USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Fwd: {'Yan Arewa} I sold human parts to churches and ritual killers – Joshua [On Magical Use of Human Murder]

Assuming the first part of the story is true: that this man is a cannibal, let's also scrutinize and interpret his story. He was an okada man before he set up his "mansion" under the bridge in a hole. What a story! 

We should also consider that this poor fellow was homeless, driven into mental illness by poverty, neglect, and other social ills. The people beating this man are in fact as sick as him. We should thank the Baale for handing him over to the police instead of ordering jungle justice for the man. What of the cannibals in 37 state houses and hundreds of local government headquarters across Nigeria eating their people into bone marrow through embezzlement of public funds, and holed up in concrete barricades. When are those going to be fished out and tried for their cannibalism? 

This man is a sick creature that needs help like the vigilante people who "arrested" him. I don't see any link between his alleged cannibalism and witchcraft, except in the minds of those who want to speak for and about Africa from the point of view of Torah, Quran, or the Bible. It's an old trick. That's what these insecured missionaries called our religions - cannibalism and witchcraft!

We should not forget that much of our beliefs about witchcraft in Africa have been (and continues to be) interpreted as ideas shaped by global capitalism, the marginalized place of Africa in it; as well as the failure of the postcolonial state (whose leaders "eat" their own people). This Vanguard newspaper story should not be read literally. We need not internalize the ignorance of Naipaul and his likes. I can understand human organ selling and maybe some churches and mosques are involved in the business but that's a separate issue (by the way organ selling is a thriving international market, although criminal). Are the churches that the 56-year old Joshua Akindele has been allegedly selling his human spare parts to not the institutions that we use as our mirrors of modernity? If so, witchcraft is as modern as modernity. It is not a remnant of some timeless African traditions. 

Our humanities and social sciences in Africa need to do better. We need the likes of Toyin Adepoju to investigate these issues so that the Boko Haramas and the "miseducated negros"of the world (including The Vanguard reporters) can be better informed. Many cannibals have been documented in the US, Germany, UK, etc. Those people are treated as sick and criminal people. I have never read anywhere that those mentally-deranged individuals represent the witchcraft practices that are native to the Western culture.

Akin Ogundiran

Professor and Chair, Africana Studies Department

UNC Charlotte 

On Saturday, November 24, 2012 9:42:30 PM UTC-5, Cornelius Hamelberg wrote:

Good Heavens!

Cannibals in Nigeria!  Probably one of the things that the halal
people of Boko Haram would like to eradicate in the country.

Is it any wonder that His Holiness the Pope also decries witchcraft
and magic?
This is cannibal and ritual murder report is too gruesome to read. It
gives the country a bad name, fulfils some of the worst  Europeans
fantasies about Africa  - " They are cannibals - look at their lips -
they are red - they EAT people!" -  the very stuff for the kind of
novel that Chidi is talking about ("denigrating Africa and/or Africans
(blacks)",- guaranteed to win a Nigerian writer international acclaim.
And yet, if Naipaul were to produce a Poe-like blood-curdling tale of
the macabre and the supernatural from Nigeria as his chosen "area of
darkness", - the whole USA-Africa dialogue series would be going for
Naipaul's jugular, though, admittedly not with our knives and forks

Now that this news is out  we can't sweep it under the carpet. I fear
for Oluwatoyin Adepoju's proposed investigations into the secret world
of Nigerian witchcraft and other supernatural sciences of the left
hand path. OA, a word for the wise: Stay away from the bush

Has the Gbaji bridge along the Badagry-Seme border area where these
crimes were committed  been added that list of "Hotspots For Ritual
Killers : Places to avoid " ?

He sold human parts "to churches" too ! This is wicked. What kind of
churches be that?
Must be a misinterpretation put into practice – some literal
interpretation of "the Holy Eucharist"
except that the flesh and blood is real  and not symbolic  like the
transubstantiated holy wafer of bread and wine...

Years ago the then Bubba Free John wrote " Spiritual Cannibalism"
something that could interest OA, although that's on a  much less gory
level of reality.....

