One by one, three Nigerian former military rulers, Olusegun Obasanjo, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar, arrived at Babangida’s Hilltop Mansion in Minna, Niger State, last Sunday. So did former National Security Adviser (NSA), General Aliyu Gusau. The Minna meeting had every trapping of African witches assembling at the coven. Like owls, a pervasive symbol of African witchcraft, did they fly to and perch on their Minna assembly nest at nocturne? Yoruba attribute the kind of powers this trio had/have to witches. They eat the head from the arm and masticate the heart from the liver. In any case, age and interminable presence in the theatre of Nigerian governance should qualify the trio as witches. Yoruba, for instance, approximates age to witchcraft. T’óbìnrin bá pé Å„lé, à jé nÃà dà they say. When the Minna ‘witches’ were done, like witches who leave their covens lips-sealed, the meeting was without communiqué. In the 1970s, Yoruba Adawa music exponent, Dele Abiodun, gav
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