cfr magazine

A home to latest news on politics, entertainment, sports, technology, education, business and zeeworld movie series

Sunday 15 October 2017

[OPINION] Until Recently, Casting & Binding Demons Or Evil Spirits Was Strange In Igbo Land

By Anayo M. Nwosu

Those that grew up in the Igbo communities earlier than 1980s were used to seeing sacrifices placed at road junctions.

Until the colonial masters widened our footpaths to roads, the paths intersected into into junctions as the new colonial roads.


Junctions are described as where two or more paths or roads meet.The type of junction or intersection determines its spiritual significance and the kind of sacrifice dropped at them.

A T-shaped junction (i.e an intersection where a road terminates at the angle of 90 degrees to another road) is of more spiritual significance than a junction where two paths or roads intersect.

It was believed that the spirits or demons ply the same roads as humans and would usually stop or pause at road junctions.


Even though the spirits are invisible to humans except to “dibia” or diviners wearing “nzu” or whitish chalk on each of the eyelids, it is a general feeling that the spirits see humans and sacrifices placed for them as food of appeasement.

A sacrifice in Igbo land is a prescription by a diviner or “Ogba afa” as an appeasement to a named evil spirit troubling a patient or their client responsible for unfavorable condition or sickness of a human being.

The diviner prepares the sacrifice for the client who would be instructed on the particular road junction to drop the sacrifice preparation and the timing.

The sacrifice dropped on the road junctions are expected to be eaten or accepted by the responsible evil spirit.

As the sacrifices are placed on the roads, the named spirit would be deemed to have been appeased.


Items used for the preparation of sacrifices include palm wine, pigeon, goats, chicken, food items etc., powder, lipsticks mirrors and later sweets and soft drinks.

Never mind that I and some of my naughty friends, while in our teens, would always hunt for and descend on biscuits, soft drinks and sweets sacrificed for the ogbanje spirits at road junctions.

My friends and I and the birds especially the vultures transported the sacrificial items to the spirits.

Even when the diviner or exorcists visit the home of a client that needs spiritual cleansing, it is all about pleading, cajoling and persuasion of the menacing undesirable spirits to depart their host.

After adequate begging, the spirit being pursued might even speak through the mouth of the possessed announcing the scale and nature of sacrifice it needs to vacate possession of their host or abode.

The native doctors that specialized in freeing young ladies of marine spirits would take the afflicted to the bank of the river and would beg mammy water to release the allegedly possessed subject.


Also, native doctors trying to reset the brains of  some young boys adjudged disoriented or suffering from “agwu” or “àghánānā” sacrifice  white fowl and/or a he-goat with a lot of pleadings and cajoling.

It’s all about begging full of incantations just like when christians speak in tongues. Only the wordings differ.

Having witnessed numerous traditional ways of exorcism or luring the undesirable spirits out of the possessed, I was shocked to see the way the christians harass and hound the undesirable spirits by way of “casting and binding”.

While the traditional Igbo people used pleading, negotiation and sacrifices to exorcise the undesirable spirits, Christians use pure violence and threats to demons to consign them to the bottomless as they attempt to free their “patients” or  “customers” adjudged possessed by evil spirit.

Both the ancient methods applied by our native Igbo people and that of the christians seem to achieve the same desired result of dislodging the undesirable spirits.

There is likelihood that the evil spirits or demons cast out by the christians would be more disgruntled or radicalized and infectious.

No comments:

Post a Comment