•Dismisses oke-ite (get-rich-quick charm) as a scam

By PAMELA EBOH, Awka

A total number of 23 Anambra indigenes are on death row in Indonesia due to drug-related offences.

Anambra State Governor, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, disclosed this this yesterday, Wednesday, April 9, 2025, while addressing members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) who decamped to All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), to support his re-election bid.

Soludo said: “Go to Indonesia, 23 Ndi Anambra are on death row there for drug related offenses. These native doctors will deceive you that they will prepare a charm that when you carry drug and enter the airport, the white man’s scanner will go blind. These young people believe them and today, many of our people are languishing in jail across the world.

“Let me tell you, if you see anyone who is professing to have the powers to make people rich, tell us, we will arrest him and bring him to Awka. If he makes one person a millionaire, we will bring Anambra people and line them up. Don’t you want an Anambra that everyone will be a millionaire? I will equally present myself because I need money too.

One of the native doctors who is in detention, his son is a waiter in a hotel in Nnewi. If it was that simple why didn’t he make his son a millionaire? One of them that we arrested has sworn that he is just a content creator, yet he has used things like these to deceive our young people that you can become rich without doing any work, as far as you have done oke (money rituals).

“That is why you see young people who wake up in the morning and retire to beer parlour drinking, hoping to get rich later in life.

“We are not against traditional worshipers; what we are against is people who are doing dangerous medicines and charms. We have always known those who are into traditional practices, they have things they believe in, and they were about the most upright people then. Those were people who believed that if you did the wrong thing, you could be killed by the gods of the land. But what these new crop of criminal native doctors are doing is deceit, and we will not allow that to continue.”

Soludo reiterated that there is no going back on the ongoing clampdown on native doctors that promote oke-ite (get-rich-quick charm), saying that there is no wealth without hard work.

He called on the indigenes of the state not to be deceived by some criminal elements adorning the toga of native doctors with claim of having the powers to make someone wealthy without work.

News Express reports that about 40 suspected oke-ite native doctors are in detention following their arrest by agents of the Anambra State Government. The first set of four suspects were arraigned in court last week and remanded in custody.