By: Mazi Omife I. omife
The other day, I went to a barbing salon near my office at the Independence layout Enugu to have a hair cut where I met the barber and a customer he had just barbed quarreling over some hairs on the floor.
As he made to go, the customer, who came to the salon with his personal hair clipper, had wanted to pick the hairs which he claimed was cut from his head but was prevented by the barber.
This attracted a large crowd in and round the barbing shop. While the customer said his reason for wanting to pick the hairs was to prevent anybody from using the hairs for rituals as currently widely claimed, the barber argued that there was no way the customer was sure of which of hairs were his since he had barbed other customers before him and how was anybody sure the customer’s intention was not to pick other people’s hairs also for ritual purposes.
As the loggerhead persisted, I quietly left the scene for another salon to have my hair cut.
The hullabaloo about using human hairs for rituals is yet a new rumour currently making the rounds and causing a wide scare as well as putting barbing salon business on the line.
Before now and for nearly a year, the craze has been the ladies-pants-for- ritual saga which has led to very many ladies now going pantless and some without braziers, to avoid falling prey to pant or brassier ritualists allegedly on the prow.
For how long shall we live with these ever-multiplying social nightmares that have neither been confirmed true or proved false by anybody? Methinks it is ripe time for the police to help out over this matter by way of a public statement on the veracity or otherwise of these rumours, based on copious news about the police arrests of suspected ladies’ pant thieves in many parts of the country.
Such a public statement will enable people either take more precaution over the security of their undies, in the case of women, and their hairs or simply go about their lives without all the fear and apprehension that currently pervade the society.
Note: This article was first published on the writer’s Facebook wall