The traditional ruler of Ode community in Akure North Local
Government Area of Ondo State, Sunday Boboye has revealed that his desire to be
a feudal lord over his town made him to join the Ogboni fraternity, a sect he
has now renounced after 10 years of joining the society.
“I wanted powers to face the mighty and powerful people who
have usurped my fathers’ land. To do this, I needed to accept one of the heist
titles in the land and which was my family’s royal entitlement. It is the
Ajagun (General at war) of Ode land”, the 45-year-old ex-Ogboni chief stated.
Once initiated into the brotherhood, Boboye possessed
dreaded powers that not only made him very popular in Ondo State but also made
many to fear and tremble before him. But that was before he had a challenging
encounter with a Christian recently.
Last weekend, a team of Christians and the reporter were
invited to the palace of Boboye in Ode, Ondo state to witness how the former Ogboni
chief who rose to the rank of Egan Oke (meaning an elder in the Ogboni
fraternity) denounced his membership and burnt all the traditional deities he
had served when he was an herbalist.
“I am the traditional head of Ode community. I give glory to
God for saving me and making me to be alive today. The lord Jesus has arrested me and saved from
evil association with Satan. I was an herbalist, a powerful one for that
matter. And I am well known in Ondo State. Everyone respects and fears me as
the Ajagun of Ode community. If I decreed that somebody would die tomorrow,
that is what will happen. The person will die. If I tell somebody that he would
not eat the next day, the person must be prepared because that is what would
happen. And if I decreed that someone would not sleep in his house the
following night. It also would also happen. I was doing all these using the
dark powers bestowed on me by serving the devil. But today, God has taken me
out of the darkness”, Boboye declared while denouncing his old association
before his people who trooped out to see their once dreaded occult grand master
and leader now wining and dining with Christians.
“Many people in Ode are surprised to see me with members of
the Lord’s Chosen church and other Christians today and even wearing this
apron, because they know who I was. They know about the tremendous power I
wielded as grandmaster in occult kingdom.
“My father, Pa Boboye Oluwasegun has been a pastor in The
Apostolic Church for sometime. He had tried on many occasions to lead me to
Christ but I have been turning deaf ears to him. This is why we used to quarrel
sometimes. Whenever, I organized the Egungun festival, yam festival or Osun or
Ogun festivals my father used to quarrel with me and asked me to drop the
worship of ancestral gods but I turned deaf ears to him because the ancestral
gods were giving me powers.
“Whenever he invited me for a programme in his church I used
to attend but he doesn’t come for my festivals because he doesn’t like it. This
is because the festivals are meant to celebrate and appease the ancestral gods.
During the ceremonies, I used to kill cows, fowls and serve some images of the
ancestral gods with the blood of the slain animals.
“ I used to invite members of my Ogboni fraternity, members
of the community and the media to partake in them. The festivals were very
elaborate ceremonies that usually become the talk of the town months after.
Many pastors and Christians have preached to me but I didn’t change my ways
because I didn’t think Jesus Christ could give me the powers I need to conquer
my enemies who want our land”, he added.
While narrating the incident that led to his conversion to
Christianity, Boboye said: “In January, an unusual Christian from The Lord’s
Chosen church who had come to buy some pieces of land from me, challenged me on
the gods I was serving. I had boasted to him that I had remained safe, taking
over all our ancestral land from our enemies all these years because the gods
of my fathers have been protecting me. But the man told me that the only most
powerful, who can protect me surely is Jesus Christ. He further advised me to accept Jesus Christ
as my Lord and saviour but I said that couldn’t happen because I couldn’t lose
the tremendous powers I have. The man then told me that if I refused to accept
Christ and serve the true living God, God would arrest me one day and bring me
to Him. I told him to tell his God to bring me to Him if He likes.”
The argument turned out to be Boboye’s undoing as what
happened afterwards not only shocked him but also turned his life in the
opposite direction.
In his words “It wasn’t up to a month after that encounter,
I got roped in a robbery case. The
Special Anti-robbery Squad (SARS) of the police in Akure invited me. So, I
drove down there with my wife. Before that day, whenever I have a case with the
police, I don’t spend more than five minutes before solving it because I’m very
popular with the police in the state. This is because if they bring any charge
against me and I say this is what I want, they must accept but that night they
refused. It was a rude shock to me. Before, the policemen feared me, because I
could pronounce a curse on them and they would be dismissed, but that night
things turned suddenly against me. The police threw me into the cell and the
next morning, my driver was brought to me. I was asked if I knew him and I said
he is my driver. The police then said that I was being arrested on the
suspicion that I sent the boy to rob.
“My driver denied robbing anybody but the policemen beat the
hell out of the two of us and threw us into the cell again. The next morning I
was taken to the court and from there I was sent back to prison. And that was
when a long nightmare began for me. I was detained and refused bail for over
five months but God Himself visited me in the prison.
