"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.

Priests, Pastors, Prophets, & Politics of Prophecies

(By Immanuel JamesIbe-Anyanwu) – Mbaka’s god and the future of Imo

There are two consistent attributes of the Mbaka god. It is an arrogant god that forecloses commentary, hence the warning that those who will criticize the Catholic priest over this new year prophecy, will attract divine wrath. Gods are like that though—often demanding unquestioning credulity. But because critical intelligence is also a divine gift, I do not believe God gave it to us not to use it. Besides, unlike Mbaka, I am from Imo State, the constituency whose destiny is being purported for change; I should therefore be free to discuss my fate.

Second feature of the Mbaka god is that it loves the APC. Mohammadu Buhari, it once declared, would transform Nigeria. In fairness, Buhari has truly transformed Nigeria, but in reverse. “There will be more hardship in 2020”, Mbaka’s god assures again, which is consistent with the Buhari prophecy of 2015: Buhari has so far transformed Nigeria into grievous hardship, but will do even more this year. 

Hope Uzordimma, 4th runner-up in the state’s last guber poll, will become Imo Governor this year, says the Mbaka god. Hope is “an agent of salvation” who would “restore the dignity of that noble land”. This is at least the third APC prophecy largesse blasting through this curious oracle. Which raises two fundamental concerns.

Of Nigerian Christians and Resilient Witches

(By Immanuel James Ibe-Anyanwu) - In Defense of Witches 

Witches have lost again. In prayer houses, Nollywood and, finally, on campus, they always lose to Christian Talibanism. But be sure they will be back. The war on witches never ends, nor do those urchins stay vanquished long on the ground. The University of Nigeria has said the “witch conference” should choose another venue—and that is an unfair phrase, witch conference, as headlines call it. Witches have always had bad reportage, yet they rise. 

Never mind having a Supreme Father, never mind all the assurances of safety in the Bible by that Father, the Nigerian Christian is the most afraid creature on earth. Sleepless in his fear of something he declares has no power, suspicious of every noise within range. “Killing”, casting and binding in a tautology of chants against an agency whose apparent immortality never compels a rethink. 

What if there are no witches? Maybe witches, alongside the devil in that binary of good and evil, were invented to keep spirituality perpetually on course? Or perhaps they exist, but not in the touted sense.

Of Nollywood, Actors, and Paucity of Acting

(By Immanuel James Ibe-Anyanwu) - Every man has his own vanity. … If I were to choose between the story and the prose of a good book, I’d choose the latter—the juice. With movies, I’d choose the acting over the story. Good acting is when you cannot tell the actor apart from the character; when acting is so real as if a secret camera were hidden to catch regular people leading their normal lives—like when you watch “24” and wonder if those guys were actors, or real CTU agents doing their thing and getting filmed.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind—a memoir, now a film. Chiwetel Ejiofor is Trywell Kamkwamba, the Malawian father whose teenage son, William Kamkwamba, exploited the wind and generated electricity, solving drought and famine. A father who, though initially, even fiercely reluctant, finally gave his only bicycle to be cannibalized for a schoolboy’s dream.

             Ejiofor is a poor farmer and there’s no single doubt about it: his energy, looks, emotions. So dissolved into his character is he that, at first, I fail to recognize him. His home, the village, the people—nothing seems like it’s a movie. His wife, Agnes—played by the popular Senegalese actress, Aïssa Maïga—looks, in every detail, the image you know about that kind of woman in your village.

Of Grandmothers, Culinary Magic, and Nostalgia

(By Immanuel James Ibe-Anyanwu) – Grandmother hated maggi, no, “mmagi”, her term for all English condiments, which she said were invented to rig the cooking process. Yet she had her own cooking secrets: ogbamkpo and nwaurubiri, two types of dry fish without which she made no soup. Only the bones were laid to waste. The heads and skin, she would pound; and send the grain into the boiling pot to literally fish out incredible taste. 

The main fish, now rid of all bottlenecks, then plunges into the soup, filling it with true blessing. No meat or fresh fish approximates to the supremacy of nwaurubiri, Grandmother’s wise culinary vote. 

