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In Brazil, the Yoruba gods are alive

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.While Yoruba traditional worship, the gods and goddesses are being ignored by Yorubas,in preference for Christian pentecostalism, descendants of the race in the diaspora keep the faith

SAO PAULO (AFP) – Doctors told Julio Penna in 1976 that he needed to undergo corrective spine surgery but faced an 80 percent chance of being condemned to life in a wheelchair.

Penna refused and instead sought help from Candomble, Brazil’s Africa-rooted religion based on worship of deities known as orishas that link humans to the spiritual world.

Today, the 69-year-old, who is of Italian and Portuguese descent, is walking unhindered and is a high-ranking disciple of a faith that has a powerful hold on many Brazilians of all races in the world’s biggest Catholic country.

Despite lingering prejudice and intolerance, mainly from evangelical extremists, Candomble and the related faith of Umbanda are attracting a growing number of followers across this vast country of about 190 million.

People often turn to the two faiths to seek relief from pain or to embark on a spiritual quest, practitioners say.

worshipping the orishas in Brazil

worshipping the orishas in Brazil

Telma Witter, a 57-year-old artist, said her husband turned to Candomble as a last resort when he was dying from an auto-immune disease.

“He was able to live an extra four years. That convinced me,” she told AFP.

A white Brazilian, she fully embraced the faith after reading the works of the late French anthropologist Pierre Verger, a respected practitioner himself who also did extensive research on Candomble both in Brazil and Africa.

Penna and Witter are followers of Mae (Mother) Sylvia de Oxala, a 75-year-old Candomble high priestess who runs the Axe Ile Oba temple in Sao Paulo’s Jabaquara district.

In April, Mae Sylvia — a mix of spiritual guide, faith healer and community leader — and her disciples held an open house to honor the deity Oxossi, one of 16 orishas in West Africa’s Yoruba mythology.

For hours, devotees in brightly colored garb, including women in billowing hoop skirts, chanted in the Yoruba language and danced around a sacred altar to the pulsating beat of ceremonial drums, with some falling into a trance as spirits apparently took possession of their bodies.

– Candomble: An Africa-rooted faith –

Developed by African slaves brought to Brazil from the 16th century, Candomble has various branches (Ketu, Nago, Angola, Jeje) based on the beliefs of these distinct ethnic groups. It also incorporates elements of Catholicism, with some orishas paired with analogous Christian saints.

Trained in Nigeria in the Ketu (Yoruba) branch of the faith, Mae Sylvia has over the past three decades tutored nearly 3,000 disciples, many of whom went on to open their own temples across the country.

“We have black, white, indigenous and even Japanese members. We are open to all,” she told AFP. “Every human being has within himself the axe (energy) of the orishas, but that powerful life force needs to be harnessed and developed.”

Mary Yamanaka, a 60-year-old Japanese Brazilian artist, said she joined the temple last year, attracted by the aesthetic appeal of the rituals, which can include animal sacrifices, essentially to please the orishas.

Mae Sylvia provides spiritual guidance to devotees, communicating with the orishas through divination based on shell reading and numerology.

Each follower is paired with a specific orisha, who is connected to a force in nature and worshipped with offerings of foods. Those aspiring to be priests must go through lengthy initiation rites that last at least seven years.

Best known orishas are Olorun (Supreme Being), his son Oxala assimilated to Jesus Christ, Shango (god of fire, thunder and justice), Ogun (warrior deity of metal work), Oxossi (hunter deity of the forest), Oshun (goddess of love, marriage and maternity) and Iemanja (the goddess of the sea and patron deity of fishermen).

Until the 1970s, the faith was officially banned and thus practiced in secret. Even today, many followers are reluctant to publicly admit that they are adherents.

For that reason, it is difficult to accurately size up the country’s Candomble community. Some estimates put it at two million members, but the real figure is likely to be considerably higher.

And today, Candomble, also practiced in neighboring countries, is enjoying a revival as an affirmation of African identity and pride, particularly in the northeastern state of Bahia state, the heart of Afro-Brazilian culture.

Official persecution of Candomble was part of a bid to eradicate African influence and led to the emergence of Umbanda in 1908, said Mae Sylvia.

– Umbanda: broader appeal among whites –

Umbanda incorporates not only the cult of the orishas, but also elements of Catholicism, indigenous beliefs and the European spiritist movement developed by Frenchman Allan Kardec in the 19th century.

Because it is less Africa-centered and excludes animal sacrifice, it has a much broader appeal among white Brazilians.

Rubens Saraceni, a white Brazilian medium, is a prominent Umbanda priest and writer.

“Candomble keeps a very strong heritage from Africa, while Umbanda gives equal weight to indigenous beliefs, spiritism and Christianity,” he explained during a festival honoring the deity Ogun in April.

Nearly 1,000 disciples, most of them whites, attended the Ogun festival, chanting, dancing and breaking into trance during spirit possession.

Saraceni estimates that with 600,000 Umbanda centers operating nationwide, the faith has at least eight million declared followers and keeps growing every year.

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Source: PM News

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Kano Transfers Over 1,000 Almajiris To Different States Amidst COVID-19 Pandemic

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The Kano State Government on Saturday said it has transferred 1,098 ‘almajiris’ to different states of the country.

The commissioner for local government, Murtala Garo, disclosed this while presenting a report before the state’s task force on COVID-19 at the government house, Kano.

Almajiris are children who are supposed to be learning Islamic studies while living with their Islamic teachers. Majority of them, however, end up begging on the streets of Northern Nigeria. They constitute a large number of Nigeria’s over 10 million out-of-school children.

