By OGAGA IFOWODO
This is the second instalment of the paper delivered  by Ifowodo at Oleh, Delta State, under the auspices of the Solomon Ogba Peace Group in Collaboration with Flomat Books. The first part was published last Wednesday

THEY have been known to be as deadly as their male counterparts in gruelling (perhaps even pleasurable? rumours suggest forced sex with designated men or other girls) initiation rites and dare-devil or reprisal attacks on perceived enemies.

But I have chosen, rightly I hope, to highlight the five male cults above because they are the oldest and present us with the clearest contrast between “then” and “now.”

I take them at their own word for the simple reason that who they say they are gives us the perfect context for examining who or what they have become and to answer the attendant questions of their frightful metamorphoses,  as well as what is to be done to restore them to their vaunted original glory.

In doing so, I am aware that the histories and manifestos I have cited are mostly available online, and that taken together with some of the claims and disavowals (denials of voodoo practices, denunciation of involvement in kidnappings or of being secret cults, for instance), one can hardly resist the conclusion that they were written specifically to deflect the widespread outrage against the violent and murderous activities that followed their transmogrification into vicious gangs or cults.

The transmogrification into secret cults: The emergence of secret cults, what I call their transmogrification, has been traced to the factionalisation that began with the break-away of the Buccaneers from the Pyrates. But this view appears unmindful of the fact that the Eiye Confraternity, founded in 1965, predates the Buccaneers by seven years; one reason, perhaps, why the former makes a point of stating that it is “not a splinter group,” does “not have any break-away organizations” and that it is “the only tertiary institution based Confraternity that maintains its unity after over 40 years of existence” (original emphases).

Disenchanted founders

At any rate, some members of the Pyrates Confraternity who had allegedly fallen short of its high standards and been expelled founded the Buccaneers. But according to the Buccaneers, the Pyrates Confraternity, then led by “a cadre of  supposed super Pyrates,” had betrayed the original ideals and their disenchanted founders – three of them, led by Bolaji Carew – had merely left to form a new confraternity that would stay true to its goals. Nevertheless, they took with them many elements of the Pyrates, including similar attire and symbols as well as its highly regimented and hierarchical structure (I will have something to say on this below).  In its edition of August 10-16, 2005, The Midweek Telegraph traces “the origin of confraternity violence back to Carew’s 1972 saga and the birth of the Buccaneers.”

In the absence of any specific evidence of violent confrontations between the parent and emergent confraternities, it seems to me that this view mistakes any form of competition or rivalry for the sort of criminal, even blood-curdling, activities that led to the renaming of confraternities as secret cults. In any case, not all of the confraternities are break-away groups, as the Eiye are at pains to point out, and as the brief history of Black Axe above has shown. Yet, there is no mistaking the striking similarity between all the confraternities that followed the Pyrates, beginning in 1965.

They all espouse nearly similar creeds, have a rigidly hierarchical organizational structure, proclaim supremacy, boast of a highly discriminating (by which I mean, selective) admission process and display a penchant for metaphorical self-naming, but more on the implications or effects of these when I come to the question of how the transmogrification occurred. Suffice it for now to agree with the Buccaneers that the subsequent “growth and spread” of the two confraternities which “coincided with the expansion of other student movements … resulted in squabbles in many campuses.”

State-sponsored violence or the militarisation of campuses: But there is another, more credible, view that traces the violence – mild at first and mostly between and among the confraternities (perhaps, what the Buccaneers refer to as squabbles), but which grew in intensity and goriness to the point where it became their single defining characteristic and raison d’être – to the equally gradual but increasingly ferocious transformation of Nigeria’s political life. Commentators who hold this view point especially to the extremely negative and destructive role that the military came to play in our politics starting with the bloody first coup of January 15, 1966.

From the counter-coup six months later to all the coups that followed, whether they be described as violent or “palace coups”- a misnomer, I argue, since ultimately, any non-constitutional change  of government is violent, redeemed only if it is by way of a popular revolution – the pogrom against the Igbos in Northern Nigeria and the horrendous Civil War of 1967-70 that ensued, to massively rigged elections that lead to the installation of kleptomaniac treasury-looters, the Nigerian polity has been defined by one word: violence.

