Win-win MoU with Babalawos

 Opening address: The reason why National Orientation Agency [NOA] is organising this training session for all the leading Babalawos, Alfas, Malams and Bokaye in Nigeria is because INEC has released the time table of activities leading up to the 2019 election. We at NOA are holding different training sessions for all the important players in […]

 Opening address: The reason why National Orientation Agency [NOA] is organising this training session for all the leading Babalawos, Alfas, Malams and Bokaye in Nigeria is because INEC has released the time table of activities leading up to the 2019 election. We at NOA are holding different training sessions for all the important players in the 2019 elections including political parties, politicians, security agents, traditional rulers, NGOs, youths and women groups but we are starting with you because you are one of the most important stakeholders in 2019. More than all the other stakeholders, you hold in your hands the power to make or to mar the 2019 elections.

I know by now that you are very busy after the release of the time table. No serious political aspirant anywhere in Nigeria will go into party primaries or the elections proper without first of all going to see at least one of you to seek your help, your blessing and your prediction. No one will waste his time, energy and money to go into an election unless he is assured of winning, and you are the only people in Nigeria with the power to know who will win an election many years before it takes place. With all its computers, card readers and ballot papers INEC cannot tell you who will win an election but you guys, with only a fly whisk, a gourd or a prayer bead can tell who will win the election. 

I hear that some of you even accurately predicted to your clients the date on which INEC will release the time table. I hear that many of you have already claimed credit for the time table. One of you accurately predicted the type of cap that the INEC Chairman will be wearing on the day he made the announcement. I also hear that one Babalawo has predicted that INEC will soon change the election sequence to favour his client.

Almost every politician in Nigeria believes that you people have the power to make somebody to win an election. We at NOA are not in a position to say whether it is true that you people have that power but that is not our concern today. If you yourself believe that you have the power to make somebody to win an election and your client also believes that you have such power, both of you are covered by the constitutional freedom of thought, conscience, association and movement.

This seminar is so important that the Inspector General sent his representative, a whole DIG. Director General of DSS sent his representative, a whole Director. Representative of CG Civil Defence is here. The Army Chief also sent his representative, and you can see he sent a whole GOC because what we are going to discuss today is very important. You people have to make a living, like every other Nigerian. You have your families to feed and you must pay school fees, hospital fees, dowry, vigilante fees etc. No one can deny that. The only thing we don’t like is that you are the ones that send our politicians looking for every kind of medicinal ingredient and in the process they commit many crimes.

For example, the IG is very worried that as soon as the election timetable was released, people started disappearing all over the country.  Children have gone missing; hunchbacks have been stolen; newborn babies have been stolen in many hospitals; albinos have been stolen; graves have been dug up in many cemeteries; there is rape all over the place. Only yesterday, IG received a report that a big politician was caught by vigilantes sleeping with a mad woman in a dark market stall. The man claimed it was consensual but the Attorney General said it is rape because the mad woman is not in a position legally to give her consent. 

When the man was taken to the charge office, the governor sent his ADC and asked the DPO to hush up the matter in order not to disgrace the man’s family members because he has many important brothers and even sons and daughters and it will become a permanent shame on them if the man is exposed. So the Police Commissioner told the DPO to release him and he seized the case file and even the video recording of his confessions.

It is you people who cause this kind of thing. I am sure it is one of you who told the man that he will not win the election until he goes and rapes a mad woman. What kind of thing is that? If you are a good babalawo and you want to do good in this society, why didn’t you tell him to go home and sleep with his wife five times in one night?  Instead of telling people to go and do all these things, the purpose of this seminar is to teach you people to become innovative in your work. You should for example tell a politician to go and bring the liver of a blue camel, or the saliva of a menstruating lioness, or the early morning urine of a baby buffalo but only the one whose mother is lying nearby; or you can even ask your client to go and bring ticks from the laps of a rhino. You can even tell him to go and retrieve eggs from the nest of a crocodile but only when the mother crocodile is lying on the nest. That is what I call creativity. 

You see, you Babalawos, Alfas, Malams and Bokaye should also help our security agencies by copying the good examples from other countries. In Nazi Germany that time, during the rule of Hitler, some Catholic priests were actually agents of the Gestapo. When you go to them and make a confession, they will promptly relay it to the Gestapo. It will be very good for Nigeria if you people begin to copy that example. If you tell a politician to go and dig up a grave, please send a discreet message to vigilante so that they will lay in ambush. That is after you have already collected your money from the client because the police do not have the money to pay you what the politician will give you.

A politician will come to you and all he has is a briefcase political party, and you people will tell him that he is going to win. That is why INEC ends up with too many candidates and by 2019 the ballot paper is going to be as long as a roll of tissue paper. Can we instead make a deal with you people, so that you tell unserious candidates straight that they will not win, and the money that INEC will save from printing a long ballot paper, it will share it with you people? I think that is better because the money will circulate in Nigeria, instead of going abroad to mint long ballot papers and it is all a waste because most of the political parties on the ballot paper, no one will vote for them. 

That is why NOA has drafted this secret Memorandum of Understanding, MOU. We will sign, INEC will sign, security agencies will sign and you Babalawos, Alfas, Malams and Bokaye will also sign. It will spell out the kind of advise you people should not give to your clients, the kind of peace that it will bring to Nigeria, the money that INEC will save, the money that all the security agencies will save, and the percentage of that savings that will be shared to Babalawos, Alfas, Malams and Bokaye. It is a model win-win national arrangement.

This speech was allegedly delivered by NOA Director General Dr. Garba Abari at Fools Paradise Hotel, Abuja yesterday, April 1, 2018.