I once searched in Lagos for the pair—nwaurubiri and ogbamkpo—in my bid to restore the dignity of oha. Only twice did I find them. Ruined by urban touch, the Lagos ogbamkpo tastes like the bark of a tree. I eat the authentic one only when I visit the village. 

          Two more items sometimes helped work Grandmother’s culinary magic: otukwuru and onyenenkete, in my view the tastiest mushrooms on earth. I do not know the English names of these species, nor do I particularly care. 

What Village People Did To Me

(By Immanuel James Ibe-Anyanwu) I arrived Umueze Umuhu 30th December, 2018, after a three-day stay at a hotel in Owerri. Off Aba-Owerri highway lies Umueze, home of my ancestors, 15 minutes to the Imo airport sited in Ngor-Okpala, our local council area. The road is untarred, the colour of a rising sun, parting rich vegetations left to thrive around rural homesteads. There is notable treenocide from housing developments, but much of the greenery is intact. I love trees, love watching the harmattan push their branches to a side like women’s hair.

          Our earth is flat, literally. No gullies, no flooding. No drainage, yet rainwater knows its way to the farm. The road runs a long stretch before bending, so that, standing at your entrance, you can see a kinsman several meters away; you can call his name, raising your hand in greeting. Our road reflects a sense of ancestral geometry, a sense of kinship.

          Because my arrival is being expected, a hot oha soup is asked to wait for me at the table. My stepmother. Oha, your leaves are green and true, I think to myself, eating without any waste of time. Dry fish, the one they call nwa-urubiri, with its colleagues is lounging in the soup. The fufu is pure white, pampered into a round edibility. I am officially welcome to the place I grew up, reminded of Grandmother’s culinary offerings.

Nollywood, Stereotypes, and Misrepresentations of Igbo Culture

(By Immanuel James Ibe-Anyanwu) - There was that billboard of a certain West-African president who was dressed in an Igbo traditional attire. A loud caption gave meaning:"Igwe!" It was easy to locate the source of that cultural benefaction, credit rightfully placed at the feet of Nollywood, Nigeria's largest exporter of culture and values. Books and social media can tell the Nigerian story, but none can boast the compelling, even hypnotic power of the movie.

Which is why we should worry about the competence of movie makers—their cultural intelligence and sense of sensational restraint. Their products speak to millions, most of whom are illiterate and poor, but powerful. Powerful in their sheer number, in their capacity to spread a social or religious poison. They are the very agencies often punctual at lynching scenes, consumers of wild superstitions on whom depends the fate of that fellow accused of manhood theft in the local market. 

For the most part, the Old Nollywood is run by Igbo scriptwriters, directors, and producers, who are businessmen more than they are artists. For too long we have watched their cultural illiteracy ruin the integrity of much of what stands for Igbo culture and values; we have watched them distort historical facts, fixate on and promote ugly, exaggerated stereotypes, even invent cultural obscenities that do not exist. We have seen Igwes who do nothing all day other than look like frogs on shiny thrones, flanked by two able-bodied human fans, as they condemn villagers to evil forests, when they do not order their deaths outright. We can tolerate such cultural inventiveness for its decorative value, aware that fiction need not be exact and realistic.

A Worshipper, His Maligned Gods, and Hypocrisy of Christians

Dede Ege, man, and the art of gods by Immanuel James Ibe-Anyanwu

I have seen a lot of foolish gods. Grandmother once told me about one who complained that teenagers that often played around his shrine gave off smelly farts, to his eternal suffocation. Poor, lazy dude, he wouldn't move an inch. Another wiped out an entire family for the sin of a member he left unhurt! There is no category of foolishness that has not been practised by some god somewhere, even in ancient Rome and Greece.

I have seen a lot of gods--and that is because, to read Homer, Herodotus, or Plutarch, ancient purveyors of the Greek and Roman gods gist--to read them is to be an eye-witness seated cross-legged at the scene of the event. Ancient Greece probably had more gods than humans, some of them thoroughly silly--and I shall not attend to your lingering suspicion that perhaps man, often unwise, made the gods in his own image; that the foolishness of the gods can be explained in the social genetics between man and what he created--I shall not attempt such a sacrilegious thinking, gods forbid!

