Historical, anthropological, and folkloric data are replete with accounts of various rituals in every human society as far back as records existed. Such rituals were performed for various reasons, notably, the regeneration of societies, institutions, associations, and individuals. While some rituals were used to reproduce societies and memories of the past, others often involved sacrifice in order to avert evil or to attract blessings or success in an endeavour. Vestiges of these rituals exist today but with the stamp of modern societies and their vagaries.

Today’s money rituals have antecedents in pre-existing rituals of supplication. Such rituals often involved one form of sacrifice or the other. What is unusual in modern Nigeria is not the use of human sacrifice for such rituals. Humans were sacrificed in ancient societies, including precolonial African societies. What is alarming today is the scale and the involvement of youths in the belief that human sacrifice is a pathway to quick wealth. Whether it works or not is a totally different question. Some commentators have conflated the two issues and concluded on the basis of the latter that money ritual does not exist. I will separate both issues and address them in turn.

As indicated above, human sacrifice is not new. It was practiced widely in human societies until modern religions, notably Religions of the Book (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) began to condemn the practice and modern societies came to treat it as murder. However, ritual killing involving nonhumans continues, as witnessed for example in the killing of rams during the Muslim festival of ramadan.

In ancient societies, human sacrifice was offered for various reasons—to pacify the gods or a human ruler; to ward off evil, such as enemy attack; to bring good fortune, and so on. Headhunting in some societies was a type of human sacrifice that involved taking the head, for ceremonial or magical purposes, of a killed adversary.

Most examples of human sacrifice in ancient societies were carried out for the public good, rather than for personal reward as such. Accordingly, money ritual  involving human sacrifice in order to get rich was unknown.

In the absence of thorough ethnographic or investigative data, most accounts of money rituals in Nigeria today are based on purported confessions of those involved, who were caught afterwards; social media reports; and commentaries by armchair columnists. One can extrapolate from these accounts that the practice is becoming prevalent and getting scarier and scarier: Youths are killing their parents, siblings, friends, and others to use their body parts in money rituals. Some of these accounts indicate that youths, especially fraudsters known as Yahoo Boys, are not the only ones involved in money rituals. Politicians, businessmen, market women, contractors, artistes, professionals, and those seeking elevation at work are also allegedly involved.

Not all seekers of these rituals want to get stupendously rich. Some are just looking for whatever amount they could get from participation. In one instance, a teenage boy, who participated in a killing, recounted that he was promised N50,000 if he could bring a specific human part to the occult practitioner. Apparently, the practitioner too wants to use the human part in money ritual for others for which he would be paid.

Whether money rituals work or not is immaterial to both sides. It is all about making money one way or the other. As in ancient societies, those who engage in such rituals believe that they work. This belief is reinforced today by their colleagues, who suddenly became rich, building houses and riding expensive cars.

What is surprising about these believers is why they don’t stop to ask why the practitioners themselves are not stupendously rich. Why can’t they use their ritual powers to create wealth for themselves or for their relatives or friends? If specific human parts are needed for the ritual, why must they be taken from their parents, siblings, or friends, rather than from just anyone? Perhaps the answer lies in making the ritual so esoteric and outlandish to be believed.

The point about belief, though, is the willing suspension of rationality and logic. Even some parents, who should know better, are caught up in this web of belief, leading them to be willing accomplices. It takes a flight away from rationality to see a connection between human sacrifice and wealth creation.

Who exactly are the occult practitioners, who order human sacrifice as passport to wealth creation? They are said to include not just some jungle priests but also alfas and pastors. Do these occult practitioners believe that human sacrifice can really create wealth? It is doubtful. Many of them are in the business of raking as much money as they can from believers.

The question now is how might this practice be stamped out? A four-prong approach is needed. First, while belief in human sacrifice as passport to wealth cannot be simply legislated out of existence, specific laws are in order that specify stiff penalties for anyone involved in human sacrifice.

