54 african appropriations
also include postcolonial African military men, the hommes de force that
ruled Nigeria (as well as Niger) for much of the second half of the twenti-
eth century. Therefore, colonial passiones stirred by French officials such
as Horace Croccichia, Victor Salaman, and their subordinates mingled in
the apparition of the latter-day Babule with postcolonial passiones caused
by Murtala Mohammed, Yakubu Gowon, Olusegun Obasanjo, Ibrahim
Babangida (in Niger, Seyni Kountché), and their followers. These experi-
ences with the mysterious and brutal quality of power have been stored
and projected through the bodies of the possessed. Apart from power,
what the Babule as embodied pastiches (neither originals nor copies, nei-
ther Africans nor Europeans) signify most is alterity. Having been dif-
ferent from other spirits and having inspired their followers to lead a life
different from that of their immediate social others, they “embod[ied]
difference that makes for many differences” (Stoller 1994: 646).
During my most recent visit to Kano, in June 2003, I again met the
Wicked Major, Mai ya’ki, and Kafaran. This time I could meet them
only in the privacy of some of my bori friends’ houses. The spirits had
not changed, but their social environment had. Public possession dances
had almost ceased to exist. Many of the open spaces that had served as
dance grounds in Kano’s suburbs ten years earlier had been transformed
into mosques. A fter the year 2000, with the establishment of the sharia
legislature, the “religious police” (‘yan hisba) harassed bori musicians,
destroying their equipment on some occasions and beating the possessed.
At the same time, a new type of curing ritual called rukiyya (Arabic for
“healing”), which aims at exorcizing spirits (unlike the bori ritual, which
focuses on incorporation and adorcism), had gained ground and provided
an alternative to bori healing rituals. Rukiy ya was considered more decent
and Islamic by comparison. A few amusement quarters outside of Kano
had become the only safe havens where bori dances could still be publicly
staged under the watchful eye of the federal police that kept the ‘yan hisba
at bay. Ironically, then, the postcolonial successors of the colonial “native
police,” which the Babule adepts had set out to fight during the early days,
now served as protectors to the Babule. But the religious shift was not the
only reason for the relative absence of the Babule on the public stage. Once
“an entertainment better than cinema” (Rouch 1978: 1007), the Babule had
gotten competition from yet another, rather profane angle. The emergence