ABIKU AND EMERE; HOW PREGNANT WOMEN CAN AVOID THEM

ABIKU AND EMERE; HOW PREGNANT WOMEN CAN AVOID THEM

The Yoruba perspective

It could sound primitive, but it is real especially among the black Africa and Yoruba race. Some children over time reborn to the same mother with the previous look, sex, complexion and structure. Owing to ephemeral nature of Abiku life, Abiku completes several consecutive life-cycles with one mother. In some reality cases, the Yorubas, in one of their traditional ways of deterring Abiku from death after reborn defaced such children either by cutting their finger, ear or a deep mark in the face or back. To a greater surprises in most cases, the Abiku on reborn would have those marks whether in the face or back. The Yorubas’ also called Abiku some pleading-names like; Duro-Orike, Durosinmi, Durojaiye, Igbokoyi, Jokotimi, Malomo, kosoko, etc to plead with them not to die again and to say with their parents.

It is believed that Abiku turns down the fortune of their parents and their great joy is to see their mother crying when they died severally because the tears running out of their mother’s face is valuable in the spirit of Abiku. Abiku time in human life is always short and their death mostly occurs at the time of their joy like marriage, graduation etc.

Emere and Abiku are the kind of children according to the Yorubas’ belief who makes a certain pledge concerning its life duration with its mates. At the expiration of the time, he/she died and re-unites with its mates. Some oral tradition also confirmed that some Emere among them must have married one of its mates and probably bore children over there. In coming to the human world, the Emere could find it difficult to get married and bear children.

Research shown that if such person is eventually married and conceived pregnant, somebody who refers to as spiritual husband (Oko Orun) will have sexual intercourse with the person in the dream and this will result to miscarriage. This remains one of the factors responsible for barrenness among women according to Yoruba tradition and the solution to it is the proper spiritual consultation.

The Emere and Abiku if eventually cannot go back to its mates may be because of some spiritual appease made by its parents, believed to be having problems because its mates will not be happy for the broken of the re-unification promises he made with them. The problems such person usually faced is the misplacing or total lost of any items in its possession especially money. The solution to that is for the person to offer sacrifice inform of food (Ounje Egbe) to stop such problems.

Research has also shown that the Abiku and Emere are very attractive because of their beauty and they loves to live very close to water or coastal areas. They are the agents of devil according to some thoughts and convictions, but some believes that they are good to be with because they will affect anybody they loves with blessing endowed on them spiritually.

The Yoruba tradition affirmed that the Emere and Abiku spirit roaming around some areas like the side of the road, corner in the cities and villages, foot path in suburban area, jungle, inside trees like Iroko tree etc, and all these places are forbidden for pregnant women to go to. The Yoruba belief was that if pregnant woman go to such areas, the spirit of the Emere or Abiku can follow the woman to her home and she will eventually give birth to a child with either Abiku or Emere spirits.

In preventing such incidence, pregnant women according to the Yoruba tradition are advised to attach either a needle or a small white stone to the edge of their clothes. The Emere and Abiku would not be able to follow the woman because those things are signs which against them.

Aside this, the pregnant women according to the Yoruba tradition are not advised to stay alone in a hidden and dark places. They should also desist from going to T junction at noon. They are also forbidden to go out at the late hour in the night and they should desist from going to coastal areas and dumping sites.

Although, this could be unacceptable in science because it is metaphysical issue in which science is incapacitated to accept or refuse. It is completely out of scientific realm.

This is not to discredit science because science has made some irrevocable contribution to improve child mortality rate to the extent that the concept of Abiku and Emere has almost gone extinct. But the fact is that there are still cases of children death without any signs of sickness.  Whenever such incident happens or happened frequently, the black Africa and Yorubas belief was that such child is either Abiku or Emere and the solution to it is to trail spiritual dimension.