Second, a select group of investigators, drawn from the intelligence, police, and local vigilante outfits, should be empowered to secretly fish out all those involved, or are planning to be involved, in human sacrifice for whatever reason and bring them to book. There are those who would argue that such a group of investigators may not be effective or may be comprised. This is Nigeria, they might say. We are doomed if every issue is approached with this mindset.

Third, all investigated cases of human sacrifice should be widely publicized to show that you will be caught if you get involved in this ignoble crime. The publicity should involve advertorials in which the pictures and names of past convicts appear in major newspapers.

Fourth, there should be massive reorientation of society, focusing on the youths, who appear to be in the forefront of the objectionable practice of human sacrifice. The reorientation could take various forms. One, parents need proper education about effective parenting during this challenging period, typified by banditry, kidnapping, cyber fraud, human sacrifice, and relentless social media indoctrination.

Two, federal, state, and local governments should set aside funds for various programmes that would engage the youths at all levels. A key event at such programmes should be values education and the need to avoid criminal activities, including human sacrifice. The point here is to condemn the practice as much and as frequently as possible.

Human sacrifice is murder. We cannot just talk glibly about it, without coordinated action.

My Participations: Bisi Akande on governance and financial management.

“It is a bonus to be cherished that this life narrative of a frontline politician has emerged from the hands of a man whose moral integrity in governance, as in all spheres of responsibility, has remained undented”.

-Professor Wole Soyinka, in his Forward to My Participations: An Autobiography, by Chief Bisi Akande, page xx.

In this continuation of my serial review of Chief Bisi Akande’s book, I focus on two inter-related aspects of his political participations, namely, governance and financial management as revealed in the book. Akande devoted Chapters 9-13 to his service in Chief Bola Ige’s government (1979-1983), first as the Secretary to the State Government and later as the Deputy Governor. He would later devote ten chapters (18-27) to his experiences as the Governor of Osun State (1999-2003).

It is clear from the accounts in the book that Akande sees effective financial management as key to good governance, especially in Nigeria’s cash-strapped subnational governments. In the case of Osun state, often regarded as a Civil Service state, the wage bill has always been too large for the state’s federal allocation. Yet, the state’s Internally Generated Revenue often did not cover the shortfall. The result is often little or nothing left for capital development. Here’s how Akande painted the situation: “I inherited a staff of 23,077 workers, who were mostly inefficient and badly coordinated, yet insisted on being appropriated with N260 million per month out of a total monthly revenue of N150 million”. This contrasts sharply with “an average of 14,500 workers” with which Chief Obafemi Awolowo serviced the entire Western Region, now made up of the six States of the South-West plus Edo and Delta States in the South-South (page 293).

This finding informed Akande’s focus on personnel management, vetting of contractors’ charges, and cutting down on the excesses of civil servants. Fortunately, he learned the ropes very early as workers staged a violent protest within one week of his assumption of office as State Governor. Their goal was to cow him into submission to their demands, including bribes. Indeed, four labour union leaders showed him proof of bribes paid by previous governments (pages 292-293). Akande responded with characteristic bluntness by refusing to cooperate.

He thereafter developed a scheme of 10% senior policy-making management; 15% middle management staff; 20% supervisory executive staff; and 55% working staff. He thereafter briefed the House of Assembly about the precarious financial situation of the state and got it to pass a resolution for him not to spend beyond 70% of average state monthly income on salaries and wages (pages 296-297).

In order to implement this policy, Akande initiated an establishment audit, which revealed a top-heavy civil service in which there were more supervisors than the supervised! Similarly, there were well over 2,000 teachers in excess of the number needed. Yet, some key subjects, such as English Language and Mathematics, were inadequately staffed, while some schools had teachers without pupils! To complicate matters, the Federal Government increased the minimum wage, which put additional burden on the states.

Worse still, there was no State Secretariat as civil servants were distributed across local government offices and rented apartments. The Governor’s office was a building donated by the Federal Government, while the Government House was “an old wood-decked house with leaking roofs built for the Divisional Engineer by Awolowo’s administration in 1955” (pages 294-295).

