LAST month, the police in Ogun State were treated to an extraordinary spectacle. Confessing his guilt following his arrest for rape, the pastor in charge of Life and Power Bible Church in Ogijo, one Mathew Oladapo, gave a spiritual alibi for raping a 19-year-old member of the church. Pastor Oladapo had been arrested following a report lodged at the Ogijo Police Division in Sagamu Local Government Area of the state by the victim, who told the police that during church service the previous Sunday, the pastor had told her that he had seen in a vision that she had a spiritual husband and was in need of deliverance. According to the unnamed teenager, the pastor told her that she would undergo a three-night fasting and prayer session in the church for total deliverance, and must come to the church with a N1,000 note and anointing oil.

The details are indeed horrific. On the first night of the fasting and prayer, she was taken to a room where the pastor ordered her to pull off her clothes and lie down on the floor. Thus: “While on the floor, the pastor started rubbing the anointing oil on my body and inserted his finger into my private part. When I protested, the pastor pinned me down, covered my mouth and forcefully had sex with me with the claim that it was the only way to break the bond between me and the spirit husband.” Over to the police spokesman in the state, Abimbola Oyeyemi: “On interrogation, the suspect confessed to the crime and claimed to have been overwhelmed by the spirit.” Oyeyemi added that the state Commissioner of Police, Lanre Bankole, had ordered the immediate transfer of the suspect to the anti-human trafficking and child labour unit of the Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (CIID).

This incident is, to say the least, grossly absurd, but it is quite typical of a society groaning under the weight of susperstitious beliefs. Across the length and breadth of Nigeria, untold numbers of people have been defrauded by religious charlatans who preyed on their obsession withmiracles and deliverances, a kind of marvelous realism on a religious plain. In this climate of religious superstition, not even well educated and supposedly enlightened individuals are exempted: it seems to be the case that many Nigerians will do whatever their religious leaders tell them to do, no matter how ridiculous. There have been stories of women being told by religious charlatans that certain parts of their bodies must be anointed with oil and complying with such requests without further ado. In this case, it is instructive that the victim complied with the instruction to pull off her clothes and lie down on the floor in order to achieve her desired religious state.While this is no excuse for her criminal violation by the suspect, it does show the base extent to which Nigerians could go in seeking spiritual solutions to the problems facing them, most of which are rooted in socio-economic inequalities. It is odd, if not insane, for anyone to be asked to strip naked in the name of deliverance from demons. Those making such requests are rapists, but they would have no ready audience in a civilised clime.

In a country where downright stupid and egregious excuses are given by suspects caught with their hands in the cookie jar, as it were, it is no surprise that the suspect in this case found justification, however perverse, in the supernatural. He laid the blame on the spirit which he said overwhelmed him. This is perhaps to be expected in a clime where an official in charge of examination admission funds once claimed that money running into millions of naira had been gobbled by an unidentified spiritual snake! In the instant case, the culprit is not a spiritual snake but a spirit, “the spirit,” who unfortunately cannot be charged as a co-conspirator. Now, since there is no means of penetrating the spirit world, the police apparently have only the suspect to deal with, and they should deal with him very seriously.

On its part, the court of law has to judge merely the physical aspects of this case, and we urge it to impose the maximum sentence allowed by law. That done, the suspect can then lodge an appeal to the spirit which he said overwhelmed him. If this sounds funny, it is precisely because Nigeria is a funny society where criminals, including those in the corridors of power who regularly treat the long-suffering masses to a salad of excuses, get away with horrendous crimes because there are often no consequences for criminality. The case under reference clearly illustrates the banality of superstition and religious mercantilism, which are nothing but false remedies for societal problems.