- Ex-members recount ordeals
…as leader says ‘we are neither a cult nor a scam’
It operates openly among the young and old in an old dilapidated hut attached to a building located along a popular street in the ancient city of Benin, Edo State. It’s reputed to be a fearful cult, but it does its things in the hut in the heart of the city.
Scores of congregants line up at dusk on the street beside the hut to be ushered in for the group’s fortnightly meeting. The leader of the flock, 73-year-old Oguda Imazagbon, teaches from a pulpit in the center of the dingy room, quoting from a wooden slate said to be several centuries old.
Members don’t have any scripture or texts to follow and aren’t allowed to take notes. They leave their phones at the entrance and do not wear shoes into the hut. And once inside the hut, they cannot even go outside again to answer the call of nature!
The group is not registered by any known local, state and Federal Government agency and has no official documents. To outsiders, the group is called Aimuorhinmwindede, while its adherents see it as just, “the Road.” It is said to have about 300 members in Benin City alone, and there are also congregations in Warri, Asaba, and Ughelli in Delta State.
She wouldn’t stop asking questions. During a mid-year meeting, everyone, except her, was handed a black envelope. The next day, she joined her male friend, who had since become her fiancé, and his parents, for dinner. But before the food was served, something strange happened!
Its ubiquity among residents in communities in the two neighboring states is legendary, though many are still oblivious of its activities.
“It’s the cult next door to every Bendel (Edo and Delta states) person, and no one even knows that it’s there,” said an exiled member of the cult group.
Aimuorhinmwindede or Ajoor as many prefer to call it, is a secret society that is popular in parts of Edo and Delta states. It claims its adherents descended from a mysterious “hermaphrodite,” who once lived in the local river.
It is said that all adherents can engage in homosexuality. Worship of objects like stones, dedicated plants and animals like wall geckos, metals and even devotion to the dead, are some of their strange practices.
To prepare prospective adherents for membership, male and female devotees are made to undergo starvation and deprivation for five days, prior to their initiation. Once a member, you cannot recant and hope to stay alive! Membership is expected to be lifetime.
For flouting any of the cult group’s regulations, a member is punished by being deprived of water and sex for 4-weeks, in addition to walking naked about the streets like a lunatic for a week.
At death, old members are obliged to donate some of their vital organs to the group to be cooked and “eaten’ by newly initiated adherents.
I didn’t start living until I left. I want people to know it’s ok to leave, to reclaim their freedom of contemplation and pursue their own life ideas
Aimuohinmwindede is said to be the “owners’’ of the many outlawed cult groups on university campuses across Nigeria. Such cult groups include the Neo-black Movement, popularly called Black Axe; the Jezebels consisting of female undergraduates, who engage in orgies with men for rituals and many others.
Through these strange practices, the adherents hope to end up becoming famous and rich, but could have their lives cut short mysteriously. Young people, who cannot get jobs and do not want to learn skills, are often married off to older but rich spouses, who are widows or widowers in the group, some former members said.
A musician, who is a former adherent, told our correspondent, on condition of anonymity because of the fear of persecution, that she joined the group in 2010, while dating a younger man, who was raised in it.
“I was curious and just wanted to know what was going on,” she said, adding that her boyfriend assured her it was “nothing special, just the simple tenets of all traditional religious beliefs.”
But she said the more she delved into it, the more confused she became. She spoke of
fighting strange and weird people in her dreams and how she was told that AIDS, cancer, Hepatitis and other illnesses were caused not by health habits, genetics or environment, but by one’s actions in the past.
She disclosed that the cult leader, Imazagbon’s obsession was breasts. She said he adored young women
with their pointed nipples jutting out of their dresses. He’s also said to have a harem of over 20 wives.
Aimuohinmwindede, sources say, dates back to at least the 1940s and its members have met in the same location, though members are taught that the founding of the group dates back to the 14th century.
Much of the group’s beliefs are shrouded in secrecy, though former members say they have a lot to do with sexual rituals, heredity and wealth.
A former adherent said he was at first shocked to discover that attendance at its fortnightly meetings was compulsory; absence for even illness is not permitted. She said when she once asked another adherent if her boyfriend could attend church service, she said the woman responded: “What do you mean? He’ll go to church? He has to attend all meetings.”
She said she was sternly warned not to share the news of her membership with her family and closest friends.
“Everything is complex. And if you ask, you’re told, ‘You just don’t remember. You’ll remember when you’re supposed to. Try to control your thoughts and dreams, and tonight you’ll remember something unusual’, ” she said.
But she wouldn’t stop asking questions. During a mid-year meeting, everyone, except her, was handed a black envelope. The next day, she joined her male friend, who had since become her fiancé, and his parents, for dinner.
But before the food was served, something strange happened! Her fiancé’s mother stood at the head of the table and shouted: “If you think you’re marrying him, you must be mad! I remember you from 5,000 years ago, and you tried to kill my husband.”
“We are launching a spiritual campaign to save him,” the would-be mother-in-law added.
Shocked, disoriented and disgusted, the young woman said she was taken outside, driven home and sternly warned never to speak to her fiancé again.
Six months later, the young man was married off to a fellow Aimuolinmhindede cult member.
The black envelopes had been invitations to a special meeting to sabotage her engagement to her lover, who brought her into the group in the first place.
“I felt like I was acting in a home video. I didn’t realise the kind of power that the Aimuolinmhindede had,” she said.
Juta Ikebo was 28 when he found himself among a dozen of young men in a secluded cranny of the Ikpoba Hills. He had received instructions on what to pack for the three-day trip reserved only for special members of the “Road Patrol.”
