Life After Death: The Mystery Of Reincarnation

By Muyiwa Owogbade

WaheedWhen it was all over, Yewande was flustered, overcome by a succession of emotions, and began to sob. "Are you all right?" asked a lady friend in company. "I just saw my mother there right now," Yewande replied, pointing to a spot a few feet away. "Your mother?" was all the other lady could utter unbelievably.

Yewande’s mother died exactly two months earlier in Nigeria. The two women were right now standing at a bus station in London, but Yewande was sure. It had all happened within a few seconds. Her mother, Yewande said, was dressed in a knee-length pink gown and a hat, an unlikely wear for her mother in her lifetime. Yewande was without doubt. She wanted to hug her, but she was rooted to the spot, her mother smiling teasingly a few feet off. The force that rooted her to the same spot now caused her to avert her gaze.

When she looked again, the apparition was gone. By all means, that experience was bewildering, but not unique. Countless people have spoken of real-life encounters with their dead or the dead ones of others. Such ghosts, called ‘akudaya’ among the Yoruba, have on a few occasions been reported in the print media. Stories have been told of the dead continuing life at distant places.

Often such said to have remarried and sired children who have continued to live after their parents have again disappeared – as they always invariably do. They (the dead) present themselves to their loved ones, as in the case of Yewande above, and in one bizarre case, according to one of our sources for this story, returned home to query the squandering of his possession!

Such encounters raise the question: Is death the end of life? Or, as the Bible puts it, "If a man die, shall he live again?" (Job 14.14). Some who believe that death is only a transplantation to a different part of the planet point to the case of a popular presenter, Gboyega Adeboye, who was dead for all of six hours before returning to life, not to die again until he had waxed a record in which he recorded his experience. In that record, Adeboye said he had, in death, found himself in a group that asked him to go and bring his Bible.

But Bible exponents, like teachers of the al-Quran, insist that such reappearances do not at all mean the existence of any other kind of life after death. Says Father Augustine Abayomi of St. Gabriel's Catholic Church, Mokola, Ibadan: "We regard such appearances as a mystery; otherwise, the Catholic Church does not believe in what you may call a reincarnation – people appearing here and there after death. I know that such beliefs exist with some people, but not in the Catholic Church.”

His view was corroborated by Rev. Sunday Eze of the Assemblies of God Church, also based at Mokola, who said, "The Bible makes us to know that each individual has only one span of life, and that it terminates through death; but people can resurrect after a few days. What this means is that he can return to life in the same form and intellect, as in the case of Lazarus and Jesus Christ." Rev. Eze, who admitted the existence of "such mysterious things" said, "What we think is that for every person is an angel; if not a Christian, an unfamiliar spirit, who goes ahead and continues life for that person.

“Such familiar spirits are not completing the life of the dead, but it is just a cover-up. What we believe is that when someone dies, his soul goes back to his God." Rev. Eze could well be speaking the mind of Alhaji Bashir A. Adelani, popular TV commentator and principal, Islamic Preaching School, Olorunsogo, Akanran Road, Ibadan, who said, "After death is death; it is the evil angels who wear people's images and go from place to place to suggest that the dead still exist in one form or the other." Told about actual people who might be said to have tasted death and returned to life to tell their stories, the scholar posited that such experiences should not be confused with actual death.

"Doctors can't see everything. It is possible that they are not actually dead. I know such instances, too; they had been proclaimed dead only to return to life." Sheikh Adelani also disagreed with the question of resurrection. According to him, "God's own plan is that we die only once. As for Jesus, the Quran makes us to know that Allah Himself took the prophet, Isa, somewhere, to be returned to the Earth at God's own appointed time to complete his mission."

Nothing in all this could discourage the diehard traditionalists (most of whom are Muslims and Christians too) in their belief that death only means a relocation, at least for a time. For such people, what they know and have seen are enough. "The dead go nowhere," said Alhaji Ade, a septuagenarian, who said that he had seen so many cases of such ‘reincarnations’ to believe any other thing to the contrary. "They live all around us in this world until their appointed time."