Meanwhile, in Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma is now sitting
firmly in the saddle for his second term but the SLPP are sore losers

http://bintumani.websitetoolbox.com/post?id=6097854

On Nov 24, 7:29 pm, OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU <tva...@gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Abubakar Bashir <bashirabuba...@hotmail.com>
> Date: Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 6:19 AM
> Subject: {'Yan Arewa} I sold human parts to churches and ritual killers –
> Joshua
> To: yan arewa <yanar...@yahoogroups.com>, Ra'ayi <raayir...@yahoogroups.com>,
> Dandalin Siyasa <dandalinsiy...@yahoogroups.com>
>
> **
>
>    *He confessed further that he sells the parts as follows: Heads 7,500,
> breast 1,500, penis 1000, hands and legs for 3,500.*I sold human parts to
> churches and ritual killers – Joshua
> *On November 23, 2012
>  ·
> *
>       By DONALD ARJI
>
> November 21st will ever remain indelible  in the heart of Oloko villagers
> as members of the palace guard to the community leader of Ajara Topa
> community in collaboration with a vigilante group operating in the area
> arrested a man who allegedly eats and sells human parts to ritualists,
> operating from a hole he dug under the Gbaji bridge along the Badagry-Seme
> border.
> Joshua Akindele,56, who hails from Etokia Local Government in Ogun State
> was spotted by one Anthony Amos who watched him crawl into a hole under the
> Gbaji bridge, confessed that he had been into cannibalism and ritual
> killing for the past 15 years, after being introduced to the business by a
> friend who convinced him to stop driving popular motor cycle known as
> "Okada" which he claimed  profited him a little, but could not sustain him.
> He further said that he had been earlier sent to prison for 5 years after
> raping a 17-year old girl.
> Speaking with Crime Guard, Akindele confessed that he was  the brain behind
> the incessant killing within the village using  ply woods to hit his human
> prey, and dragging them into the holes before splitting their parts for
> food and business… with ritual buyers.
> <http://www.vanguardngr.com/2012/11/i-sold-human-parts-to-churches-and...>
>
> *Joshua caught with some human skeletons
>
> In his statement "I have been in this business for the past 15 years after
> my friend advised me to stop riding okada and to join him in ritual killing
> and cannibalism"
> When asked how he carried out his activities, he confessed "Whenever I see
> somebody walking alone without being conscious of who is watching, I walk
> slowing up to them and  hit them with a big ply wood on their heads after
> which they fall unconscious, I then drag them into the hole and use a knife
> to cut them into parts which I sell to some churches and some ready buyers
> who indulge in ritual killing for easy money, and some times when I feel
> hungry  late in the night, I eat some parts for food.
> He confessed further that he sells the parts as follows: Heads 7,500,
> breast 1,500, penis 1000, hands and legs for 3,500.
> Amos who is a member of a vigilante group in the area alerted other members
> of the group and palace guards of the Baale of Ajara Topa community to
> monitor the movements of  Joshua.
> He told Crime Guard that at about 1 a.m on 21st of November, he was on his
> normal routine watch when he noticed him (Joshua) crawling into the hole
> with a rice bag, he quickly alerted other members who confronted him with a
> gun and ordered him to drop and open what he was carrying. When he did,
> they discovered rotten human parts;  skulls, legs, hands, breasts e.t.c.
> Crime Guard visited the palace of the Baale of Ajara Topa community,  Chief
> Samuel Amosu Owolabi, who after  confirming the incident told Crime Guard
> that he was sleeping in his palace when an emergency call woke him with the
> caller informing him that a man had been arrested by members of his palace
> guards in collaboration with members of the vigilante group with human
> parts.
> Chief Samuel said he quickly called Chief Patifo, Baale of Iyafin whom his
> community shared the bridge with to accompany him to the scene.  When he
> got there, he noticed a mob had begun beating the suspect and only stopped
> after he begged them to let him live so that proper investigations will be
> carried out by the police.
> Crime Guard confirmed the suspect was in the custody of the Badagry police
> division from a police source who pleaded anonymity.
>
> http://www.vanguardngr.com/2012/11/i-sold-human-parts-to-churches-and...
>
> Bashir
>
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