"I Represent Earth": Religion in Social Media Age

(By Immanuel James Ibe-Anyanwu) - Angela Nwosu: Interview with an Ogbanje

In 2016, there was that trending video of a girl with scant hair and no makeup talking sex in vulgar Igbo. While some cheered her bravado, others were deeply offended, yet she released some more. Four years later, the lady, Angela Nwosu, has found some acceptance, pulling perhaps the largest following by any Nigerian using a private account on Facebook: 203,000. How did a random girl with a smartphone become a famous brand inspiring traditional worship in a digital generation?

Was the sex talk a way to get people to listen? I ask her, opening an interview this past Sunday.

“No. I just love talking about sex. I can’t have an adult conversation without talking sex. I had no friends and I needed to talk. When I started, there were so many trolls reporting me, so Facebook banned me.” 

Four times she created new accounts but all were banned, the last time permanently, she tells Nigeria Abroad. Angela moved to YouTube, where she met the same fate.

“I had to hire an IT guy to formally write letters and beg Facebook that I’d be of good behavior.”

Her spiritual nature has always been there since she was a child, Angela says, only she had to “use her available platform to provide solutions to people’s problems.” Today on social media, she sells spiritual items—amulets for luck, scrubs for spiritual cleansing, etc. She also provides free spiritual counseling on how people can use nature to better themselves.

Angela, who studied Physiology at Madonna University, grew up in a strong Christian home. Often called an ogbanje—a child possessed by evil spirits—she was quite rebellious, and neither faith nor discipline tamed her nature. 

“I know the Bible cover-to-cover. As kids, Dad made us read and summarize whole chapters when we offended. People said I was an ogbanje and it made me cry a lot. Then I finally embraced it, now as a digital ogbanje.”

For long in her life Angela has been familiar with hate. But hate on social media, she says, is the essential power driving her work. 

“I get at least 6,000 messages on WhatsApp daily. But whenever it’s up to 15,000, I know someone has posted something negative about me. And at least 30% of the messages are orders. On my birthday it was over 19,000 messages.”

The figures might seem staggering but on her two Facebook accounts—one private, the other a public page—Angela has amassed a combined following approaching 400,000 people. She is targeting a million in no time, trusting the help of haters and her own ingenuity in building a growing community she calls the #AngieNation. 

Angela, it was said, was previously married but was divorced over her refusal to have a child—in her new marriage she has also been said to want no child. Angela laughs it off.

“I was never married before. How will I not want kids when I help women to conceive? My husband is an only son. You know what that means in Igboland. Does that make sense that I don’t want kids?”

“They don’t even know our plans, if I’m even pregnant or not. People who don’t know me write a lot of stuff about me. Some say I charmed my husband.”

It was through those videos on raw sex talk that she met her husband who had started following her on Facebook, Angela shares with Nigeria Abroad. 

“They said no one would marry me because of those videos. It was the same videos that moved him to love me.”

 

The young couple recently celebrated buying a house in Lekki. 

“No one would ever understand how quickly things turned around for me with the emergence of Angela Nwosu,” her husband who said she crystallized his vision, wrote on Facebook. “I knew my path but didn’t know where it led.”

Analyzing Angela’s digital engagement and its possible returns, a fellow wrote that Angela was earning up to N25 million a month. Her spiritual items cost N30,000 to over N100,000 apiece, her rituals far more. On Facebook Angela shares reviews and testimonials from buyers: women who got pregnant following her advice, people who found big inexplicable favors, etc. 

“I don’t post reviews for traffic, because I’m not in doubt and people who use my items are not in doubt. Whether I post or not doesn’t matter. In fact, people send these reviews and bug me to post. I post only a few.”

On what she earns monthly, Angela says what she does for people “has no financial connotation. That is why most of the money goes back to charity.” 

Head-turning giveaways are part of her digital power, as she doles out smartphones and money on a regular. On her last birthday, she gave out N2.7 million (a day) and is planning a groundbreaking splurge to mark a coming milestone. 

“My charity is part of giving back to society, but also a spiritual mandate to appreciate the Universe. It’s a spiritual law: when you give, you grow. Testimonies from my clients, and seeing people get liberated, are my idea of success.”

On a Facebook thread discussing her sometime ago, someone said it was all “mumbo-jumbo,” that those getting results are merely “favoured by random luck.” Another replied that all spiritual claims, including by pastors, follow the same pattern. Angela says her acceptance and growth derive from efficacy, not luck.

Though embodying aspects of Igbo traditional religion, her spirituality remains unclear. No one knows what deity she serves and I challenge her to define her faith.

“Why do we have to define spirituality by the same language where things are either right or wrong, where people belong in boxes? What I do is not traditional Igbo worship. What I do is connected to Nature and Nature is not tribal.”

“I represent Earth,” she continues. “But I work with Air, Water, and other elements. I read where someone wrote that he knows my dibia. Nobody taught me, my spirituality comes from Nature. The revelations come, I apply them and they work.” 

For a society with a strong Christian façade and depth, Angela’s following and patronage raise questions. Is Christianity failing the people? Does traditional faith stand a better chance with digitization—with some makeover away from dirty rituals and harsh-smelling concoctions?

Recently, a native priest in body-hugging top, sneakers and trendy jeans, was arrested for breaking the COVID-19 lockdown. Some say a metrosexual dibia may find little reverence, but perhaps times are changing.

“My work room is beautiful and clean,” Angela speaks of her shrine, with a glow upon her face. She sets up posh altars for clients and performs rituals too. Often she talks about “charging” her spiritual items before dispatch. On Instagram, many are selling charms, but with a digital laundry that pulls commercial traffic.

“Many Christians hate me. Christians buy my items. Christians benefit from my giveaways,” Angela tells me, stating that people should be tolerant.

“Whatever we don’t understand, we hate. Your religion was passed down to you through socialization. What if it’s not the whole truth? What if there are other truths?”

“I didn’t choose to do this work,” she adds. “I was chosen and there are deeper explanations you probably won’t understand in a hurry.”

At 32, the Ogbanje girl from Nnewi may be raising a community of young people more welcoming to traditional worship, yet the element devotion inherent in most religions, equally thrives. A few times, she has posted a mere cluster of emojis without a word, drawing stunning engagement, if not disturbing loyalty. 

Perhaps in all this is a lesson on how aspects of tradition can attain modern embrace. Or how digital marketing can be catalyzed by what seem like random techniques unavailable in professional books. 

“I told my mother to disown me for a while and become my mother again when I make her proud,” Angela tells me, recalling her mother’s rejection of her methods. “Today she’s so proud of me, and to those people always running to tell her what again I’ve done on Facebook, she tells to leave me alone.”

“I will build a free clinic, where sick people won’t pay a kobo to get treated,” Angela enthuses. “It’s going to happen as my best gift back to the Universe.” A tall dream but, for someone with such incredible growth trajectory, the idea seems within grasp: with a smartphone, social media, and a smart idea, growth can happen and fast too.