“A prison mate named Dagas, who was jailed for being a
deadly thug but had become a Christian convert in prison, preached to me and I
was touched. One day, I had a powerful dream after praying with Dagas. I saw my
dad by my bed in prison. He asked me if all the ancestral gods I was serving
have saved me. He told me that he was the one who brought me to the prison. He
gave me a Yoruba Bible and asked me to first read Psalm 119: 68 which reads:
‘before I was afflicted, I had gone astray’. He asked if I knew the meaning of
the passage but I said no, he then asked me again to read verse 71 of same
chapter, which says: ‘But it is better for me that He chastised me so that I
might know the right way.’
When I woke up from the dream, I was afraid and woke up the
boy who had prayed with me. When I told him about the dream, he praised God and
said that my being imprisoned was God’s design to save me. Dagas said that it
wasn’t my father who appeared in my dream but God himself.
“The brother urged me to continue to pray to God to deliver
me from the prison.
What later convinced me the more was that mytravails then
were God’s design was that on May 23, the same man of the Lord’s Chosen church
visited me in the prison and prayed with me. After the prayers he told me that
God was about to deliver me from the prison because He has shown me enough that
He is the almighty.
“Barely a week after the visit, the same judge who had been
refusing me bail, rejected several sureties and all that, miraculously granted
me bail.”
However, Boboye has countless regrets for being an Ogboni
chief. According to him, he has committed terrible sins with the dark powers
the ancestral gods he served gave him. Recalling his 10-year foray into the
dark world, he said: “I had all the ancestral gods in Yoruba cosmology. I had
Sango, Ogun, Osanyin, Iya Ogbo, and Osun among others. Whenever I wanted to go
and fight on land issues, I used to kill dogs for Ogun to appease him to give
me victory. I also appeased other gods
with their demands, but they failed me, they didn’t tell me I would have a
serious case before it happened and when it happened they couldn’t save me
except God.
Now that I have accepted Christ, I have peace of mind, I’m
no longer afraid of anybody. In fact, before anything would happen to me, God
would have revealed it to me in details in a vision. I will burn all the
shrines I built for these small gods and denounce them publicly”.
And Boboye did exactly that, he threw the images and other
fetish materials into the front of his palace and was set to burn them all. But
before he did that, he explained in details, what he was using the images of
the gods for during his time as herbalist and Ogboni leader.
Boboye took members of the church to his power room where he
kept molded images of different deities in Yoruba cosmology. The first, a repulsive
image of the head of an old woman, he referred to as Iya Aye or Iya Ogbo,
otherwise called the earth’s mother or the Ogbonis’ mother.
“All the witches meet at the her place. But she is a molded
image. If there is a puzzle to be resolved, we visit her and present the issue,
the witches then respond to us and make it look like she did so”, he explained.
He then pointed to another small molded image, which he
called Sigidi. “We use Sigidi whenever we want to attack someone with a
spiritual arrow. We christen the Sigidi after the person to be attacked so that
the Sigidi would represent the victim spiritually. We then launch the arrow at
the Sigidi in order to hit the victim. And after the attack, we wash off the
victim’s name on Sigidi so that we can use it to represent another person in
the future.”
“This is one of the charms I used to bury in a controversial
land so that I can stop the opponent dragging the land with us”; Boboye said
pointing to yet another fetish item that looked like a rotten head of an animal.
He said the item is an antelope’s head. “If the victim on whose land the head
is buried, steps on this, he would suddenly have his legs and other parts
swollen and that would eventually lead to his death.”
Drawing the team’s attention to another repulsive sight,
which he described as the devil’s shrine, Boboye said the biggest one at the
centre of the group of roundly arranged molded images was devil. “The small
images are messengers to the devil. I used to feed the shrine with palm oil and
salt. But whenever I want the devil to afflict anyone, I would present it with
the black oil and mention the name of the victim as the one who said that this
god should be given the black oil. This would make the god to be angry against
the victim, as the black oil is its abomination. He would then visit the victim
and deal ruthlessly with him or her.”
The shrine of Osanyin and a small pot were the next the
herbalist turned Christian showed. “This is Osanyin, the god who reveals
secrets. The osanyin initiates and I took an oath which if broken I would vomit
blood.
“The water in the small pot was fetched from the Osun River
in Osogbo, Osun State. To all the Ogboni initiates, the water is used for good
purposes. We feed this shrine with salt, water but not alcohol. If a child is
ill, we use the water to heal the child, we also seek for solution to
mysterious problems from the shrine, we do this by giving someone the water to
drink and when that is done, we would find out what problem of the person is. It was prepared by the elderly members of the
Ogboni cult that I joined.”
There were some sculpted images on the wall of the room and
Bobobye pointed at a small round one on which a small mirror was glinted. “With
this one we know the secrets of men as it usually reveals to us like a
television whenever we invoke the spirit behind it with some incantations. But
not everybody can appear in the mirror. In fact, I don’t invoke the spirit of
Christians when they bring their case to me because I was afraid it could cause
problem. This is because I know that Christians could be dangerous through the
teaching I got while growing in a Christian home.”
Having surrendered to Christ at the Lord’s Chosen
Charismatic Revival Ministries, Boboye advised the other traditional rulers,
saying: “My advice to all the Obas and the chiefs is that they should accept
Christ because He is the one that can solve their problems.”
