Juju and Justice at the Movies: Vigilantes in Nigerian Popular Videos

African Studies Review, Dec 2004 by McCall, John C

Juju and Justice

As discussed earlier, Ekeh (2002) dismissed as "anthropological speculation" the HRW report's contention that the Bakassi Boys were resuscitating precolonial legal practices. Ekeh did not, however, refute the claim. He only directed attention to the failure of government law enforcement (a system Nigerians still refer to as "European") and away from the profoundly indigenous character of the vigilante response to that failure. The mythography of the movies goes much further than HRW to develop this particular trajectory of "speculation." The employment of various charms and occult abilities by both criminals and vigilantes is a central dramatic motif of these vigilante dramas. The charms employed are of two main types: defensive charms, such as those that prevent harm from bullet or machete, and revelatory charms that are used to extract confessions. Charms that protect the owner from injury are well documented in the colonial literature, and belief in the efficacy of such charms remains widespread (Basden 1921:203; Talbot 1923:233-34; 1932:331 ).3 Many Nigerians with whom I discussed the matter, including university-trained scientists, insisted that no one could take on the armed robbers without adequate countercharms of power greater than the protective charms of the criminals.

More significant to our inquiry, however, are the revelatory charms depicted in the movies. Unlike the protective charms that are employed by robber and vigilante alike, revelatory charms are used by vigilantes to identify those guilty of crimes. One commonly represented method involves the use of a charmed machete that glows blood-red when held before a guilty individual. In Issakaba the most important charm of this type is a cowry-laden necklace that compels the wearer to speak the truth. Confessions obtained by torture, as reported by HRW, are nowhere to be found in the movies. Instead, the vigilantes stand by passively while their jujus cause thieves to confess and to implicate those with whom they have conspired. Acceptance of the efficacy of these truth-seeking jujus is crucial to the claim that vigilantes can administer justice without recourse to due process of law. Therefore, the historical provenance of the authority these charms are granted seems much more significant than Ekeh acknowledges when he dismisses the precolonial roots of vigilante justice in Nigeria.

Truth-seeking jujus have a long and illustrious history in Nigeria, and despite colonial campaigns to destroy them and missionary efforts to discredit them, they remain important fixtures of village life in southeast Nigeria. Known as ariinsi or alüsi in Igbo, truth-mediating jujus were at one time a central institution for justice in the region.4 One of the most famous Igbo arunsi, Ibin Ukpabi, was located in a cave near Aro Chukwu. The British colonials recognized the jurai authority vested in the shrine, which they called the "Long Juju," and in 1900 they mounted an expedition into the "hinterlands" to destroy it (Nwabara 1977:100).5 While they successfully dynamited the cave and subsequently brought the region under colonial control, the priest of the arünsi simply relocated it, and Ibin Ukpabi and the countless other shrines like it remained important mediators of justice in the region. Portable arünsi and poison oracles vested with power from a fixed shrine or independently imbued with such power were employed by secret societies and other social mediators to divine the truth in legal disputes. Jurai guilds, such as the Ekpe society that originated in Calabar but exercised legal authority in communities more than a hundred miles up the Cross River, consisted primarily of traders allied to protect their goods and freedom to travel against the predations of thieves and slave raiders. While colonial courts displaced these practices in ordinary criminal cases, they continued to be employed to settle disputes, such as witchcraft accusations, that fell outside of the paradigm of colonial law.