Okay, I can’t really pass this one up.
Native Doctor Nabbed for Rituals
A female native doctor Alice Yaga and Lucky Agadaemo, both residents of Igbo-Nla in Epe area of Lagos, are now in police net for allegedly killing one Mr. Ezekiel for ritual purposes.
[…] Ezekiel, who had been nursing a big sore that defied orthodox medications, approached Lucky Agadaemo who promised to take him to a native doctor who could solve the problem.
[…]Lucky took Ezekiel, accompanied by his wife, to Yaga on the 18th of last month.
[Yaga] promptly attended to Ezekiel […] and immediately […] water and pus began oozing [from] the sore.
Convinced [she could] cure the ailment, Lucky and Ezekiel’s wife left him in [Yaga’s] custody.
The sick man was nowhere to be found the following day when his wife visited [Yaga’s] home.
[Yaga] claimed she did not know his whereabouts, [saying] all her children and Ezekiel slept on the ground.
The case […] was reported to the Baale of Igbo-Nla [and] eventually Ezekiel’s corpse was discovered in a shallow grave in the forest.
[…] an autopsy carried out showed that the deceased was strangulated.
Okay, is it just me or shouldn’t anyone know better than to go to a Yaga for “treatment”? Especially accompanied by her “Lucky” αγαθοδαιμων? Or Agadaemo, excuse me. Beyond that, who in their right mind reports the crime afterwards to a Ba‘ali (yes, baale is as valid a transliteration of בעלי as ba‘ali).? Does that really help? Or just encourage them?
Other recent adventures in News Out of Africa:
There was the article about a school being closed and a man imprisoned after the local children were “attacked by his demons” (I’ll cite the article, but it seems it’s now been archived behind a paid-access part of the site :/—actual quotation: “‘I wonder why people really acquire demons and resort to bewitching others.’ [Margaret] Kasaija [, resident district commissioner] lamented before she cautioned the public against acquiring demons.”).
Two priests and twenty-eight others were arrested after police recovered more than twenty human skulls and one corpse in a shrine and more than fifty mutilated bodies in an “evil forest” (the “chief priest of the dreaded shrine”, “said to be over 100 years old”, “was not arrested on account of age”; “Nigerian media reported that businessmen and politicians from the economic capital Lagos were among the clients of the Okija witchdoctors”). Note that Lagos is also the setting for the Yaga article cited above.
In another part of the country, the police “advised the family to consult with spirit mediums” about “stones” that were apparently falling out of the sky wherever a certain woman went.
Not that Africa’s alone in the prevailing weirdness by any means. Only a few days ago it was reported that two women, aged 50 and 55, were beaten to death and their bodies burned… for being witches. In public view of the whole village after having been dragged from their homes into the square. Or, less violent though no less weird, who could forget the Nepalese rice-farming women who took to farming nude in order to appease their rain-god this summer?
It’s like a global Unknown Armies