Against the above backgrounds, Akande engaged in fund saving measures. He started by cutting down on political appointees, limiting the number of Commissioners to only eleven.  This was followed by pruning the civil service, including (a) retrenchment of workers with negative records of service and those who had attained retirement age or served for the maximum 35 years and (b) merging and reducing government agencies from 43 to 34. This, of course, intensified strikes by the Labour Unions, to which some reviewers of the book attributed his re-election loss, rather than to the massive rigging carried out by the Obasanjo-led People’s Democratic Party in 2003.

Akande also prevented contractors from milking on the state, by slashing proposed contract sums and subsequent variations. In one instance, he bluntly told a contractor, who had submitted a variation of N377 million: “You are the one who incurred this debt on our behalf. It is either you take my terms or you go to court. I can only pay you N140 million … After four days, he came back and accepted my terms” (page 398).

From his previous experience as SSG and Deputy Governor, Akande had seen through civil servants. He knew about budget padding and inflated purchases: “In one instance, they wanted to buy four tyres for an SUV … for N40,000 each”. On further enquiry, Akande discovered that the market price for the tyres varied from N9,000 to N11,000 (page 396). At the end of the day, the tyres were purchased for N10,000 each!

He resisted several attempts to offer bribe, even to prevent his own impeachment. He also resisted attempts by the late Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuwade, to trap him into borrowing the sum of $300 million to repair the Ede-Osogbo Waterworks. Akande went behind the Ooni to get the same Waterworks completed with only half a million dollars, instead $300 million (page 336)!

As a further step to save funds, Akande also exposed the financial shenanigans of his Deputy, Iyiola Omisore, which led to the latter’s impeachment.

It was this prudent management of personnel and financial resources that allowed Akande, without borrowing a penny, to build the new sprawling Secretariat, including the iconic Bola Ige House, which the Osun State Government uses till today: “It is on record that the entire Secretariat and the Bola Ige House were built from savings I made from yearly recurrent expenditure” (page 395). He also embarked on road construction and rehabilitation, including the mapping out of the road network in and around Osogbo, which subsequent administrations embarked upon.

Anyone familiar with Akande’s biography would not be surprised by his prudence and no-nonsense governance style. Here is a man, who started building his own house in Ila with his first salary arrears at about age 20 (page 65); shunned a funeral party for his mother in order to save money for his brother’s education (page 69); became an Accountant at age 23; joined British Petroleum, where he worked in the Accounts Department and role to top executive level; and already knew the inner workings of government before he became Governor.

As I was growing up, what baffled me was the apparent, debilitating and abject poverty of my parents … throughout his working life, my father climbed an average of seventy to eighty palm trees twice daily. My mother hawked and sold the wine my father could procure daily … But despite their hard work and diligence, they never had any respite from poverty. They endured this poverty till death.”

-Bisi Akande on his parental background in My Participations, An Autobiography, page 37.

The above quote from Chief Bisi Akande’s book is one of several statements others might have chosen to omit in their own autobiography. Similarly, Akande narrated how he was upbraided for a bureaucratic error by the State Executive Council, when he was the Secretary to the State Government, for initiating a memo that should have originated from the Ministry of Education (page 147). On yet another occasion, he told us, “I incurred a shortage of £1:5/- … by some duplicated entries under pressure from customers”, while acting for the cashier, who was on leave, while he was the Divisional Accountant (page 85). These are just a few of many examples of self-reporting in the book.

These examples demonstrate Akande’s truthfulness even to the point of self deprecation, while offering a taste of what he revealed about himself – his hometown of Ila-Orangun, his upbringing and education, his professional career, and his excursion into politics. If he revealed this much about himself, one can understand why he held nothing back about others. Reviewers who ignored these essential biographical details missed the insights into the making of the man that Akande eventually became.