Of End Times and Conspiracy Theories

(By Immanuel James Ibe-Anyanwu) - First time I encountered jaw-dropping conspiracy theory was during the much-touted news of ECOWAS working to soon introduce a regional currency, the Eco. 

"It's what the Bible warned concerning the End-times. That the devil will rule the world with a single currency. Look at Euro in the Eurozone. It's all coming together," said a banker-friend who had an MBA. I was still seeking university admission. He had been drawn to what he called my "superb intellect", seeing the kind of books he often saw me reading. I was then obsessed with Karl Marx, Hegel, and Plato.

"Don't let your little intellect deceive you into arguing about spiritual matters." That was his retort to my argument that the proposed Eco had nothing to do with some unitary satanic government. My intellect had dwindled.

One thing though: the Satan guy isn't perhaps as clever as we thought, seeing as he let West-African leaders kill that Eco dream. He is now busy attending village witchcraft meetings rather than strengthening a shambolic Eurozone crucial to his future government.

Nollywood and Misrepresentation of Traditions

(By Immanuel James Ibe-Anyanwu)

There was that billboard of a certain West-African president who was dressed in an Igbo traditional attire. A loud caption gave meaning:"Igwe!" It was easy to locate the source of that cultural benefaction, credit rightfully placed at the feet of Nollywood, Nigeria's largest exporter of culture and values. Books and the social media can tell the Nigerian story, but none can boast the compelling, even hypnotic power of the movie.

Which is why we should worry about the competence of movie makers—their cultural intelligence and sense of sensational restraint. Their products speak to millions, most of whom are illiterate and poor, but powerful. Powerful in their sheer number, in their capacity to spread a social or religious poison. They are the very agencies often punctual at lynching scenes, consumers of wild superstitions on whom depends the fate of that fellow accused of manhood theft in the local market. 

Of Priesthood, Discipline, and Nigerian Youth

(By Immanuel James Ibe-Anyanwu) - Yet another young man is soon to become a priest. A beckoning masculinity, his looks are bested only by his brilliance. You joined the seminary as a teenager, I say to him—perhaps age has now brought clarity upon the enormity of this vow—do you sometimes fear you may regret? 

Not all all, he emphasizes. 

You mean you don't get...tantalized by...you know, sex, money...and other famous vanities of the human experience? 

Discipline is all you need, my brother. All you need to live just as happy as anyone else, comes the paraphrased response.

There was that lady I once saw in a friend's compound. Modest dressing, yet her beauty just couldn't keep itself in one place, helpless in its capacity for decent invitation. Seeing my lip-sucking smile betray interest in romantic, if not erotic pursuit, my friend cut in quickly: She be Sister o!

Wait, you mean this cuuute lady went to the convent by herself, with her own two legs? 

No, she carried her legs on her head and went.

I was to learn that, every year, there are actually more applications than there are spaces in both celibate vocations in the Catholic Church. They are 'oversubscribed', which means that while the world is wildly obsessed with sex, there are people lacking the relish for a more total existence.

Why I'm Not A (Nigerian) Feminist

(By Immanuel James Ibe-Anyanwu) - There are two ways to describe patriarchy. First, as a sociopolitical system marked by the privileging of men over women. Second, as an unfair system with a conscience which, without any real, palpable threats, admitted its own mistakes and injustices and made amends. A system that refused to call the bluff of feminine logic, that turned against its own gender and cut itself to size. Feminism owes a large part of its success to the support of men. 

A trite remark, nonetheless it is necessary to help us avoid the danger of a single story. Patriarchy has been so demonized you'd think it's all sour grapes: a system that is, arguably, responsible for the glory of the developed world as we see it. The skyscrapers, the physical developments, the moon landings, the technological revolutions that make life easy today—all owe their actualisation largely to patriarchy, to men who worked the dirt spreading bare backs in the sun to build our infrastructures—but these are ignored by the single story. To this point, we shall return later.

There are at least three major areas of human empowerment: politics, economy, and culture.