The thorough militarisation of the civic space, precipitated by the plain fact that power turns politicians and political appointees into instant millionaires and billionaires, transformed the electoral process into what General Olusegun Obasanjo, former military dictator and President from 1999-2007 in the so-called return to democracy, famously described as a “do-or-die” affair; in other words, a war. Colonel Ahmadu Ali (retired), chairman of his ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP, would underscore the war metaphor with the idea of “garrison” politics while lauding the “strongman” of Ibadan politics, the late Lamidi Adedibu who unleashed his private army of thugs on any Oyo State governor who as much as hesitated to obey every of his wishes and desires; in particular, the wish that he be given a direct access to the state’s treasury.

The ensuing unbridled violence led to many high profile political assassinations, itself a continuation of the method perfected by the military dictators. The list of their victims is too long to recount here, but we may mention a few: Dele Giwa, Major-General MammanVatsa, Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni 8, Alfred Rewane, M. K. O. Abiola and his wife, Kudirat, Bola Ige (and by necessary implication, his wife, Justice Atinuke Ige), etc. The telling thing about all of these cases is that their murderers have yet to be apprehended, as if the victims all committed suicide. With the increased militarisation of the polity came the deeper deformationof the structure, and vulgarization of the principles, of a federation, such as the idea of relative but inviolable autonomy for the federating units, separation of powers and of state and religion, the result of which is strong perceptions of marginalisation and oppression across the land; hence the rise of ethnic and religious militias.

This view is not original, and I need not dwell on it. I suspect that you share it too, so I will limit myself to an elaboration of it mostly by citing a few of the many social analysts who have argued in this vein. And what better personage to turn to first than Professor Muyiwa Awe, code name Long John Silver, one of the original seven who formed the Pyrates Confraternity in 1952, but who has since turned an evangelist, founded a church – the Fullness of Christ Evangelical Ministry (FOCEM) – and publicly renounced the association partly on rather contentious terms that led to a prompt rebuttal from his erstwhile brother and leader of the group, Wole Soyinka.

In a piece entitled “The Metamorphosis: From Confraternities to Cults” published in his ministry’s newsletter and posted on FOCEM’s website, Awe not only adopts this view but also casts his gaze a little further back to trace the origin of what he calls the “national culture of violence” to the Operation Wetie crisis that swept Western Nigeria in the wake of the rigged 1964 regional election. Because he encapsulates this argument, I will beg your indulgence to quote him at some length:

Political party thugs

By 1964, violence had crept into the political system of the country with the introduction of political party thugs operating within the national political landscape. The situation was most severe in the Western Region where the might of the Federal Government was being used to undermine the regional government. Operation Wetie was introduced, in which property of perceived opposition politicians were set on fire using petrol as fuel and, in extreme cases, politicians themselves were set on fire. In an act of political violence, the Federal Government declared a state of emergency in the Western Region and appointed a civilian administrator to rule over the Region. The unrest in the Region finally led to the first military coup on January 15, 1966. This was followed by the Revenge Coup of July 1966 which was staged by Nigerian soldiers from the Northern Region who perceived the first coup and its aftermath as being directed against the interests of their Region.

Then there was the mindless violence of the pogrom carried out in the Northern Region against civilians of non-northern origin resident in that Region. The massacre was directed particularly at civilians of Igbo origin. This led to the declaration of the Republic of Biafra and its attempted secession from Nigeria. This attempt was eventually crushed after a 30-month civil war from July 1967 to January 1970.Even now that we are under a civilian administration, many former military men are in top positions at the national and state levels.

Our president was a military Head of State and a retired general; former military officers are now governors, senators, legislators etc, and they continue to demonstrate that old habits of authoritarianism that are characteristic of the military die hard. Such habits do violence to democracy and the rule of law. In addition, armed robbery, assassinations and ritual murder are now a common occurrence in the country. The culture of violence that has covered the land these many years has percolated into various levels of society, and the confraternities, fraternities etc. have imbibed this culture. Violence was introduced at their initiation ceremonies.

