JUJU SCARE: OBINKITA AGAIN?

JUJU SCARE: OBINKITA AGAIN? (Proof read)
By Ohiaerinwa Ogbonnaya Okoro
The last editions of our community newspapers (THE OMU ARO, ARO NEWS and ARO AMBASSADOR) carried a new item concerning Obinkita women allegedly attempting to use juju to commit evil against members of the compound. And promptly her cooperating husband, also the Eze Ezi, was suspended. He has since then joined the wife in her “house of exile” in a non-Aro, non-Igbo neighboring community. A new Eze Ezi has since been crowned in a grand ceremony.
But few months after the juju woman’s saga, a riot of juju and witchcraft attacks and scandals have continued to disturb the peace of the majority of the compound, Obinkita village and other Aro neighbors.
In one instance, a girl child revealed and exposed many witches and wizards who live along one of the village’s popular roads.
But the latest in a series of juju rituals scares, outright threats to life and some eventual deaths allegedly occurred recently after mid night, in one of Obinkita’s sub compounds.
It was alleged that a young man of the compound slept outside his room; close to one of the several stores, shops and workshops near the main road, at Amaikpe Square. After midnight he had to ease himself by urinating casually in one of the available spaces. He went back and slumped again to sleep.
Then allegedly came this elder of their compound, precisely one of his uncles. The latter flashed torchlight firmly upon his face to ascertain if the young man was really sleeping. It was at this point by coincidence that he was noticeably snoring.
The fact that most evil are perpetrated in darkness came to play here. The uncle moved to and collected the urine wetted sand.
What followed was least expected, never bargained for by this elder of nocturnal and questionable operations for feared diabolical schemes and antics.
The young man caught him in the act. He instantly raised an alarm as he gripped him to explain to him what he was up to by collecting his urine soaked sand. Many relatives and neighbours rushed to the scene to find out what was amiss. Another juju scare; another juju scandal had occurred. The elder could not offer adequate and convincing explanations.
Obinkita may have a track record of seemingly youth restiveness and cycles of all sorts of crimes. But their youths used to have one of the best and successful vigilante outfits in Arochukwu, not withstanding some excesses common to all youths everywhere.
But juju and witchcraft menace, threats, accusations and counter arguments and the controversies that are associated with them constitute almost everyday occurrence.
Aro village communities have surrendered to juju, witchcraft and other diabolical devices evil men and women use against other people. Atani, Amannagwu, Amasu, Ugwuavo, Amoba, Ibom among other Aro villages have repeatedly demonstrated that they could resist and fight back these diabolical practices.
Obinkita, the largest and most populous Arochukwu village may seem prone to these, their Diaspora outreach and relations making the syndrome understandable. But the village’s credit is the ever ready prompt, no-nonsense, punitive responses by various interest groups- youths, women, compound and village heads and the elites. The example of the compound that exiled the juju woman, the Eze Ezi husband, is illustrative of the will and resolve of the village to fight crimes, obviously physical and temporal, others deviously covert and spiritual, but all the same diabolical.