There has always been a strong belief amongst Nigerians in the old ways, including voodoo and black magic. There still is: The hunt for Nigerians who can change into cats.
Belief in African traditional religions and its juju components are widespread in Nigeria, with many combining them with either Christianity or Islam, according to a 2010 report by the Pew Research Centre.
Many Nigerians believe that magic charms can allow humans to morph into cats, protect bare skins from sharp blades and make money appear in a clay pot.
Questioning supernatural capabilities is taboo in much of Nigerian culture.
While this belief system sounds bizarre to “normal” people it is revered by many Africans of all social strata:
These beliefs are not just held by the uneducated, they exist even at the highest level of Nigeria's academia.
Dr Olaleye Kayode, a senior lecturer in African Indigenous Religions at the University of Ibadan, told the BBC that money-making juju rituals - where human body parts mixed with charms makes money spew out of a pot - really work.
Jude Akanbi, a lecturer at the Crowther Graduate Theological Seminary in Abẹ́òkúta, can be unequivocal about juju.
“This capacity to be able to transform yourself to [a] cat, to fade away and reappear, these things are possible in the characteristics of conventional religion that is african. – BBC
Thus every year there are ritual killings to harvest “body parts” in the ritual intended to make “money fly out of clay pots” to make people rich through no effort of their own other than, perhaps, the killing of a young girl.
The voodoo and ju ju priests use the belief in the ancient slave god Ayelala, to lure thousands of West African women into sex slavery in Europe and Britain every year – thereby making money fly out of their pots if not their followers. Oddly the West no longer seems to spend much time over this atrocity, neither condemning or curtailing it. Priorities, I suppose.
West Africa was once also the major market for transatlantic slaves and today, in a chilling echo of that role, Benin City has become the main hub for trafficking African prostitutes to the streets of London, Rome and Paris. – Daily Mail
It’s a mystery to me why Black Lives Matter so much in the West but no so much in Africa, where you would think they would. I’m equally unclear on why we are not allowed to acknowledge that one culture is superior to another when it clearly is, as far as human rights are concerned. Either we’ve lost our moral compass, lost our way or simply don’t know where we’re headed.
Given current circumstances I’ll go with the later.
It seems the most logical explanation.