The troop was led by two adherents, ex-police officers, who taught the youngsters how to track route, the basics of camping and other endurance skills.
He didn’t realise the training would include firing catapults into an abandoned junk heap.
“The belief is that there are always enemies out there and we would have to defend our people and safeguard our food and supplies always,” recalled Ikebo, now a 68-year-old zoo keeper.
“We shot the catapults, at least, twice,” he said. “We were told enemies were imminent, seconds or minutes away. People in the cult wouldn’t have to drink water because they thought, ‘Why bother?’ ”
Ikebo was born into the group and worked three years for Oguda Imazagbon’s transport company in Benin City, which employed many members. “I felt like a prisoner. I felt like a bonded slave,” he said.
He stayed through the tenures of two Aimuohinmwindede leaders across several years- each with his own agenda and “personal beliefs.”
Chief Ojo Imade, the leader during the 1980s and ’90s, taught Ikebo that once the enemy attacked and the world ended, people would not die but be transported’ ‘live’ to another planet. There, they would be one sexual category.
Ikebo said the leaders of the cult group had one thing in common- they tried to encourage lesbianism, which he said that they considered “good for women.”
The meetings would begin, when the leader announces, “Greetings, friends.”
He said, ”They’re brainwashed. They’re obsessed; you were always told if you leave the Aimuohinmwindede, you would cease to breathe.
“They don’t give you any sources. There’s no dogma you can make reference to.”
“It’s just word of mouth. You just believe what you’re told,” another ex-member said.
Aimuohinmwindede leader instructs followers to obsessively look for the reversed ‘V’ symbols in dreams and their everyday lives.
Ex-members said they couldn’t even have artwork in their homes unless it contained this letter; the group’s greeting sign. Friends and families are not to know about the group, except they want to and must join, once they show interest.
Ikebo finally summoned the courage to leave the group in the 2015. The last straw that broke the camel’s back was a member spying on him as he dined with a male friend, who was not a member of the cult.
“How dare you bring a blind man here?” the member had angrily said. Non-members are referred to as “blind.”
Ikebo left a letter in the leader’s home notifying him he was done with the group.
“I didn’t start living until I left. I want people to know it’s ok to leave, to reclaim their freedom of contemplation and pursue their own life ideas,” he said.
Another ex-follower, who pleaded anonymity, said he was booted out of home at 17 because he questioned the cult’s teachings and refused to throw away his Bible.
“Their beliefs are weird,” he said, adding that fathers were to initiate their sons at birth and ensured they inherited all their memorabilia at death while their family members must follow the Road rules for their funerals.
“Once you get to a certain level, they start to tell you these things. They think they are saints. They carry themselves like they’re spirits. . . they’re not human; everybody else is filth and [they] don’t want to relate,” he said.
He endured brutal beatings by his parents, who he believes were instructed by the Aimuolinmhindede leader on how to deal with him.
“I had this reputation of being a bad kid when I wasn’t. I was an abused kid. Everybody is brainwashed in this thing. They’re conditioned to think and behave in a certain way, and it starts from childhood. Children are taught to dread life,” an ex-member said.
“The Road also teaches that children aren’t human until they reach the age of 16,” he said.
Aimuohinmwindede’s solution to his sister’s defiance was to marry her off to a homosexual in his 50s.
“She was a gorgeous 19-year-old, and they married her off to this lunatic,” the ex-member said.
“If they want to clear their name of suspicion, they need to start answering questions. They should, maybe, have a sign out in front of their building, if they want to be listed as a church,” he said.
Another ex-member said he and his grandmother were forced to have sex while all the other members watched, for missing a meeting, before they jumped ship in the late ’80s.
He remembered the leader announcing Aimuolinmhindede would convert into a church and be collecting offerings. Shortly after, the member was kicked out for marrying a woman who refused to join the group.
“There was always so much turmoil when someone chose a partner from the outside world,” he said, adding that parents often married their children off to other members in the group.
“It was not uncommon for girls as young as 15 marrying men, who were quite a bit older,” he said.
The exiled follower said it took many years for him to get over the occurrence, adding that he had never shared more than phony details with his adult children.
“It still stands out as the worst time of my whole life. But I was lucky enough to have people still in my life that loved me and helped me throughout,” he said.
But the leader of the group, Imazagbon, a charming and sharply dressed man, who carries a pipe he hardly smokes, and believes he was a King in a past life, denied that the group is a cult.
“We’re not a cult. We’re what a church should be. The principles are to have an upright, normal and hale and hearty life and to be responsible for our own actions. You can’t do that in one life. It’s impossible,” he said.
He denied that Aimuohinmwindede supports punishment by deprivation of water for weeks and walking about the streets naked like a lunatic. He also denied the group’s involvement in homosexuality, but said, “If I want to discipline my children, it’s no one else’s business.”
He said children could not be indoctrinated until they had attained the age of 18, adding that if a child dies before age 13, it’s because he committed suicide in a previous life.
Imazagbon further stressed that Aimuohinmwindede was not a secret cult, but a group registered with the Federal Government as a nonprofit organisation. The foundation’s location along Ikpoba slope in Benin City, he said, is a public knowledge and that its branches and members’ identities were not
hidden.
He disclosed that Aimuohinmwindede’s source of revenue was its investments in assorted stocks worth billions of Naira.
“It’s not a cult. It’s not a scam. You can come 1,000 times and you’re not going to have to pay one Naira to join,” Imazagbon
said.
