Gana Koto Nupe Short Story

By Ndagi Abdullahi From The Landzun Master Story-Teller Series

It was in my presence in Kano that my elder cousin brother Abubakar Dzukogi and his friend Pharmacist Dispenser Abdurrahman Bida formed the Northern Elements Progressive Alliance, NEPA, the first political party in Northern Nigeria. That was on the 8th hour of the 8th month of 1948.

It was from these pioneer Northern politicians, including Sa’adu Zungur, Aminu Kano, and Gambo Sawaba that I learn the dirty game of politics.

Aminu Kano later on became the head of NEPA and changed the name to NEPU in August 1950.

All these propelled me to, in 1956, contest for Member, Northern House of Assembly. But I lost the race to Alhaji Ndagi Faruk Tafida Nupe of the NPC.

When Alhaji Usman Sarki left the Federal House of Parliament to become the Etsu Nupe in 1963 I contested in the bye-election but lost to Alhaji Ibrahim Muku Naibi.

I didn’t relent but contested and lost again to the same Muku Naibi in the Federal House of Parliament elections of 1965.

My detractors mocked me as a ‘serial loser’. Anyway, the First Coup, led by Chukuma Nzeogwu Kaduna, came about on the 15th of January 1966 and swept away the First Republic.

The military regimes of Ironsi, Gowon, Murtala and Obasanjo then followed in rapid succession until Obasanjo broached the return to civil rule in 1978.

So I contested for the seat of Member, Niger State House of Assembly.

But that year 1978 I lost my elder cousin brother Abubakar Dzukogi, the most famous politician of those days.

I bragged to my detractors that I will be the next Abubakar Dzukogi of Nupe politics. Now I could not afford to lose, so I went to Gana Koto, the most diabolical Ebasanci sorcerer of the Cekperi Death Cult.

Gana Koto said he is inoculating me with the witchcraft antidote of Zhekpe to protect me against witchcraft attack from my political enemies.

But the moment I got the powers of Zhekpe I was the one who became possessed by a malevolent spirit. My malicious imaginations began to come true by bringing horrible misfortune on any politician I dislike or hate.

That was how all politicians who I loathe began to get afflicted with terrible misfortunes.

My political arch-enemy in those days was Audu Kudagba, a political kingpin from Laruta, Bida. He was struck dead atop his Raleigh bicycle by a Radi thunderbolt when I wished and imagined him dead.

Before long politicians who value their lives learn to never oppose me. Instead they all came to support me. I became the most popular politician in the Bida of the late 1970s.

That was how I defeated my opponent Ndagitsu Kolo with a landslide as I was voted Member, Niger State House of Assembly in 1978.

As a Member, NSHA for four years from 1979 to 1982, I was the most famous politician in KinNupe. I was the new Abubakar Dzukogi. So, in 1983, I came out to contest for the senatorial seat of Zone A Niger State.

By that time it was obvious that I will easily defeat both the New Nigerian editor Mallam Muhammadu Turi of NPN and the A.B.U. Zaria Professor Jerry Gana of NPP at the general elections. Not even our late venerable father Alhaji Aliyu Makama’s patronship of NPN could prevent me from defeating Mallam Muhammadu Turi. And even Alhaji Alhassan Badakoshi’s unprecedented popularity and political clout with the NPP cannot stop me from defeating Professor Jerry Gana! But I was not happy.

Politicians who oppose me were dying and getting crippled through bloody accidents and gory sicknesses – I was realizing that these were subconscious blood sacrifices from me to the sanguineous Spirit of Zhekpe who was rewarding me with political successes!

Was Zhekpe not supposed to protect me against witchcraft? Why was Zhekpe giving me witchcraft powers instead?

So, I visited the exorcist Islamic scholar Ba’Gimba Waziri.

Ba’Gimba Waziri is a descendant of the famous Shehu Waziri Hajji Mamman the greatest Nupe Islamic scholar of the twentieth century.

Shehu Waziri Hajji Mamman was in turn the son of Shehu Abdullahi Banwuya who was a great Islamic scholar of the nineteenth century.

Shehu Abdullahi Banwuya left Bida for Mecca to perform the Hajj Pilgrimage on feet in 1895 just when Etsu Bubakari succeeded the late Etsu Maliki as the new Etsu Nupe. He took along with him his toddler son Shehu Waziri Hajji Mamman.

While in Cairo, Egypt, on the way back from Mecca with his father the then 12 year old Shehu Waziri Hajji Mamman met Khidhir by the Nile riverside.

Khidhir is the eternal spiritual personality mentioned in the Qur’an as a teacher of Ilm Batin to Prophet Musa.

The Bida Islamic historians said Khidhir imbued the young boy Shehu Waziri Hajji Mamman with the Mujiza and Karama miraculous powers of Islamic exorcism.

By the time the young Shehu Waziri Hajji Mamman and his father got back to KinNupe in 1904 the British have already conquered Bida back in 1897.

It was the young Shehu Waziri Hajji Mamman who used his miraculous powers of exorcism to chase the evil spirits called White men away from Bida to Jebba, Zungeru and Lokoja in 1906 when the pale- faced demon called Lord Lugard came with his West African Frontier Force army to dethrone Etsu Bubakari the second time. For saving Bida from the evil Spirit of Colonialism Shehu Waziri Hajji Mamman became very famous and was revered as a saint throughout KinNupe.

But the White people bore that grudge against him from 1906 till they exiled him from Bida to Ilorin in 1933 during the reign of Etsu Saidu. They accused him of lynching three witches in Bida.

