Sports and talismanic influence, by Clem Oluwole
The belief expressed by the President of Nigeria Golf Federation, Otunba Olusegun Runsewe, that no juju can make one excel in the game of golf caught my attention. Runsewe, who is also the Director General, National Council of Arts and Culture, made the declaration in an interview with a journalist ahead of the events lined up to mark the nation’s celebration of its 63rd Independence Anniversary. For a man who is the custodian of our cultural heritage, such belief must be taken seriously.
He admonished anyone who wants to excel in the sport to desist from using juju if they want to make remarkable progress in the game.
The man of (arts and) culture expressed his shock thus: “You can’t believe that some of our golfers are so deep in fetish things. Some of them go to their babalawos to collect charms or juju and put it in their pockets to play golf. But do they win any tournament? Your guess is as good as mine.
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“Golf is scientific. Golf is an IT-based game. Our athletes should shun patronising babalawos because they do not have anything to offer; instead, they (golfers) should be scientific in their approach to the game.”
Very few sports folks will agree with Otunba Runsewe. Many Nigerian sportsmen and women believe in the use of talismans to excel in their chosen sports in the spirit of self-help. I will not be surprised if some golfers apply charms on their golf sticks so that they hit the balls from the tee-off straight into the holes, regardless of the distance.
In all my life as a sports meister, beginning as a footballer from kidhood, it is the first time I ever heard that one could attempt to employ juju to play and excel in golf, even though juju is believed to be helpful in some other sports. The use of juju is prevalent in soccer. And maybe boxing where the fist could be laced with a talisman called “aluwo” in Yoruba. “Aluwo” means “hit to fall”. It is believed that if you pack the charm into your fists, you could rock an iroko tree to its roots with a punch.
It was juju (or magic) in sports that made the International Olympics Committee (IOC) keep Indians at an arm’s length. We were told that the Asian Giants could employ magic to help their athletes jump over a 20-storey building or run faster than the speed of light. And you would not be able to pin doping on them! The rest of the world would have to perpetually settle for the second place in any event featuring the Indian athletes.
But football is the major culprit here. After Christianity and Islam, perhaps no other religions have large followership as football. In fact, it can be argued that soccer has the largest followership among them all. This is because the followers of football cut across all the other religions. Even atheists are adherents of this soccer religion too. It is the only religion that governments at all levels worldwide build soccergogues for. You call them synagogues. Governments seldom build churches or mosques in a secular system. The soccergogues are the stadiums where soccer services are held mostly at weekends. Some services take place even on Sundays and Fridays, thus clashing with the activities of the world’s two major religions. When that happens, the churches especially often record poor turnouts as soccer fans would rather stay at home to watch the global competitions on an idiot box as the Americans call television.
The referees are the priests who conduct the services with the aid of whistles. They are assisted by (mass) servants who shunt from pillar to post along the sidelines, communicating with flags. And they all dress in black most of the time. The object they worship is known as the god of soccer. The supporters’ clubs constitute the choirs. Their own business is to cheer and sing during the 90-minute service, while the spectators form the members of the congregation.
The belief in sports juju cuts across the African continent. And it is phenomenal. Some years back in Swaziland, the artificial turf at the country’s only stadium was ripped apart by some soccer buffs and they planted talisman known as muti under the field. This traditional ritual, meant to help their teams to win games, saw the $600,000 turf ripped open over a period of one month as muti was planted underneath by competing clubs. The goal area and the midfield were the most badly affected. The turf, according to reports, was barely 12 months old.
The Swazi soccer disciples are not alone in this desperate practice to get their clubs to win matches. Back home in Nigeria, some followers of this soccer god believe that there is a talisman you can rub on the goalpost which will cause it to shift position during matches so that when a shot is fired at goal, it will shorten in height and the ball would go over the bar or the post will shrink to cause narrow misses. When a goalkeeper is sent the wrong way with the sheer skill of a striker, they believe the talisman in his boot caused the ball to split into two and the goal-tender would normally go for the wrong ball, while the right one would whistle into the net. When a goalkeeper parries a canon shot into the net, they would say a talisman transformed the leather object into a ball of fire too hot for him to handle. When a defender scores an own goal, they would say he had been placed under a spell to sell out.
I remember an ugly incident that took place at the Liberty Stadium, Ibadan, when, as its chairman, I led the Standard Football Club of Jos (now Plateau United) to face the IICC Shooting Stars of Ibadan during the 1979 National League season. In the Ibadan-based squad were great soccer guns like Segun Odegbami, Sam Ojebode, Felix Owolabi, the late Muda Lawal and the late Best Ogedengbe who manned the goalpost. There was nothing in the soccer book that Odegbami and co did not do to find the back of our net… but all their efforts came to zilch!
As the encounter was approaching the last 20 minutes with no goal in sight, the Ibadan fans believed that we must have come with a more superior talisman. They singled out goalkeeper Tunde Adedara who wore a black beret for a search. The Shooting Stars supporters disrupted the match, insisting that the goalkeeper must be uncapped. They argued that he was the custodian of the juju that was preventing Shooting Stars from shooting into the net. Eventually, the centre referee succumbed to pressure and our keeper was uncapped. They turned his beret inside out, hoping to find a muti. Nothing was found in it but they took the beret away. That psychological trauma and the palpable threat that we would not leave the stadium in one piece should Shooting Stars lose out destabilised us. At the end of the day, we lost the match by 3 – 0 and it took the intervention of the late Chief Lekan Salami to get us out of the stadium alive but our bus was badly damaged by the fans for daring to come with charms to humiliate their “occult” club.
The debate on whether or not sports can be jujunised to achieve excellence will continue till thy kingdom come. And by the way, why are the likes of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo referred to as talismanic if they don’t use talismans? Enjoy a talismanic weekend, sports folks.
Clem Oluwole is the Managing Editor of Blueprint Newspapers in Abuja.
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