•Oil believed to attract crowds to a business
Faced with shrinking profits and dwindling customer bases, some desperate Nigerian business owners are increasingly turning to traditional spiritual practices such as aworo, a ritual believed to possess magnetic powers to pull crowds to their shops and stalls, reports Saturday PUNCH.
The ringtone from Gabriel Obaniyi’s phone jolted him from a nap as he lay sprawled across the wooden bench in his small shop at Dugbe, Ibadan, the Oyo State capital.
Although it was the middle of 2024, a period when traders usually enjoyed brisk sales, on his end, the weeks dragged on bleakly without the regular foot traffic of willing customers.
After rubbing his eyelids, the 34-year-old responded to the caller with much enthusiasm. On the line was one of his customers who had just returned from Lagos and promised to stop by soon.
For Obaniyi, even such a small assurance felt like a glimmer of hope in an otherwise gloomy season.
A clothier who specialised in assorted male wear, the tide of Obaniyi’s business had fallen since the middle of the previous year, and the level of patronage he enjoyed compared to his competitors in the market had considerably dropped.
Visibly frustrated, the father of two narrated his ordeal to his close friend, Muyiwa, who sold electronics close to his shop and seemed to fare better than him.
“He (Muyiwa) promised to help me get something that would help boost my sales,” Obaniyi told our correspondent.
“He didn’t explain what it was, but his father is a traditionalist, and they prepared a native soap for him and said he would get the same for me.”
Barely two weeks after this conversation, Muyiwa reportedly gave Obaniyi the magic soap, which he was instructed to bathe with, among other instructions.
“After following the directives Muyiwa’s father gave me through his son, I began to experience more sales for a while. But after some time, things became worse than before. It was then that another friend took me to a traditionalist who gave me a spiritual object called aworo (crowd puller), and he told me to hang it at the entrance of my shop.
“I had to go and purchase a photo of Jesus and hang it above the door of my shop to disguise the aworo they gave me. It was working when I first got it, but I probably need to go and renew it as I was told.”
When our correspondent asked how much it would cost him to renew it, he disclosed that it would take between N20,000 and N40,000, depending on the level of efficacy ascribed to the charm.
Mystical crowd-pullers
Aworo is a Yoruba word for a spiritual or magical substance, often in the form of soap or powder, used to attract crowds and boost businesses, particularly in Nigeria and other parts of West Africa.
In a country dominated by Christianity in the South and Islam in the North, with a marginal population of indigenous religions, belief in the power of spiritual forces and their interference in the material world remains widespread.
Amid the challenges confronting small and medium-scale enterprises in Nigeria, many business owners have resorted to seeking solace in magical solutions to improve their fortunes.
However, unlike universally tested and empirical business tools, the magical beliefs that underpin aworo are often subjective, unproven, and fraught with coincidences.
Findings by our correspondent revealed that aworo is usually prepared by practitioners using ingredients such as lime, oils, specific perfumes, and herbs to attract customers and generate sales for shops, restaurants, bars, and other ventures.
The primary purpose of the charm is to draw a large number of customers to a business, whether a market stall or a supermarket, through a supposed spiritual magnetic force.
The preparation of aworo and other “crowd pullers” is believed to stimulate sales and increase business revenue by driving foot traffic to the premises where they are used.
While some remedies are prepared with black or white native soap as their base, others rely on herbs like tomato and jatropha leaves, white handkerchiefs, salt, and spiritual oils.
Mixed with prayers or incantations, aworo is considered more than an ordinary object; it is thought to channel mystical powers towards attracting divine favour into a user’s business.
Like the one given to Obaniyi, many of the ingredients are either purchased as prepared formulations from traditional practitioners or sourced directly from spiritual shops. They are often used for morning baths before opening shop.
It was also gathered that while some of these magical items are placed in containers within business premises, others are buried close to the entrance of such ventures.
Despite the touted effectiveness of aworo, which is believed to depend on the clarity of intention and spiritual focus of the user, some business owners say they combine it with sound practices such as maintaining good customer relations.
Struggling businesses
In Nigeria, small and medium enterprises contribute significantly to the economy, accounting for about 48 to 50 per cent of the national Gross Domestic Product and employing approximately 84 per cent of the workforce, according to reports from Moniepoint and PwC.
