A Prevalence of Witches: Witchcraft and Popular Culture in the Making of a Yoruba Town

Abstract

This paper considers two instances of witchcraft representation. The first is a representation that develops from the author’s fieldwork and his own experience of witnessing a witchcraft trail. The second is in Nigerian graphic comics that were popular in the 1990s and which to an extent influenced the current form of popular Nigerian soap opera and video films. This paper contrasts attitudes toward witchcraft in the Ekiti Yoruba town of Ikole outlining the multiplicity of moral attitudes toward witchcraft among the various constituents of the town, and the way that these generate local understandings of the town’s identity.