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ON THE ISSUE OF THE EFFICACY AND TRUE ESSENCE OF ETA
ONTOLOGIES OF TRADITIONAL FORMS OF KNOWLEDGE
Ola Kassim
Compiled and edited by Toyin Adepoju
from Nigerian centred listserves
[A response to a report that a Nigerian man was shot dead while testing a purported magical bullet repellEnt called Eta]
If Eta is meant to be an invisible bullet--at least one that can not be seen by the human beings--(i.e. outside of the visible spectrum of the human eye,) whether or not it truly exists would depend on how narrow or broad we choose to define the words--"exist and existence" and their possible derivatives.
Outside of the spiritual sense, an object can only be deemed to exist in scientific terms if it has 'mass' and is capable of developing some "velocity."
So in which sense are you defining Eta when you claim that it exists. Is it in the spritual sense --for example spoken words e.g; a curse-- like in " I eta you and you eta me' and the one with the more powerful eta (an invisible bullet) wins and gets to live while the vanquished lay dead till eternity
or
Is your idea of Eta's (or its antidote Ayeta's) existence one in which it is an object that obeys the laws of physics including the basic Law of Mechanics-- "Action and Reaction are equal and Opposite" , Einstein's Law of Relativity E=Mc2 and others?
If Eta is indeed a spiritual object, that is one without mass and is incapable of developing neither velocity nor acceleration, at what point did the OPC operatives[the political organisation group to which the man who was fatally shot belongs], some of whom are well educated -transform and acquire Eta--as a weapon (let's hope not a WMD) they can deploy against their opponents and Ayeta as their own bodily armours?
So what exactly is Ayeta?
There is indeed a lot of science in our native medications. The agbo [Yoruba word for ‘herb’] dongoyaro (can't remember the exact name now) which is used to cure malaria contains some of the same ingredients that we find in today's anti-malarial pills such as chloroquine and quinine, that we buy at the pharmacy.
The drug chloroquine was originally produced from the bark of a tree even though it is now synthesised. There are many more examples where our native medical practitioners have contributed to modern medicine and still continue to do so.
As Babasnmi mentioned, there is world of difference between a form of medication either solid, liquid, powdered forms [etc] produced by our native doctors and mythological ideas like Ayeta, Magun, Afeeri etc--whose existence are in the spiritual realm. Our native doctors have a 'cure' for the symptoms of Schizophrenia--in the form of some concoctions (agbo)that they prepare from a mixture of leaves and tree trunks from medicinal plants. We should be spending time and money to research these kinds of ideas.
[Do ideas like that of Eta, however, belong in the the realm of metaphysics and in the spiritual realm [rather than] in the bread and butter tussle of our daily lives in the 21st century? Adapted from Kassim’s words by the editor]
27/09/11