However, these businesses grapple with challenges such as infrastructural deficits, poor access to finance, high operational costs, and a lack of skilled manpower.
Recently, the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry revealed that although Nigeria’s economy recorded a modest GDP growth rate in the first two quarters of this year, inflationary pressures remain elevated, driven mainly by soaring food prices, energy costs, currency depreciation, and logistics disruptions.
The LCCI projected that inflation could ease to 26 per cent by the end of the year, with improvements in oil production expected to help stabilise the foreign exchange market.
Vendors take over social media
With millions of Nigerians being active social media users, many aworo vendors now freely ply their packaged magical items, which are said to be delivered by dispatch riders to their various customers.
Checks by our correspondent showed that TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram have the highest concentration of aworo vendors, although there were also many videos teaching viewers how such ‘crowd-pulling’ charms can be prepared at home.
Some of the prescribed methods, it was observed, play into the social psychology of the target audience and tailor their appeal towards SME owners through foundational beliefs in magic and spiritual symbols.
The prices of the aworo seen by our correspondent ranged between N20,000 and N85,000 and were sold as powder, solutions, and ingredients placed in a gourd painted white.
“Aworo (crowd puller/business booster) will pull hundreds of customers to your business place,” a Facebook user, who described herself as a spiritualist, wrote.
She added that those who patronise her and purchase her aworo, which is to be buried at the business premises, will have the spiritual power to pull lots of customers to their hotels, shops, churches, bars, and restaurants.
On TikTok, the mode employed in marketing aworo to curious and desperate patrons appears to be more animated, polished, and targeted at a younger audience.
“Get honey, salt, sugar, and perfumed water known as Miss Paris perfume. Use it to wash your shop, and after you have done this, take a container of about five litres and mix the perfumed water with water.
“Every morning, pour this outside your shop. I am telling you, you will testify when you do this,” a prophetess, Oyerinde, said in one of the videos posted on her TikTok page.
Instructing his audience, a TikTok user, Kingbun, who has 85,000 followers, explained that the spiritual preparation he described can be used to magically draw many people to supermarkets, schools, and small and medium-scale businesses.
“You will use bitter melon seeds, native egg, original honey, and locust beans. Mix these items and place them in the bitter melon, and coat it with honey. Then tie it up with black and white thread until no part of the bitter melon is seen, and place it in a pit you have dug at the entrance of your shop, supermarket, or compound,” he said.
To persuade her audience, another TikTok user, Patience, claimed that her spiritual work to supernaturally pull crowds does not have any side effect because she utilises natural ingredients.
She instructed her viewers to filter out the water they had used to boil rice and mix it with old cinnamon.
“Take it to a spot where there are many people, or pick some sand from the marketplace and add it to it. Every morning when you want to step out, pour it in your bathing water and use it with any soap of your choice. Believe me, you will have testimonies,” Patience added.
Describing a different method, a Facebook account operated by a practitioner named Ifayemi instructed business owners to get a pigeon, hold it by its legs, and raise it in the air to summon material blessings from different angles.
Describing an elaborate ritual that involved cutting the bird’s chest and pouring two cups of white beans inside its body, he prescribed burning the dead pigeon and suspending its ashes in a gourd at the front of their office door.
“Before you hang it up, add one original gin inside. Please, you need to check it every week, but before checking it, you will have to stand on a chair. When the gin finishes, refill it with another gin, and you will see the work of Almighty God,” he wrote.
Failed tools
Recounting his experience, a Lagos-based fashion designer, Solomon Uzor, said he was introduced to a “crowd puller” water, which he purchased from a spiritual shop.
“I bought it for about N60,000. They said it was a spiritually prepared water that I should sprinkle in my shop so that it would bring customers. To be honest, nothing changed. I just wasted money purchasing a lie. Most of the claims these guys make online are lies.
“If truly they have the power to pull a crowd, they should test it on themselves first and let everybody see the magic work, but they won’t. Some of them use these things to dupe desperate clients who feel that one spiritual power can make them rich in a country where government policies, power supply, and the state of the economy decide a lot of things,” Uzor told our correspondent.
Also recounting his experience, a chef, who gave his name simply as Steve, said he was sold an aworo to boost the number of his customers, but afterwards suffered unexplained losses.
“Rather than bringing good luck to me, the object brought bad luck to me because I didn’t see its efficacy at all. I angrily threw it away,” he recalled.
