Just as many calamities and evil processions precede the celebration of Yuletide festivity generally considered currently as End-of-Year festival, this ill-incidence was amongst the many unreported incidences that happened in some months back. As the era of Christmas has been translated indistinctly to a somewhat era of cruel and gruesome rush for garnering material wealth simply for the yuletide festival, many ill-human and disdain activities are now regarded as phenomenon that normally accompany the period.
About 23rd December 2012, Mallam Usman, a butcher who ply his butchering business at one of the Suleja abattoirs, was on his way, returning from Gwarinpa, Abuja, where he had gone to supply his meat to his customers in the location. His mode of business was mainly to slaughter cows, butcher them and supplied to his various customers in Suleja, Zuba, Deidei, Gwarinpa and Utako Market. He was more of a supplier of butchered meat than a meat seller though he did sell some meat directly to customers at his butcher spot.
Mallam Usman was not mobile, so he did hire vehicles to distribute his meat to customers, and thereafter, joined public transport means to return home after his routine distribution for the day. Many times, he would take a public transport to Zuba, then joined another vehicle heading to his residential location commonly called ‘Kaduna Road’ by residents and visitors of that area. This was the same routine on the evening of 23rd December 2012. Just as usual, the most vehicles conveying passengers at this Zuba mini-park till date, are private vehicles mostly cars. Hence, as he waved his hand and saw a black Toyota Camry car stopped for him, he did not employ any second thought for any negativity accompany the passengers already in the car. He hopped inside the car, as it is usually the norm of the passengers there to rush into a car if stopped for them.
In the Toyota Camry, there were already four passengers and with him joining, the total passengers then became five. He had hardly settled down in the back seat of the car before the front passenger called his real name: Usman! He was dazed in astonishment. How could an unknown stranger just called his name? He pretended not to show his trait of puzzle by replying the call with a reluctant grin. He did as if he knew them before, but in reality, he could not recollect where he had seen any of the faces before. Yet, maybe in his line of business, many people recognized him more than how he recognized them for the fact that he dealt with different faces everyday during his business activities.
‘One of your customers told us about you...your customer in Deidei’, the front seat passenger told him to clear his doubt. He continued. ‘We were looking for an expert who is very good in slaughtering rams, and your customer said you can do that for us for a fee...’ Their conversation was done in Hausa language as Mallam Usman was unable to neither speak fluent English or good Pidgin English. Happily, Usman accorded to the proposal. Even when the man said ‘we have been trailing you from Deidei till we meet you here’, he did not raise any eyebrow. He kept his ignorant grin as if he was already certain of the business up in store for him.
He was asked if he could slaughter between twenty to forty rams at a go. He answered in a hurry by saying: ‘even if you have over 100 rams, I will slaughter them all in no time.’ He was asked if he could do that for them that very night. He replied that though he was a bit tired due to the routine activities of the day, he would not neglect any offer to perform his profession. They told him that his reward of payment would be based on pay-per-slaughter. He agreed happily without much ado and whatever that meant, he did not care to ask.
The car got to Zuma Rock vicinity on the slow speed it started with from Zuba, but just some few metres away from the giant rock, the velocity accelerated. Before Mallam Usman could say Jack, the car had veered off the main road (the highway) and unto an earthly dusty path of a road leading to an unknown direction. The last thing Mallam Usman could remember before he later found himself in large gloomy hall was. ‘Oga which direction are we heading now?...’
His eyes open to the amazement of a big gloomy hall that seemed to be an underground sort of a hall. As he turned around, the four men with him in the car stood in patience, and smiling behind him. ‘But...but...but, you said...said...I will slaughter rams, so why are we here?’ Usman stammered to speak in completely overwhelmed perplexity.
‘These are the rams’, said one of them, pointing to the human figures, staked and chained to the different huge captive hooks on the wall.
Usman looked closer. He was deadly astonished to realise that the bodily figures, which he had assumed to be artistic wooden structures on the wall, were none but real human beings staked for ritual purpose. He got the full picture of the scenario, as suddenly, there was a brighter light which he could not ascertain the source. With the effect of the light, he could count at a glimpse of the eye that, about forty humans, both male and females were staked to a distinct pillar on the long tiled wall of the large hall.
‘But these are human beings, not rams’, he said with frightful eyes.
‘To you, they are what you just called them, but to us, they are the rams we told you about. They are the same rams we bargained about. Now, you will get a knife from there...’ pointing to a large bowl with seven sharp knives inside, ‘and slaughter twenty-one out of these rams’. One of the men said this without a care about the reaction of Usman.
‘No no no, my religion doesn’t allow killing a fellow human being’, Usman said in rejection.
‘Ok, no problem. Since you do not want to complete the contract you have agreed already, we have no option than to release one of these ‘rams’ to do the job so that you will take his place’.
He noticed that all those humans staked to the wall had been made zombies. A supernatural force had been used to turn them all to zombies. If he would have to take another’s place on the wall stake, surely, he would be turned a zombie as well. So, he had no option but to do their bid reluctantly.
He request for the knife and announced his readiness. One by one, each of the zombies were brought for him to slaughter by five huge and heavily built men that appeared from nowhere in the hall, dressed in red and white coloured woolly skirts. He slaughtered them with each slaughtered victim had the flowing blood from the neck gathered in a wide white bowl, till he slaughtered twenty-one souls. He was asked to stop when the number 21 victim was slaughtered. Surprisingly however, he saw with his very eyes that the blood which was in the different white bowls, was taken in certain mystic cups and drank by the ritual operators. They drank the blood with zeal and excitement.
As he announced his leaving the hall, there was horrific and hilarious laughter that pervaded the scene. He was told to get his reward for a job well done; so, a Ghana-Must-Go bag filled with cash was handed to him. He lifted the bag and made to go but there was no exit door! They called him back to say he could not leave just as that simple. When he asked why, he was forcefully made to drink from the blood of the slaughtered ‘rams’. Immediately he drank that blood, his entire human system changed. His sense of reasoning changed mysteriously. He did not realized how he left the hall but the next thing he could recall after drinking the blood was him standing by the roadside of the highway, waving for a car lift in the morning of 24th December...
This story was narrated directly by Mallam Usman at his residence, on the 24th December 2012. Unfortunately, he breathed his last breath immediately he completed his narration of the impious incidence! We must be careful and be watchful of all our movements especially during the season preceding the yuletide festivity.
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