Mr Garo said the Kano government transported 419 almajiris to Katsina, 524 to Jigawa and 155 to Kaduna. He said all of them tested negative for coronavirus before leaving the Kano State.

Despite the coronavirus test done in Kano for the almajiris, the Jigawa government earlier said it would quarantine for two weeks all the almajiris that recently arrived from Kano.

Mr Garo said another 100 almajiris scheduled to be taken to Bauchi State also tested negative to COVID-19.

In a remark, Governor Abdullahi Ganduje said the COVID-19 situation in Kano was getting worse. He appealed for a collaborative effort to curtail the spread of the virus in the state.

Mr Ganduje, who commended residents for complying with the lockdown imposed in the state, said the decision was taken to halt the spread of the virus.

Kano State, as of Saturday night, has 77 coronavirus cases, according to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.

The decision to transfer the Kano almajiris is part of the agreement reached between Northern governors that almajiris in each state be transferred to their states of origin.

However, even before the latest agreement by the governors, the Kano government had been transferring almajiris to other states and neighbouring countries after it banned street begging in the state, most populous in Northern Nigeria.

Despite the transfers, however, no concrete step has been taken to ensure such children do not return to Kano streets as there is freedom of movement across Nigeria although interstate travel was recently banned to check the spread of the coronavirus.

 

Sourced From: Premium Times Nigeria

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COVID-19: ‘Bakassi Boys’ Foil Attempt To Smuggle 24 Women Into Abia In Container

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By Ugochukwu Alaribe

Operatives of the Abia State Vigilante Service, AVS, popularly known as ‘Bakassi Boys’ have arrested 24 market women hidden in a container truck, at Ekwereazu Ngwa, the boundary community between Abia and Akwa Ibom states.

The market women, said to be  from Akwa Ibom State, were on their way to Aba, when they were arrested with the truck driver and two of his conductors for violating the lockdown order by the state government.

Driver of the truck, Moses Asuquo, claimed he was going to Aba to purchase stock fish, but decided to assist the market women, because they were stranded.

A vigilante source told Sunday Vanguard that the vehicle was impounded while the market women were sent back to Akwa Ibom State.

Commissioner for Home Land Security, Prince Dan Okoli, who confirmed the incident, said that  smuggling of people into the state poses great threat to the state government’s efforts to contain the spread of COVID- 19.

 

Sourced From: Vanguard News

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Woman Kills Her Maid Over Salary Request

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Operatives of the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (SCIID), Yaba of the Lagos State police command have arrested one Mrs Nene Steve for allegedly killing her maid, Joy Adole

The maid was allegedly beaten to death by Nene for requesting for her salary at their residence located at 18, Ogundola Street, Bariga area in Lagos.

Narrating the incident, Philips Ejeh, an elder brother to the deceased said that he was sad when they informed him that his sister was beaten to death.

He explained that the deceased was an indigene of Benue State brought to Lagos through an agent and started working with her as a maid  in January 2020.

‘’She reported that her boss refused to pay her and anytime she asked for her salary she will start beating her.

She was making an attempt to leave the place but due to the total lockdown she remained there until Sunday when her boss said she caught her stealing noodles and this led to her serious beating and death,’’ Ejeh said.

He called on Lagos State Government and well- meaning people in the country to help them in getting justice for the victim.

The police spokesman, Bala Elkana, stated that the woman and her husband came to Bariga Police  Station to a report that their house girl had committed suicide.

Detectives were said to have visited the house and suspected foul play with the position of the rope and bruises all over the body which confirmed that the girl had been tortured to death and the boss decided to hang up the girl to make it look like suicide.

He said: “The police moved on with their investigation and found a lot of sign of violence on her body that she has been tortured before a rope was put on her neck.’’

He added that the police removed the corpse and deposited it in the mortuary for autopsy to further ascertain the cause of the death.

Elkana said the matter has been transferred from Bariga police station to Panti for further investigation while the couple have been arrested and will be charged to court.

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Boko Haram Attacks: Buhari Summons Urgent Meeting Of Service Chiefs

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President Buhari and the Service Chiefs in a meeting. (File photo)

Ostensibly alarmed by the latest killings of dozens of soldiers by Boko Haram insurgents, President Muhammadu Buhari has summoned an urgent meeting of Service Chiefs to find ways to stop the trend. 

He has also dispatched the Minister of Defence, Mansur Dan Ali, to the neighbouring Republic of Chad for an urgent meeting with President Idris Deby and his defence counterpart. 

Knowledgeable sources said in Abuja on Friday that the president is worried by on the deterioration of security situation on the Nigeria – Chad Border that has led to the recently increased Boko Haram terrorism in the area.

The sources which did not want to be named in Abuja said: “Nigeria has a Chad  problem in the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF) put together to secure the Lake Chad basin areas and repeal the Boko Haram terrorist attacks against all the countries neighbouring the Lake.”

The sources noted that Chad is believed to be having their own internal security challenges and this has reportedly led to their pulling away their own troops manning their own border around Lake Chad,  saying: “That lacuna is being exploited by the Boko Haram terrorists, who go in and out of Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon to launch terrorist acts.  This is a clear illustration of the fact that terrorism is beyond national borders.”

When contacted, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, confirmed that the Defence Minister is going to Chad but said he is unaware of the purpose. 

Meanwhile, the military authorities are said to be in the process of identifying the families of the latest victims with a view to making contact with them. 

Credible sources revealed that it is the reason the president is yet to make any pronouncement on the matter. 

“The President has called an urgent meeting with the Service Chiefs, as well as the fact that families of the latest victims of the Boko Haram are being identified and contacts made before a government pronouncement on the tragic attacks. This, it is understood, is the reason for the silence of the government over the incident,” the source said. 

 

Sourced From: Tribune

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