Secrecy became their mode of operation, and occultism – the use of spiritual power belonging to Satan – was also introduced. The metamorphosis is now complete; the confraternities, fraternities and brotherhoods have become secret, evil cults, the Campus Cults. In the early 1990s, female students started their own cults. There is only one thing missing from Awe’s perspective on what he rightly calls the national culture of violence: the specific way in which this culture seeped into the campuses and an explanation of how the confraternities fell prey to it so easily.

Consistent opposition

As the military consolidated its hold on power, and one regime was replaced by another, especially in the long, dark period of December 31, 1983 to May 29, 1999, the universities emerged as sites of the most consistent opposition to autocracy and the demand for a return to democracy.

The National Association of Nigerian Students, NANS, and the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU; together with their individual campus affiliates, emerged as the vanguard associations that mounted relentless criticisms of dictatorial policies that shredded our civil liberties, eviscerated the principles and values of our social existence, and prepared the way for military self-perpetuation. ASUU fought mostly for academic freedom, improved conditions of service and reform of a rapidly crumbling university system unable to carry on any teaching or research worthy of its name.

NANS, which defied its ban and every attempt to prohibit local campus unionism, also fought for the same issues with an emphasis on free education at all levels, as articulated in its Charter of Demands, but because these questions had a direct bearing on the character of the government (military dictatorship), the battle line was drawn.

Having failed to emasculate the students and the progressive lecturers active in ASUU, the military government decided, as a matter of deliberate policy, to arm and patronise the confraternities which by now had become more and more anti-social, even if their “squabbles” were limited to inter-fraternity quarrels, reprisals against “sugar daddies” or any rival for the attentions of their girlfriends, or the intimidation of lecturers to award them passing or higher grades.

Patronage of confraternities

Adewale Rotimi, whose essay “Violence in the Citadel” I referred to earlier, is specific on this point of the military regimes’patronage of the confraternities as allies against the resistance the military was unable to crush on the campuses. Basing his view on findings by another scholar, Rotimi rightly points out that confraternities were not violent at all when they emerged in the 1950s. That was until they were “high-jacked” by military governments who were anxious to consolidate their hold on university students who challenged their authority. By the time of the 1988 anti-fuel price hike, whose flashpoint was the University of Jos, it had become clear to General Babangida that virile student unionism posed a potent threat to his power.

Consequently, confraternities, whose activities had become less open the more violent their squabbles became, were employed as a ready and willing reactionary force to “neutralize” student unions and their “anti-government activities.” This fuller picture, drawn from the perspective of active participants or observers of the gradual militarisation and degradation of the university, may be found in two other scholarly articles: Said Adejumobi’s “Structural Adjustment, Student Movement and Popular Struggles in Nigeria, 1986-1996” in Identity Transformation and Identity Politics under Structural Adjustment in Nigeria (2003), a book of essays edited by Professor Attahiru Jega, incidentally Iyayi’s successor as president of ASUU and the current chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC), and Sylvester Odion-Aikhaine’s “The Student Movement in Nigeria: Antinomies and Transformation,” a 2009 essay published in the Review of African Political Economy.

Personal experience

I need not tell you, I hope, that I can speak from personal experience, and the experiences of other victims, students and lecturers, with which I am directly familiar. When the Babangida regime and its spokesmen hunted student activists on the pretext that NANS and campus unions were banned, that our activities were, therefore, illegal, or when the regime said it did not recognize NANS (especially when we gave those ultimatums about protests if our demands were not met), we defied him and his minions with a simple answer:  The feeling is mutual! We do not recognise your regime which is illegal, since you assumed power by an act of violence against the constitution and the sovereign will of the people. An illegal government has no legitimacy and cannot ban the citizens’ right to freedom of association and peaceable assembly!

As you know, this was not a bluff, and the many street protests that NANS called in the eighties and nineties, peaking with the great anti-SAP uprising of 1989, testify to the desperation of the military in the light of the failure of the draconian provisions of the Students Union Activities (Control and Regulation) Decree no. 47 of 1989, and so why it had to resort to arming and setting up the confraternities – as well as such newly minted groups as the Peace Movement, Vigilantes and Man O’War – as counterweights to the “radical” students unions and NANS.