Tunde Odesola
(Published in The PUNCH, on Friday, February 21, 2025)
As the crowd moved in the pillar of early morning fog, their song became discernible on the dewy road of the thickly forested Aji town. The road in front of Enwe Nwanjo’s house was that type of decades-long, durable earthen road built and maintained with townspeople’s sweat, long before government came and built its own road of potholes amid applause and blinding camera lights.
So, it was on this road that the crowd was trekking, singing a medley of Igbo Christian songs, with tenor, soprano, alto and bass twanging from honeyed throats – in fantastic acapella.
I love good music, so I listened and watched. I thought the crowd was moving up the road that stretches beyond the nearby Aji High School, but right in front of Enwe Nwanjo’s multi-residence house, the crowd turned into the expansive compound, still singing.
“Who are these?” I wondered, struggling to make out their faces in the fog. Then, I heard familiar voices. They were students who lived in the students’ quarters built around the main building where I lived. They stopped smack in the middle of the compound and said a prayer like football players do before a match. Then, they dispersed into their various rooms.
But one of them didn’t go to the students’ quarters. In the fog, she headed straight to the main building. “Who is this familiar figure?” I wondered as the figure moved closer to the house. “Haa! It’s Eucharia, my Eucharia! What!? How come? So, she wasn’t the one in the room? Who then were those lovebirds inside her room?
My chest heaved a sigh of relief to see Eucharia wasn’t the one in the cozy blue room but I was curious to know who those two bedmates were. Eucharia came up to the balcony and greeted in her melodious voice, “Ndi corper, good morning. You no sleep?”
My face creased into a frown, then a wry smile. “I just came out to enjoy the early morning breeze,” I said. “Uhmm, you and cigarette!?” she said as she made for her apartment. “Where una dey come from?” I asked. “From church, we go do vigil,” she said.
She knocked on her door gently and waited. She knocked again. After a moment, the door swung back but before she could enter and close the door, I leapt up from my chair and was right behind her. Using the advantage of my height, I scanned the whole room ultra-carefully as she walked in with her back to me. What I saw was shocking!
I saw a little girl between eight and nine years old who came to open the door. She went back and curled up in bed, pulling the sheet over her head. Ha!? Eucharia probably woke her up from dreamland.
“Who is this,” I asked. “My niece,” she replied, “I went to Nsukka yesterday and I came back with her.” “I was wondering who was inside the house. I peeped through the keyhole and saw two people in bed,” I stated jokingly. “You must be seeing double,” she said, laughing. Little did she realise I really saw double.
When I sat back later and put what happened to me in perspective, I came to a profound understanding of the power of the mind. The incident buttresses my belief that the mind is the most powerful part of human physiology. It strengthened my resolve that I can achieve anything if I put my mind to it. When people give up on life and watch their dreams die, they do so from the mind.
In Eucharia’s case, it was my mind that sent suspicion signal to my brain which imaged the signal to my eyes and my eyes duly manifested the negative content of my mind.
I hadn’t settled down to drinking when I first peeped into Eucharia’s room. So, what my eyes saw wasn’t a product of drunkenness. It was a product of a mind wandering off. As a sound mind can be the teleport to self-actualisation so can an unsound mind be the shoestrings of the sneakers of a potential marathon champion, tied together while running. It’s all in the mind.
Today, social media has broken the backbones of witches and wizards, just like it is exposing the ruts of fake religious leaders, traditional rulers, celebrities and all.
Hitherto, in our communal mind, we believed witches and wizards were everywhere, sucking blood and cracking bones. So, we hid ourselves from ourselves – nobody wanted people to know the names of their children, their ages, their pictures, what they ate, where they lived, what they did, their achievements etc.
But nowadays, people live on the internet, showing off their families and achievements. So, I ask: where are the witches and wizards against whom we sing, “Oro nla le da, eh eh eh, oro nla le da…” when tragedies happen? Are they no more potent? Are witches and wizards too old-fashioned to join social media to wreak havoc?
It’s strange that people drive recklessly under the influence, killing others along with them, yet relatives and friends turn their mouths up to the heavens like homeless sparrows, crying and blaming the devil together with his witchy disciples. It’s all in the mind.
In most cases, after suffering self-inflicted tragedies, some people go to the same dreaded witches and wizards in search of redemption while some go after pastors and alfas who are not better than bats – blind, blatant, blasphemous and base.
When you see some people falling for the miracle pranks of some manipulative pastors, alfas and babalawos, you wonder why the gullible worshippers can’t see through the foolery, but it’s not their fault, it’s their minds, in which the clerics live rent-free.
Please, tell me why do people believe a stinking, poorer-than-poor babalawo has the power to use a human head for money ritual? If there was ever a ritual potion for money-making, babalawos and their families would be richer than Elon Musk and they won’t tell anyone about the potion.
From the outset of his career, controversial musician Habeeb Okikiola Badmus aka Portable declared himself ‘were olorin’, and people took it as a metaphor that means ‘mad musician’. Little did people know Portable was truly mad.
Going by his antecedents and being very sure Portable was suffering from ángàná, I came to an audacious editorial conclusion last week when I headlined the first part of this article, “The witches on Portable’s road to madness (1).”
In validation of my headline, Portable, during the week, personally declared himself a patient of the Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital in Aro, Abeokuta. In an online video, Portable raved, “I am mad. I have medication for madness. You can go and ask about me in Aro. I have a card there…I am mad.”
Portable calls himself a child of grace. Truly, he’s one. But when the mind is messed up, especially with drugs, grace wears the toga of a prefix and becomes disgrace. If the disgrace becomes consistent, the disgrace wears an embroidered suffix and changes to disgraceful.
From North America to Asia, Europe, South America, Antarctica, Oceania and Africa, drug use has destroyed the careers of many superstars. From Michael Jackson to Witney Houston to Bobby Brown, Elton John, Majek Fashek and countless others, drug use has been the bane of many music careers.
Portable is a dot in the galaxy of the aforementioned superstars but his example teaches a lesson in gratitude, decency and humility.
A dirty-looking hussler, the child of grace received favour from hip-hop star, Olamide, who collaborated with him to produce Za Zoo Zeh, a song written by Portable. If not for Olamide’s collaboration, Za Zoo Zeh wouldn’t have blown the Nigerian music charts.
He who the gods want to ruin, they first make mad. Portable became mad and he turned against Olamide. Olamide simply ignored him. Portable went ahead to diss another Nigerian music star, Davido, whom he first ingratiated himself to, but later turned against when Davido wouldn’t collaborate with him.
Since hitting the limelight, Portable has been a fly in the ointment of the Nigerian music industry, fighting everyone in sight. His online fight with his ex-lover and ex-wife of the late Alaafin, Queen Dami, was despicable, to say the least. The only fight he fought which got the approval of the general public was his fight against Bobrisky, the cross-dresser.
Since Olamide cracked the nut of fame for him, Portable has seen himself as the biggest Nigerian musician, calling himself the late Abami Eda, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, yet begging bigger stars to feature him in their songs. No bi juju bi dat? It is not juju, it’s hard drugs.
It’s hard drugs that could make him beat up the environmental officials from the Ogun State Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban Development, who faulted his building construction. He ran into hiding for many days before finally giving himself up to the police amid altercations between him and his elder brother, Akeem, who expressed joy over his travails.
Portable needs psychiatric help fast. The witches on Portable’s road to madness are in his mind. Though he has lost money and goodwill to this travail, his court trial should run its course and justice should be served to teach celebrities and people in authority that the law is not totally dead in Nigeria.
*Concluded.
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