Akande grew up in Ila-Orangun, a town deeply rooted in Yoruba history, which suffered greatly from the Fulani-led coup that toppled Afonja in Ilorin and the upheavals that attended the subsequent collapse of the Oyo Empire in the 19th century. Today’s Ila-Orangun was resettled by returning refugees from the Yoruba wars, after losing much of Igbominaland to the Ilorin Emirate, now in Kwara State. This displacement and resettlement explain why many Ila-Orangun residents today have one ancestor or the other from other parts of Yorubaland. It was against this background that Akande charted the development of Ila-Orangun, his own ancestry, and his own growth as a youth, pupil, teacher, accountant, Councillor, Constituent Assembly member, and politician-SSG, Deputy Governor, Governor, and Chairman of 4 progressive political parties.

Akande’s ancestors “were parts of these general displacements and movements occasioned by the years of wars in the Yoruba country” (page 39). Indeed, Akande’s great grandfather was an Ila military commander during the Yoruba wars (page 50). Akande’s encounter with the warrior’s military outfit and fighting arsenal in his grandfather’s house made a lasting impression on him. When he was told that the relics were being kept there as his inheritance, the impression was created that “that I was likely going to end up as a warrior. All this had effect on me. As a young boy, I was foolhardily bold”.

Anyone who has read through My Participations would know that the boldness has persisted. He never shied away from trouble in his youth and confronted elders as appropriate: In 1978, when the trio of older politicians – Chiefs Akinfosile, Onitiri, and Coker – tried to woo him away from Chief Awolowo, Akande retorted: “What did Awolowo do wrong in politics that any of you had not done worse (page 6)?” Furthermore, when he was caught sleeping at work while still learning the ropes as a worker for British Petroleum, he boldly asserted that he slept, arguing that the job of sitting down to understudy someone else in a comfortable corporate environment was vastly different from the setting of his previous standing job as a school teacher. The management must keep him busy, if they did not want him to sleep off! (page 83). Moreover, when Chief Olusegun Obasanjo sought to shift the blame for Bola Ige’s murder, Akande boldly told the sitting President: “You must be out of your mind” (page 350).

Akande’s parents were offsprings of returning refugees of the wars. Although both parents were born into wealth by local standards, Akande’s father chose two different paths of his own: First, he took to palm wine tapping, instead of farming like his own father (that is, Akande’s grandfather). Second, Akande’s father chose to forsake his own father’s traditional religion by adopting Islam.

Thus, young Akande grew up fully exposed to traditional religion, embraced by his paternal and maternal grandparents with whom he lived, and to Islam, which his parents had adopted. The encounter with Christianity would compound the situation when he eventually enrolled in colonial and missionary schools and became a teacher in the latter. As a youth, he freely was going in and out of mosques and churches. This experience sowed the seed of Akande’s religious tolerance.

Young Akande could have become a farmer or a palm wine tapper but for the intervention of a Railway Station Master whom his father respected. Later, when he went to Idanre to complete his primary education, he was lured into being a Mechanic, but he was redirected to school by concerned relatives, who conspired with the Master Mechanic to ask the new apprentice to produce a primary school leaving certificate.

After a short stint as a pupil teacher in Idanre, he went to a Teacher Training College to become a certified teacher. He enrolled in a correspondence college, while still in training and eventually became an accountant. He rose through the ranks to become an executive in British Petroleum. How he joined BP and his experiences with the company are a lesson for today’s job-seeking youths.

It was in the Teacher Training College that Akande’s leadership training actually took off as the school’s Health Prefect, whose duty it was to determine the suitability of the kitchen’s food for consumption. While working for BP, he joined the Ila Student Union in Lagos in his effort to contribute to the development of his hometown. He subsequently became a Councillor, where he distinguished himself, and other political appointments would follow.

What is rather distinctive about Akande’s political participations is the recognition accorded him by his people and other politicians beyond his state. Rather than go all the way out to seek office, he was always selected for office or invited to run for one. His role in the offices he occupied and the lessons to learn from his experiences will be the subject of the next contribution.