African evangelists destroy artifacts

ACHINA, Nigeria (AP) — Born to a family of traditional priests, Ibe Nwigwe converted to Christianity as a boy. Under the sway of born-again fervor as a man, he gathered the paraphernalia of ancestral worship — a centuries-old stool, a metal staff with a wooden handle and the carved figure of a god — and burned them as his pastor watched.

“I had experienced a series of misfortunes and my pastor told me it was because I had not completely broken the covenant with my ancestral idols,” Mr. Nwigwe, 52, said of the bonfire three years ago. “Now that I have done that, I hope I will be truly liberated.”

Generations ago, European colonists and Christian missionaries looted Africa’s ancient treasures. Now, Pentecostal Christian evangelists — most of them Africans — are helping wipe out remaining traces of how Africans once worked, played and prayed.

As poverty deepened in Nigeria from the mid-1980s, Pentecostal Christian church membership surged. The new faithful found comfort in preachers like evangelist Uma Ukpai, who promised that material success was next to godliness. He has boasted of overseeing the destruction of more than 100 shrines in one district in December 2005 alone.

Achina, a community of mainly farmers and traders, is typical of towns and villages in the ethnic Igbo-dominated Christian belt of southeastern Nigeria where this new Christian fundamentalism is evident. The old gods are linked to the devil, and preachers are urging their rejection and their destruction.

The Ezeokolo, Achina’s main shrine, has been looted repeatedly of its carved god figures. Although no one has been caught, suspects range from people acting on Christian impulses to treasure thieves.

A village civic association recently volunteered to build a house to keep burglars away from a giant wooden gong decorated with carved male, female and snake figures. The gong in the market square is reputed to be more than 400 years old, and in decades past was sounded in times of emergency.

“We feared it may be stolen or destroyed like so many of our traditional cultural symbols,” said Chuma Ezenwa, a Lagos-based lawyer.

The move to protect a communal symbol has not changed the minds of others.

Ikechukwu Nzekwe, a 48-year-old farmer who belongs to a traditional masquerade sect, rues the action of his younger brother, a born-again Christian who destroyed the family’s masquerade costume, including pieces dating back seven generations.

The masquerade sect was once part theater, appearing at festivals to perform songs and dances, and part traditional police — its members helped enforce mores and customs. Now its role is largely restricted to theater, including performances and races by men in costumes depicting ancestral spirits.

Mr. Ukpai, the evangelist, tells followers that the artifacts bear “curses and covenants” linked to the gods they represent.

“Since the curses and covenants do not automatically disappear when we repent, Rev. Dr. Uma Ukpai is a man called by God for the total liberation of mankind,” he says on his Web site, claiming to have the spiritual backing of Jesus Christ to break the curses.

Efforts to speak to Mr. Ukpai were unsuccessful, and e-mails to his office asking for an interview received no reply.

Early missionaries to Nigeria condemned most traditional practices as pagan. Roman Catholics and Anglicans later came to terms with most practices, even incorporating some traditional dances into church liturgy. But there was no room for local gods once their erstwhile worshippers became Christians.

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