Police in Nigeria are holding a goat handed to them by a vigilante group, which said it was a car thief who had used witchcraft to change shape. A police spokesman in Kwara State has been quoted as saying that the "armed robbery suspect" would remain in custody until investigations were over. But another police spokesman told the BBC the goat was being held in case its owner claimed it.
The belief in witchcraft and the power to change shapes is common in Nigeria.
Police reform activists have condemned the "arrest", saying it highlights the low education levels of many Nigerian police officers. Nigeria's Vanguard newspaper has a picture of the goat and reports that police paraded it in front of journalists in the Kwara state capital Ilorin on Thursday.
But this was denied by national police spokesman Emmanuel Ojukwu. "The vigilante group arrested the goat and took it to the police, then they told the media." The next morning journalists turned up demanding to see the goat, he said. "But of course goats can't commit crime."
2 comments:
Hej,
This post brought back memories from our farm days in Africa. We dealt with issues of star-crossed lovers and witchcraft from time to time.
So many of the younger persons, often the less superstitious and educated, but still tribal, found it very difficult to break rank with the reigning elders. I think partly this was done out of respect for the elders, partly out of socio-economic considerations, and probably because there was hint of "working against former colonial prejudices". We found that such matters were never quite so straight forward to sort out.
In one case that comes to mind, a younger woman do like her proposed marriage to a much older man. She basically engineered a drama by exploiting the superstitious beliefs of others, basically through the claim of black magic. She was quite brilliant in using the strategy she did. In the end, the proposed marriage was called off.
During the Second World War my mother lived with her Aunt and Uncle in the country where they kept goats to provide milk. Whilst I don't remember hearing any stories about the goats indulging in criminal behaviour I do remember being told that they liked eating the washing off the line!
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