Just as vehement was Tajudeen Lawal, an Ifa priest, who had had no less than two encounters with the dead. Fifteen years ago, Tajudeen, then a driver, had travelled to Ohori, a village of Badagry, when he came across a middle-aged woman with whom he immediately became friends. She excited him further when she said that she hailed from Kobomoje-Ibadan, a stone’s throw from his own house at Ariori-Idi Aro of the same ancient city. Asked when she would be coming home, she named the coming Eid-el-Kabir. In that way, they struck an appointment - to meet at the next Ileya.

On the appointed day, Tajudeen, believing his woman, walked to Idi Omo’s Compound, Kobomoje, where his friend had told him to ask for her. He was, to begin with, slightly perturbed by the bewildered look that everyone gave to his inquest. Finally, they showed him a group photograph on the wall and asked if he could identify the woman he was looking for in the picture. When he pointed at the woman, some of the people around burst into tears. It was only one of the few that still retained their emotion that ruefully informed tajudeen that the woman he was asking for died three years before!
That encounter was not to be the last with the dead for Tajudeen.

He said: “A second encounter was when I picked a very beautiful young woman close to a cemetery at Ebute Ero, also in Lagos. This time, however, I was suspicious. "I was trying to observe her in the mirror when she protested and said I should turn up the mirror. I immediately knew that I had picked a dead person. (They hated their faces in the mirror.) She was probably a fresh victim of an accident, but she did not mind me looking at her directly. Later, she asked to be dropped at Igbobi, close to a cemetery, thus I had picked her close to one cemetery and dropped her off close to another."

Even more convincing, it would appear, are the words of Waheed Amusat, a building contractor, who once passed out on an operating table at St. Mary's Catholic Hospital, Academy, Ibadan, 12 years ago. Said Amusat: "I had gone to Festac Town in Lagos to do a job when I was forced to return to Ibadan quickly because I was finding breathing difficult.

On the evening of the day I returned, I was checked into St. Mary's Hospital. It was while they were trying to perform a second operation following the failure of a first that I passed out. "I immediately found myself moving about. My experience is that the dead is immediately imbued with extraordinary powers. If he thinks of being in a place, he immediately finds himself there.

“He can see the living, but the living cannot see him. If he shouts at them, they cannot hear, but would sometimes notice an eerie feeling around them. The dead could in desperation blow a light wind around them. He moves about with the air we breathe; and if someone he knows at all sees him, he would have disappeared before such a person could make up his mind about the person he/she actually saw.

"After a time, I came to a garden and went inside. Immediately, I noticed an old man whom I took for my late father, urging me to go out, saying they would soon lock the gate; that I should set out immediately. I was reluctant. The place was so cool that I didn't want to leave. But the old man was persistent, warning that the gate would soon be closed.

“Once I stepped out, I found myself back in the hospital where the doctors and nurses were praying fervently for my revival. I believe that if the gate had been closed on me, the masters of the garden would have found me a stranger; and not being one with his name in their register, I would have been sent out. My feeling is that one would have no option then than to be looking for a place to settle down in the world.”

Needless to say that all this well fits the average Nigerian idea; but Alfa Sulaimon Oloyede, as well as other believers in the Bible and the al-Quran are unmoved. Oloyede of the Eniola Ajadi Central Mosque, Elewura, Challenge, argued that life after death was real and well-founded. "In the Quran, it is called 'the Day of Reckoning', ‘the Day that everything will be revealed'.

“We speak of such reincarnations when we think that somebody has died before realising his purpose on earth. The case of akudaya happens when people reveal their nudity carelessly when alive. This enables the evil angels to take their photographs which they could now use to deceive people upon their death. Such experiences happen only with unbelievers."

Reminded of the case of Gbenga Adeboye, the alfa said this was not without a backing in the Koran, as there was the case of a prophet that God made to sleep for a hundred years and later brought back to life.

"God did that," he said, "so as to prove to that prophet how easy it would be for Him as the Creator of mankind to bring us back to life after we are dead." And so, back and forth the argument continues. Can we quite know all there is to this matter? Maybe not; but we could for now agree with those who regard the akudayas as one of the mysteries of life.