By the time Etsu Bakudu brought him back to Bida from exile in the late 1930s Shehu Waziri Hajji Mamman was already an old man. He died a few years later in 1946 but not before passing over the power of invoking Khidhir against evil spirits to his descendants.

And it was to one of his descendants, Ba’Gimba Waziri, that I went at Banwuya, Bida. First Ba’Gimba Waziri berated me a Muslim for visiting an Ebasanci sorcerer Gana Koto in the first place.

Then I was shocked when Ba’Gimba Waziri conducted his Hisabi séance and discovered that Gana Koto under the lie of inoculating me with the witchcraft antidote spirit of Zhekpe had instead infected me with two evil spirits namely Razhe and Shianto.

Ba’Gimba Waziri gave me a calabash filled with water. I looked at the water but instead of seeing my face it was the hideously fiendish faces of the Razhe and Shianto monsters that I saw.

Instead of protecting me against witchcraft Gana Koto have transformed me into a medium for the demons of witchcraft to consume the blood of the innocent! Ba’Gimba Waziri said that is why it is Haram for Muslims to visit Ebasanci sorcerers.

Ba’Gimba Waziri explained to me that Razhe is the opposite of Zhekpe and is actually a vengefully bloodthirsty vampire spirit that uses its victim as a medium to cause bloody accidents through which Razhe will be ensured of a steady supply of blood to consume.

Ba’Gimba Waziri then said Shianto on the orher hand is a very ancient kind of malevolent demon known to the ancient Egyptians as Seth, the Murderer of Osiris, the Manipulator of Chaos, and the Destroyer of Culture and Civilization.

Ba’Gimba Waziri said in the Modern Ages the European imperialists and American politicians have sold their souls to Seth or Shianto who have in turn respectively empowered them with the evil spirits of Colonialism and Democracy both of which have transformed the Third World into a vast abattoir of human blood for the vampire spirit of Shianto.

Ba’Gimba Waziri said he will have to form a tag team with me to fight Razhe and Shianto at the subconscious level in my dreams. That night in my dream I saw myself inside a wrestling arena at the village of Mawogi, not far away from Tashibo and Birnin Maza in Lapai Emirate. I was locked in a deadly fight with the two hideously fiendish-faced demons of Razhe and Shianto while a large crowd of Mawogi spectators surrounded us with the Alugbe drumbeat of death.

Razhe and Shianto were both fifteen feet tall giant monsters who easily beat me a mere four feet human being.

Suddenly Ba’Gimba Waziri appeared as a fifteen feet tall giant too but with the banner of Khidhir – he rescued me by beating both Razhe and Shianto into coma.

Ba’Gimba Waziri also pulled Gana Koto out of the crowd and beat him to stupor... ... then I woke up!

In the following days I realized that my power of harming my political opponents through imagination was no more.

I also learn that Gana Koto has fallen into a comatose stupor since the night Ba’Gimba Waziri beat him to stupor in my dream. But my political fortunes began to plummet.

First it was my political opponents who began to undermine me anyhow when they realize that I could not harm them anymore.

Then I woefully lost the senatorial election to Professor Jerry Gana of NPP.

Ba’Gimba Waziri explained to me that I lost the election because the dying Razhe and Shianto in coma were no more rewarding me with political successes in exchange for the blood sacrifices from my subconscious self.

That night I saw Razhe and Shianto in my dream. Shianto was beating his chest as he told me that if Khidhir is Horus then he Shianto is Seth.

He said Horus and Seth are coming back to KinNupe, their original homeland, to re-enact the story of their eternal fight narrated in the Egyptian mythology.

It is a fight that I and Ba’Gimba Waziri cannot win, Shianto told me before he and Razhe left my dream.

In the wakeful state I was still feeling so bad for losing the senatorial seat to Professor Jerry Gana. I secretly wished and imagined that all the politicians who won the general elections will be afflicted with a general misfortune.

I have hardly finished my malevolent imagination than the military came and overthrew the Second Republic through a coup-de-tat on the 31st of December 1983. The new military regime under General Muhammadu Buhari and General Tunde Idiagbon immediately arrested and imprisoned all the politicians who won the general elections. A general misfortune for the winning politicians indeed!

My power of destructive imagination was back! But it was a mixed blessing as I was devastated with the thought that Razhe and Shianto might have recovered from their coma to possess me again!

I rushed back to Ba’Gimba Waziri who gave me the calabash with water to see if Razhe and Shianto are really back.

That was when both I and Ba’Gimba Waziri received the shock of our lives: we saw the faces of three different demons in the calabash water! Ba’Gimba Waziri identified the three as Razhe, Shianto and Doso!

Ba’Gimba Waziri did his Hisabi séance and discovered that Gana Koto, the most diabolical Ebasanci of Cekperi Death Cult in KinNupe, had, unknown to me and against my wish, infected me with the spirits of three different demons and not two as we initially thought!

A visibly shaken Ba’Gimba Waziri said we will have to fight in my dreams a great and risky battle with these three demonic forces.

Ba’Gimba Waziri was still washing his Rutun concoctions from the Elo slate when I furiously left for the house of Gana Koto to give him a taste of his own evil.

On my way to Gana Koto’s house I wished and imagined him dying. And, of course, when I got to the house I heard people crying and wailing.

Gana Koto had just died!
The three bloody spirits of Razhe, Shianto and Doso have used my imagination to kill Gana Koto.

When Gana Koto was infecting me with these evil spirits to kill others he never thought that I will one day use them to kill him.

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