“…he told me to stretch my palms forward and which he studied carefully as he nodded his head several times and hummed repeatedly. It was as if he saw my problems inside my palms.”

This is my story. It happened to me in 2008.

Prior to the time, everything I had had crumbled right before my eyes. I lost almost everything I had, everybody deserted me. My business had hit the rock and my finances had crumbled like a pack of cards. I had nothing.

The situation was so awful that I could barely afford a single meal a day. It seemed I was the only person on the surface of the earth as I screamed my life out at the block.

Look, it wasn’t that I mismanaged my wealth when things were okay, but it was because the country was not so positioned and conducive enough for legitimate businesses to thrive.

Like I had loved to say that Nigeria is a kind of evil enclave where you cannot project if you want to do a legitimate business. Seriously most of the businesses that prospered in this Nigeria have been linked to various fraudulent acts and many of them only thrived on cunning means to make profit to survive.

I had so many instances of bad day that I cannot express here, yet I kept my head on through the turbulent time. I never considered suicide as an option, I stood my ground as I endured in silence.

One day a friend of mine, known as Alabi, who understood my plight came to me to admonish me to seek spiritual solutions from the ‘Elders’., as he put it.., ‘Àwọn Àgbà’.

Even though I knew what he was talking about, yet I did pretend like I did not know all what he was talking about because I wanted to extract more facts from him about the man. He gave many instances of people he knew that the spiritualist he wanted me to consult had helped.

“Let us try the man, he is very powerful” Alabi admonished me.

“Ọ̀rẹ́, sé o mọ̀ pé àrá gbé l’ayé ni?” He tried to convince me, and I could see from his face that he knew and meant what he was saying.

Seriously I was, and I am still a person who doesn’t believe in running helter-skelter in seeking spiritual assistance from all tom-dick-and-harry, I did not even have a secret pastor any where apart from the pastor of the church I attended. I had many friends who had sought spiritual solutions from all sides of all religions at the same time, yet they were not better than me. I didn’t enjoy jumping from one mountain to another looking for miracle where I believed commonsense could have worked faster and better. I knew miracle, I believed in miracle but I also knew miracle never happened to the die-hard seekers just like that.

In the end, as a drowning man who clutches at every straw in the eyes of the storm, I yielded to Alabi’s pressure and ready to follow him to where he believed my life’s problems would be solved.

We got to the place and it turned out to be a church. A Celestial church for that matter, somewhere right here in the heart of Ibadan.

The priest “Olùshọ́” of the church was a young man in his forties and he happened to be the elder brother of my friend that took me there. He beckoned to us to come into an enclosure at the back of his church where he used as his shrine. No one was allowed to go into the shrine but I was allowed in because of his brother that took me there. The shrine was nothing short of a Fadeyi Oloro’s house, every where was jampacked with all sorts of ritual materials; different leafs, herbs, roots, eggs, coconuts, earthen pots and calabashes of different sizes, mortars, pestles and et cetera.

You need not to be told, the “Olùshọ́” was indeed more of ‘babaláwo’ than a pastor.

During the consultation, the priest “Olùshọ́” told me to stretch my palms forward to him and which he studied carefully as he nodded his head several times and hummed repeatedly. It was as if he saw my problems inside my palms.

To cut the story short, at the end of the day, the priest asked me to provide the following ritual materials:
1: A big male live duck,
2: 7 packets of white candle,
3: 7 Eggs of local bred hen,
4: 7 white soaps,
5: 7 yards of white cloth,
6: 7 coconuts,
7: 7 thousand naira.

We left but not without assurance that if I could comply and bring all the items as quickly as possible, my problem would be a thing of the past in seven days after the ritual. He was so sure and so my friend, his brother that took me to him.

That same day, I had some money on me so I bought the male duck and all other materials that “Olùshọ́” prescribed. I bought everything and took them home but remained the seven thousand naira that I couldn’t raise as easily as I had thought.

For almost a week I tried so hard to raise ‘7K’ but to no avail. I kept all the items I had bought at home and while I was still looking for the money.

INTERMISSION

One day as I was still continuing to look everywhere for the ‘7K’ to complete the ingredients needed for the ritual as prescribed by “Olùshọ́”, my phone rang and it was a one call from someone from UK that changed my entire story till this moment. I will tell you all what happened related to this someday in the future. The first income from the call was three thousand pound.

Now there was no need for me to go back to “Olùshọ́”. I slaughtered the duck and used it to make a delicious soup, I boiled and ate all the eggs and the coconuts I bought, while I used the white Lux soaps in bathing one after the other. I sold the seven packet of candle to a retailer store in the neighborhood for the half of its price and used the seven yards of white cloth to sew four pillowcases.

Sincerely speaking, I should have turned that “Olùshọ́” to a ‘little god’ if I had completed the ritual as he had prescribed. 🤷‍♂️

About seven months afterwards, the “Olùshọ́” fell sick and died mysteriously. My friend called me to break the news.

(Those that wait upon the Lord shall not inherit failure)