What Are We To Make Of This?

I have been reading about the alleged discovery of Juju/Voodoo paraphernalia with the name of the leading New Patriotic Party (NPP) presidential aspirant Nana Addo-Dankwa Akufo-Addo tied to it. And to be certain, whoever concocted this most bizarre, albeit not altogether puzzling, doodah, as one newspaper reporter characterized it, most definitely meant the subject great harm.

Still, whether the concocter, indeed, has even the moral righteousness to attempt to even “spiritually” harm the alleged subject of his concoction, is another matter altogether.

Some observers and critics prefer to facilely attribute the decision of the editors of the Ghanaian Statesman to publish the discovery at all, to media sensationalism. And there, of course, may, indeed, be an iota of veracity to such claim. Equally veristic, though, is the deeply-ingrained belief in the force and potency of Juju/Voodoo among a remarkable percentage of Ghanaians, even among those claiming to be devout Christians and Muslims. For even as Mr. Amidu Hassan, the 25-year-old Muslim who allegedly climbed and retrieved the Juju/Voodoo material from the tree to which it had been tied aptly noted, the reality of Juju/Voodoo practice among even postcolonial Ghanaian soccer players and other Western-educated intellectuals who, ordinarily, one expects, ought to know better, as it were, cannot be lightly ignored. For “religion,” positively or negatively envisaged, is an incurable human pathology.

Interestingly Mr. Hassan, who is reported to be an employee with the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), also, allegedly, claimed that his Ramadan fasting regimen had empowered him to boldly retrieve the Juju/Voodoo preparation from the tree, located near the old Sem Cinema Theater in Alajo, a district of the Accra metropolis.

It is equally interesting to note that the retriever’s mother, Ms. Patience Nyarko, is reported to be a devout practitioner of the Christian faith, to which the apparent subject of mischief also belongs.

What is also fascinating is the “internationality” of the ingredients of which the Juju/Voodoo mint was composed. There was, for instance, a horse’s tail to which what is believed to be a horse’s tongue was tied. And, needless to say, the horse is historically known to be a North-African and Middle-Eastern beast of burden. Then there was also a rare wood which is known to grow in the northern-half of the country. Then, again, in what appears to be the concocter’s attempt at racial inclusiveness of some curious sort, two black stones and a white counterpart were added for good measure. As for the inclusion of salt, bird feathers and a corroded needle, we leave the interpretation to the authoritative likes of Professor Kofi Asare-Opoku and Archbishop Peter Akwasi Sarpong, now that the erudite and pioneering likes of Professor Geoffrey Parrinder and Captain Rattray are no longer with us.

I have also been wondering why, if the Alajo Juju/Voodoo concocter believed his “medicine” to be that potent, the would-be spiritual assassin had kept absolutely mum for so long while the Volta River was pitifully reduced to a virtual dustbowl and Ghana a veritably Stygian heart of darkness? Or, does the Alajo Juju/Voodoo concocter, perchance, have anything to do with the deadly floods raging through the northern-half of our beloved country?

Indeed, this is not the very first time in Ghana’s postcolonial history that the subject of Juju/Voodoo has assumed such a grotesquely national political dimension. In 1958, or thereabouts, for instance, quite a remarkable number of prominent and pioneering Akan broadcasters, including this writer’s own great-granduncle, Nana Owusu-Akyem Tenten, were fatally felled by what was believed to be a Juju/Voodoo regimen, largely composed of live burials of cows and bulls, I forget exactly which. The suspects were believed to have hailed from a pathologically and perennially aggrieved Ghanaian ethnic sub-nationality, although no arrests were made nor charges preferred.

In sum, while the relevance and potency of Juju/Voodoo continues to be hotly debated among Ghanaians from all walks of life, on the scientific front, Juju/Voodoo remains an intractable myth, just like Nana ’Komfo Anokye’s purportedly still-intact professional sword, boxed around under a great tree on the grounds, or compound, of the ’Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in Kumasi.

The metallic projection actually looks like the rusted part of a modern gadget; perhaps the armature of a tractor or even some dead-weight construction contraption. Still, those of us who staunchly and religiously believe in the unfissionable organicity of the Asante Nation are sworn to upholding the preeminence of political religiosity over raw science as, indeed, it ought to be.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., teaches English and Journalism at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@aol.com.

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