Asigidi and Ogboni Occult-Senator Rowland Owie was a member of Asigidi, Ogboni and more others fraternity in Nigeria before he find Christ.
Senator Rowland Stephen Owie is the former Chief Whip of the Senate, and a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Edo State. But for this piece, that is an aside. In this interview with Sunday Vanguard, he discloses that as the only surviving son of his mother, he belonged to different secret cults in order to survive. He possessed...
Senator Rowland Stephen Owie is the former Chief Whip of the Senate, and a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Edo State. But for this piece, that is an aside. In this interview with Sunday Vanguard, he discloses that as the only surviving son of his mother, he belonged to different secret cults in order to survive. He possessed powers capable of destroying his opponents and as a result nobody dared him. He discloses his encounter with the Blessed Virgin Mary, who, according to him, exposed his last voodoo. He also bares his mind on the forthcoming July 14, 2012 governorship election in Edo State on which he predicted victory for his party, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.
Excerpts:
A back ground
I was born into Ihogbe royal family of Benin Kingdom over 66 years ago in my village,Uhumnwonde. Incidentally, I am my mother’s ninth child, eight died before me and two died after me same day. One died at home when my mother went to the farm. The child was convulsing and they put fire in the open harem warming the leg. You know those days when one is convulsing they will put fire but we didn’t know that it was even increasing the temperature. But after about twenty minutes she died. The male, my mother took that one to the farm. When my mother came back from the farm, she noticed that we were all looking pensive but I just came to welcome her and said, ‘Iye (mother), Ivie is sleeping’. I was about six years old then. Because all these people were dying, before my mum had me, she moved to Ewaen about four kilometers from my village, the same Isi South. She moved there to stay with her people.
So when I was delivered, they sent a message to my father’s village that I was a female because the first eight children that died were all male. They all died when they were seven years or ten. So I wore female clothes for the first three years. It was after three years that I was brought to my own village and even when I got to the village, my mother was still dressing me up in female clothes.
And I was kept from relating with my peers and that is one of the reasons you will find out that I am very very careful with women because of what my mother went through to keep me alive. If she was going to the farm, it was either I followed her or she will lock me inside her room until she was back. She did that so that people will not understand whether I was male or female just to protect me.
My mother told me that after the death of her seventh child, she went to marry another woman for my father so that the man could have male children. And after the death of the eight-one she encouraged my father to marry a third wife. And as I was growing, she always told me to be careful. She said: ‘If you are going to travel tomorrow, don’t let any mother know. Don’t eat outside’. Would you believe that until I entered the university I never ate outside no matter how close I was to the person?
‘Don’t tell anybody where you’re traveling to; don’t talk to any friend about your life or about anybody so that they will not invite you anywhere’, she would tell me.
My early life was highly secretive. But people got to know that I was a male when I entered Iluobi Primary School and it took me time to over come that. Then after the last two died, my mother became more protective of me.
It now became an every day pilgrimage to a native doctor. I pitied her because she was taking me to all sorts of native doctors, even the ones for psychiatric ailments. There was this particular native doctor, some times she will be there for about a month with other mothers, and they will be working at the farm for the man with their children. It was very sad, at a point I would tell her, ‘ Mama, I am okay’. She would laugh and tell me: ‘You never know. We kept on until 1954, when my late uncle, Lawrence Agho, who was secretary of the NCNC scholarship board, visited our village and asked me a few questions on mathematics after which he told my mother that I must leave the village. We came to Benin to stay with my other uncle G.Edokpaiyi and I started primary school at First East Circular and finished in 1957.
How I joined secret societies
Because of this terrible back ground, my father and my mother were founding members of the Ewegbe society. My father was NCNC Etuode and before you could be in Etuode at that time you must be a member of the Ewegbe society.
That same society was instrumental to Osadebey’s victory to become governor in the old Midwest. He tried to destroy the society that put him in power and that administration started destroying shrines. But my father’s shrine was not located and destroyed because my community people did not disclose its location to any stranger. My people are like that, that was even the community that protected the Igbo during the war so that they will not be harmed. Any attempt to fight people in my village then, bees will attack the intruders.
So, after Osadebey’s regime was toppled, it was that shrine that they used in reviving the Ewegbe society which they now call Osokpinka today. I was born into it. When I was in teachers’ training college, we used to dance on broken bottles and nails and none ever pierced our feet. My mother also served the Olokun and Sango gods and we served them together and even when she died I inherited them in my house here. By the time I came out of the university, I entered the Ogboni society and grew to the position of the Ojomu of Iledi-English Benin. From then I went into all the societies that were available in the Benin speaking area, Asigidi, every thing.
Battle with my wife
But one thing happened because my wife, Helen, kept telling me when we got married that this way of the traditional religion was not the right way. At a point I told her: ‘If you’re not ready for this marriage you better pack it up’. There used to be a cashew tree in my parlour, there was a pot of juju and I had two snakes inside, one red, another green. If I was going out on campaign, I will put alligator pepper in my mouth and speak into that pot, so if the red snake showed its head, I immediately knew that the road was not going to be good. But if the green one showed up, I knew that the coast was clear for my movement that day. For instance, anytime I was when I am traveling at night, I will repeat an incantation and if I was going to Asaba, until I get to there,no vehicle would over take me. Any one trying to over take me will crash into the bush or their engines would become (discombobulate).
