchcraft as a social phenomenon”.

The controversy generated by the UNN conference reflects the intense interest that spiritual or extra terrestrial issues have always generated across time and space. There are diverse perspectives on these matters. For some, phenomena like witchcraft, wizardry and diverse forms of African juju are legitimate forms of spirituality, which have been unfairly cast in a pejorative light by the orthodox world religions particularly Christianity and to some extent Islam. For Christians, these practices and activities are decidedly satanic, evil and dangerous such that St. Paul famously warned in one of his epistles that “we fight not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms”.

Both adherents of Christianity and other major world religions as well as practitioners of the occult and ‘fetish faiths’ believe in the existence of the spiritual but only differ in the moral valuation they place on them – good or evil, light or darkness. This is in sharp contrast to atheists who deny the existence of supernatural phenomena including God, the agnostic who says he has no way of knowing whether or not God exists or those scientists and philosophers of a materialistic inclination who believe that only that which can be seen, heard, smelt, tasted and felt by the five senses is real. All others are entirely mythical.

I am sorry if my language is tentative and imprecise as I am no expert in these matters. My purpose in this piece is simply to present the interesting perspectives of two of Nigeria’s great sons, the just departed Professor Tam David West and the great statesman, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, on the phenomenon of African juju otherwise known as black magic. While David West, a renowned scientist expressed his views  in one of the chapters in his book, ‘Philosophical Essays’, Awolowo, a lawyer, politician, Christian and mystic, bared his mind on the subject in a fascinating and in-depth interview with the late philosopher, Professor Moses Makinde and published in the latter’s book ‘Awo as a Philosopher’.  We shall examine Awo’s insights in the second part of this piece.

“Dad, what are your views about juju?”, Professor David West’s son asks him in a chapter of his collection of essays. The professor’s answer’s is blunt and unequivocal. His words, “Son, this is another expression of human culture that is founded in superstition. The question of charms also falls under the same class. Both the belief in juju and the faith in charms thrive under a pervading atmosphere of fear. This mortal fear is predicated on two other truisms of man’s nature or culture. First, Nature, has, perhaps most justifiably, hidden the “future” from the purview of man that is the “present”. This naturally makes most men to be anxious of the future. They would therefore do anything, even if these are patently silly and ludicrous, to flatter themselves that they can bridge the present and the future, i.e. that they could have the best of the two worlds – the present as well as the future. The second truism is that most men are innately cowardly…And so being basically cowards, men – perhaps all men – fear to die”.

Thus, David West contends that it is fear and cowardice that drive men to belief in juju and charms, which is nothing but superstition and ignorance. He cites the example of a British military expedition, which marched against the Tibetans in Lhasa in 1905. In his words, “The counter-attacking Tibetan soldiers were encouraged to keep on advancing on the British militia. They were emboldened because their priests had concocted a bullet-proof charm for them; at least so they believed. However, when the soldiers started to die one after the other from the British bullets, the priest’s alibi was that their charm protected against lead and not nickel which the British bullets contained”.

At the UNN conference on witchcraft mentioned earlier, Professor Damian Opata of the institution’s Department of English and Literary studies adopts a more cautious approach to the issue of such supernatural phenomenon. In his words, “Witchcraft may or may not be exercisable and I wouldn’t know the true situation but I understand the desire by the Christians opposed to this conference to totalize and sequestrate and, perhaps, control the discourse on witchcraft. Unfortunately, it cannot be pigeonholed as religious discourse, not to talk of being only a Christian exorcism discourse. How does one talk of phenomenon like witchcraft? Is it a scientific phenomenon? Is it superstition or is it the line of least resistance that people resort to when afflicted with problems that they cannot easily explain? Is it a form of technology?”

Professor David West’s emphatic assertion that juju and charms are entirely mythical and non-existent is similar to the position of Professor Peter Eze, an anthropologist, at the UNN conference on witchcraft. According to Eze, “The claims on the nature of witchcraft are, of course, part of the belief. Belief is just what it is: belief. In Israel, in European countries and North America, it will be laughable to talk seriously about witchcraft as a real-life experience today. Things pertaining to witchcraft survive in the lexicon in a figurative sense only”. He agrees with Professor Daniel Offiong’s view that “Most of the western world has forgotten about the fear of the witches. This is unlike what happens in Nigeria and all over Africa”.

But then, what does a Christian pastor like Andrew Wommack, one of the leading evangelists in today’s highly technologically advanced United States of America have to say about this in a book published in 2009? His words, “Like most people who were raised in typical America, I honestly didn’t think about demons. I’d read about them in the Bible, but I thought all the demons were overseas in some third world country. I didn’t think there were demons here, or that we could physically encounter them. Then I got turned to the Lord and began to look at the Bible. I recognized that the spirit realm is as real today as it was two thousand years ago. I realized that many things were demonic, including sicknesses. My friends and I began to cast demons out of people and seeing miracles happen”. Can it be then that scientists and philosophers like David West are too dogmatic and simplistic in this matter and that reality is indeed much more complex than they see and portray it?

In conclusion, Professor David West warns his son, “I must not end this discussion without warning you seriously against classical biological (chemical) poisons that are sometimes decorated or concealed in fetish paraphernalia, and so pass as- charms. In other words you must exercise great caution and discretion in what you eat or drink. But as for those juju and charms that without rocketry travel through space, Son, Forget them”.