EVERYDAY STRANGE - Nigerian Police Arrest Goat

THE STORY GOES LIKE THIS

[Image source]

Ilorin, Nigeria - On January 23, 2009 international news agency Reuters reported that a black and white goat was subdued in the state of Kwara by a local vigilante group while trying to steal a Mazda 323 and taken to police in Nigeria. The men who apprehended the goat claimed that they had witnessed two men attempting to steal the car, one of them escaped, but the other had transformed himself into a goat using black magic. The police held the goat in their custody

"We cannot confirm the story, but the goat is in our custody," Tunde Mohammed, a representative of the Kwara state police said. "We cannot base our information on something mystical. It is something that has to be proved scientifically, that a human being turned into a goat," he said.

The goat was held on suspicion of armed robbery for a time, but was never formally charged.

CONCLUSIONS
Though this is a hilarious and bizarre story, the tradition of the mage changing into a goat is an old one. The black goat of the woods is a classic trope of occult folklore, so when a story like this appears, it brings a smile to the face for a couple reasons. Parts of Nigeria are virtual hotbeds for witchcraft and belief in black magic is rampant in those areas. The goat became something of a local celebrity with many people visiting him while in prison and he even made the front page of the national Vanguard newspaper.

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A second spokesperson, Emmanuel Ojukwu later contradicted the earlier statement, claiming that the goat was being held by police in case its owner came to claim it. And that's what we call "damage control" ladies and gentlemen. But the "damage" goes beyond a challenging image.

The Nigerian police in the area of Ilorin have a reputation of being ill-educated and in many cases openly criminal. It has been reported that the local police would resort to lynching criminal suspects to avoid lengthy investigations. From that perspective, it isn't difficult to see how the police might go along with a story presented to them by a vigilante group, a group that was patrolling the streets in the first place because police in the area refused to do their jobs.

This isn't the only time a goat has ended up in prison, but it appears to be the only time a goat was claimed to be an imprisoned man in disguise.

SOURCES:
Reuters
BBC