That time I could set a house on fire only with some incantations. But, I tell you the truth, when you do that, certain negative things will happen to you and you will be battling with it for the next weeks. I realized that when the devil gives you power from the right, he takes it from the left. For instance, when I was in these societies, I will bath with various pots of medicines before moving out for campaigns. In the 1982 governorship primaries when I ran against Ambrose Ali, I bought seven vehicles for seven Ohomila native doctors.
I also went to the Congo to get a native doctor who came to prepare some things for me to defeat Ali. All of them told me no problem but the very day we finished the primaries and Ali won I came back to the house and drove all of them away. My wife reminded me of her advice. But I shouted at her, that she should mind her business.
For the primaries alone, I quartered about 900 delegates in hotels in Benin and another seven hundred within my area. Out of the nearly one thousand nine hundred delegates, those that were my own that belonged to the various societies that I belonged to – Osokpika, Asigidi, Hot Fellow, Cemetary Group – the delegates that I had in the primaries with Ali were about a thousand three hundred. When we did the exercise, I got about seven hundred and some thing votes, we were about nine aspirants. Tai Solarin came to conduct it but I knew Awolowo asked him to rig it in favour of Ali.
However, when I got home, I asked myself, ‘if all these people that I quartered, about nine hundred were members of the secret societies that I belonged to yet I got seven hundred and some thing, which means not every body that was supposed to keep this oath by voting for me kept it, then something must be wrong. So something started telling me to listen to my wife. One good thing about the Catholic, when they are evangelizing to people, they don’t use force, they leave you with love.
I say today, God finding me was through my wife, Helen, and Rev. Father Uwaifo. Father Uwaifo became close to me in 1979 when I won election in the UPN. When visiting me, he will see me dancing in the shrine in my red clothes and he will sit and wait for me at the veranda. When I finished he will say: my brother this your way is not good’.
But I will not listen to him, yet he will relax. I kept on with every thing. But, suddenly, one of my daughters, Eki, became paralyzed. We did everything, went everywhere to find solution, no way. We always carried her to ease herself; she was paralyzed for over two years. But my wife kept praying while I was still practising what I knew best. When passing through any church I didn’t like looking at them because I didn’t want to see them. Rev Father Uwaifo would visit us and pray for the child, and use anointing oil on her.
One day he left the oil after anointing the child. After he was gone I told my wife to come and carry the oil, ‘I don’t need it’. Surprisingly, one night, I was in the sitting room taking my usual root (Kai kai), and I heard the child call out to me saying, Daddy I can walk, I can walk’. I became shocked and I told my wife, ‘I think this una God get name-o’. I now went to Father Uwaifo and told him that I wanted to serve God. We went to church, father prayed for us and my wife became very happy. I said this thing that God had done that my own gods had failed to do in the past three years it means that God was powerful.
Two days later I told my wife to call Father to come and carry the juju away from my house. Four pick ups were used to carry the juju from my house. And they left for the village to collect the ones there to the church. In my father’s shrine called Ukhure, I called siblings from my father’s other wives and told them I wanted to give my life to God, that I was no longer interested in serving the shrine. But my brother said he, too, wanted to go and serve that God.
My encounter with the Blessed Virgin Mary
But there was one juju that I’d kept under the ground in front of the gate, I did not tell Father about that one. That one was to protect the house from thieves so I refused to tell anybody about that one. But I never knew that there is nothing God does not see.
I kept going to church. But one day my wife reminded me that there is this particular juju that I was yet to remove and I told her it had been removed when they went to the village. Inside my mind I knew I was lying but the poor woman said okay. So, one night, I saw a nurse with the Rosary, in my dream, she said to me, ‘my son you are doing very well, but that thing you dug at the gate of your house is obstructing my angels from visiting you, go and remove it’. I woke up and said these people have started again. She came three times like that. After the third time, something told me this is Blessed Mary. I now called my wife and told her: ‘Please oh, that juju is still there but I didn’t want to tell you’. So we went and dug it out and took it to the church. That was how the juju part of it ended.
Dumping the Secret societies
Getting out of secret societies is not easy because they were after my life but I thank God almighty for his protection in my life and my family.
That was how I parted, three days, three months, three years, ten years and God is keeping me today. It was great. I can assure you that there is nothing as good as serving God. Finally, when I became a Catholic, I found some thing unique in Mary because in all the African traditional societies, the symbol is always that of a woman. Even the Reformed Ogboni Fraternity, the symbol is a woman. Because of our Blessed Virgin Mary, I respect women and that is why I have been celebrating her and will do that all my life.
Read more:
truthaboutcultisminnaija.blogspot.com
Topic: Asigidi-Senator Rowland Owie was a member of Asigidi and other societies (Read 938 times)
