During my undergraduate Law School days in London, a bunch of white mates kept shouting my name out one afternoon—calling me to come and have a look at something they were staring at on a laptop.
After several minutes of ignoring their calls, I decided to end the nuisance by responding, by making a walk to the corner of the library, where they had gathered.
They had stumbled on an article which was not a satire (reported as a fact with an eyewitness account)—and the article stated that a cat had turned into a human being in Nigeria.
The ridiculousness of this was the reason why they were bothering me on the assumption that since I was from Ghana, I could explain to them if people still believed in such “hocus pocus,” only of contemporary relevance in the West in Harry Porter and other fictional books.
I looked at them in shame and said something along the lines; “a lot of people still believe in such Palaeolithic era nonsense” and quickly added that “it’s mostly the old generation with little or no education.”
Of course, I was lying with the second part of my answer. The African superstitious nonsense has no generational boundaries, both the old and the new are pathetically hooked on it as though it’s in the water given to us from birth.
Over the weekend, Ghanaian musician-Tinny stated that his musical career is not progressing because someone has ‘juju’ him in Benin. Like a typical African dodging responsibility for their actions, Tinny thinks there can be no other explanation for failure unless someone else is ‘doing’ you.
He does not only believe this to be true, he actually believes it’s plausible enough for him to serve it to the Ghanaian population which largely believes in such things.