WHEN I wrote “Pastors and the witchcrafting of mothers” (September 17, 2022), I had no idea I would be touching on this same issue so soon. But here we are. In case you missed the story of the 86-year-old woman set blaze by her daughter in Ondo State, this week, here’s the gist. The woman’s 45-year-old daughter simply identified as Abiodun (aka Iya Sunday) offered her mother as a burnt offering to her pastor-god at their residence in Surulere, Ondo. Abiodun’s pastor had given her the spiritual intelligence that the deceased was behind her spiritual problems!
Hear the werey: “I went to my mother’s house around 4 a.m. and sat outside. When it was 5 a.m., I called out my mother from the house. Immediately after she came out, not knowing what was happening, I poured petrol on her and set her on fire. What cause this is that I went to a pastor for prayer and he told me that my mother was behind what was happening to me. My mother also took me somewhere to see a woman. After my mother left, the woman also said the same thing. I burnt my mother because of what I heard from the pastor and the woman: that I could only be free from bondage when my mother is dead.” The Ondo State Police spokesperson, Funmilayo Odunlami-Omisanya, said the 86-year-old died in the hospital she was rushed to.
You may, in a fit of rage, load this accursed woman with expletives, but she is just like millions of churchgoers whose brains have been on holiday since they climbed the stairways of their church. You see, with only a few exceptions, pastors are gods and their word is law. They are made in the image of Lucifer and they shed blood at will, turning daughter against mother and son against father. They ride private jets over the heads of lesser mortals and can rain down on their heads whatever they please. I once attended a church where the pastor regularly broke homes by branding women witches. A convert who joined the church shortly before I left handled matters in a different way: sensing that the prophesiers used by the pastor were set to break her home, she threatened the deacon with a knife. The prophecies ceased.
In the Yoruba world, certain snakes, namely the gaboon viper (oka) and python (ere) are consumed by the contents of their bellies. That is the image that surfaces with the case of the poor old woman murdered in a most horrendous fashion after her own daughter smoked a pastor’s spiritual marijuana. Like the character Boxer in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, Abiodun (Iya Sunday) has no use for her brain. Of what use it is when Comrade Napoleon, her pastor, “is always right”? The logic is simple: “If Pastor sa sit, it must be right.” It doesn’t matter if the bloke is a habitual warmer of other women’s beds or a Rastafarian bellowing clouds of marijuana smoke. He is right willy nilly. Church is business, and with a rich supply of willing women, drink, and money, what else does a man need to rule the world? The pastors will “enjoy” till they quench. They are the exact opposite of a certain Alexander of Stavropol, Russia, who was killed by two female acquaintances last week for refusing the offer of a threesome: when they order, it is done.
As our world approaches the place of sleep, Satan’s special seeds (SSS) are having a swell time murdering their parents. In July 2012, 21-year-old Idowu Akinkuotu set his 65-year-old mother, Grace Akinkuotu, ablaze in Lotogbe, Ondo. The hapless woman was sleeping in her room when he walked in. Grace shouted for help but her husband, who was visually impaired, could not save the day. Last December, the Chief Judge of Niger State, Halima Abdulmalik, sentenced one Stephen Jiya, who killed his mother by setting her ablaze, to death by hanging. Comfort Jiya, a retired director in the Niger State Ministry of Education, was murdered by her son in December 2021 after he suspected that she was behind his wife’s disappearance from their Suleja home. When 23-year-old Sydney Powell from Ohio killed her mother, Brenda Powell, by beating her with an iron skillet and stabbing her nearly 30 times in the neck in March 2020, it was for a typically narcissistic reason: Sydney had been kicked out of college and didn’t want her mother to find out.
It’s a terrible thing for anyone to dip their hands in their parent’s blood. In the Roman Republic, this was, at a time, the only crime for which a civilian could be sentenced to death. I am aware of the psychoanalytical theories on Oedipal sexual conflict and the theory of family systems, according to which the primary cause of matricide is attributable to an abusive and pathological family structure that the perpetrator finds unbearable. I agree that the problem of family values is serious. The late apala singer, Ayinla Adegator, once asked his listeners not to be shell-shocked when they see someone’s supposed son stabbing him with a knife. He sang that no true offspring would exhibit the behavior suggesting a curse (Omo ti baba bi o je wuwa epe), advising women not to play devious games. “Onisowo lo yan wan lale eni mowe na lo gbomo fun,” he theorised. Gloss: It was a trader that impregnated them, but they gave the child to the man of books.
Readers, may we not have killer children! Abiodun sat for one hour in front of her mother’s Ondo residence, plotting her deadly ouster from this world. The same woman who had danced with joyous abandon during her (Abiodun’s) naming ceremony cried in deep agony as blazing fire swept through her blood and bones. The pastor in this story got exactly what he wanted: the blood of an innocent woman. Now that Abiodun has a murder case hanging on her neck, her problems have only just begun, yet Mr Pastor had claimed that he wanted to help her solve her problems. I remember the Yoruba cognomen for esu, the trickster demon: abaniworan-baorida (the one who finds trouble for those who have none). Sounds like Abiodun’s pastor, doesn’t it?
Re: Senator Aliero’s spare parts dealers
My only reaction to the behaviour of the northern elite as expressed in your article, Senator Adamu Aliero’s spare parts dealers is your assertion that ‘if this Lugardian contraption called Nigeria cannot work, then let us go our separate, peaceful ways; or, at the very least, have a confederation with express provisos for exit.’ These people don’t appear to have any thought about the urgency and desperation of the Nigeria situation. I think they just enjoy wasting other people’s time. Unfortunately, they benefit from the connivance of unserious people like them from the south. I appreciate as you continue to bring issues that matter as front burner.
Michael Olaotan ([email protected]).
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