Speaking with our correspondent, an Ogun State-based traditionalist, Niyi Ifadare, explained that most business owners who use aworo rarely disclose it to the public as it is regarded as a well-guarded business secret.
He further clarified that aworo comes prepared in different forms, but its efficacy could be nullified under certain conditions.
“If a woman having her menses or a man who has just finished having sexual intercourse physically touches such a spiritual item before it is buried in the ground or hung up, it can lose its efficacy.
“Another reason could be that the area where you bury the aworo is inhabited by evil forces who operate between the physical and spiritual plane. They can use their eyes to strip the aworo of its efficacy. Under such circumstances, it won’t work. Otherwise, it always works, except if its power needs to be renewed, and you will know the signals,” Ifadare explained.
Explaining further, the babalawo confirmed that it could be used in a shop such that other people around who sell the same goods will not be patronised by customers.
“If you go to such a store and look around, you might not see the aworo. Some are placed in the POP ceiling, close to the entrance. Some could be buried before the floor is tiled, so it depends on how you want it.
“There is also a form of aworo that is put in water and sprinkled within a span of about four houses or shops on the right and left areas of the business site at dawn, before people come out of their houses,” Ifadare stated.
‘We mistake superstition for strategy’
Commenting on the use of magical ‘crowd pullers’ by small and medium-scale business owners, a consciousness theorist, Livingstone Usoro, described such patrons as being “unfit to compete with the modern world.”
“We are like children clutching toys while others build machines. Aworo and its cousins are not power; they are delusions. If these charms truly held force, the idols sanctifying them would never have been looted and displayed in European museums. Their silence in the face of plunder was proof of impotence, leaving the black man defenceless.
“Yet, instead of confronting this failure, we continue to romanticise such beliefs, parading them as culture or uniqueness. In reality, they betray a society that has not evolved beyond mysticism. Europe once believed in witchcraft and mermaids, but it outgrew those fantasies.
“We, meanwhile, still cling to the illusion that businesses and even churches flourish through mystical intervention. That very illusion prepared the ground for our subjugation, giving the white man the excuse to ‘civilise’ us and leaving behind the legacy of slavery, conquest, and centuries of colonisation. Still, we have not learned,” Usoro told our correspondent.
He lamented that many Africans had chosen to remain a “conquered people” due to the chains that still bound their minds.
“That is why no African company leads the Fortune 500. Not because of a curse, but because we mistake superstition for strategy and miracles for method. A country that worships charms instead of cultivating knowledge, skill, and innovation will always kneel before those who do.”
“Our poverty is not merely material, it is mental. How can businesses grow when the workforce itself is shackled by this mindset? Until we starve superstition and feed enlightenment, we will continue to romanticise our stagnation.
“Mysticism is not culture; it is a cage. And as long as we polish those chains and call them heritage, progress will remain impossible, because a people who choose illusions over reason have already chosen defeat,” Usoro added.
Economists weigh in
Speaking with our correspondent, an economist, Segun Aderounmu, pointed out that the reliance of some business owners on aworo and other ‘crowd-pulling’ spiritual shortcuts is one of the means desperate people resort to in a bid to survive in the harsh climate of the Nigerian economy.
“Can we really blame them, though? When your store sits empty while rent, fuel, and other overhead costs keep rising, desperation can kick in, and the promise of supernatural help starts sounding reasonable.
“But from an economic standpoint, no charm can override the fundamentals. Inflation stands at 21.88 per cent, and although it eased a little from earlier months, the costs of fuel, electricity, and basic goods continue to erode the purchasing power of Nigerians.
“Add other factors such as unstable power supply, exchange rate pressures, and rising logistics costs, and it becomes clear that these are the real barriers to business, not unseen forces,” Aderounmu noted.
Explaining further, the economist said that while it should be acknowledged that the economy is struggling, he highlighted some internal cracks that local businesses ignore.
“Many small and medium-scale enterprises lack a system for proper record-keeping of inventories or sales, but would rather entrust this duty to a trusted ‘sales girl’ who can easily divert stocks or cash.
“A dishonest staff member, or terrible record-keeping, can sink a business faster than any economic downturn—and imagine seeking external charms when the internal cracks are widening.
“In the end, businesses need resilience to cope in the challenging economy, and sustainable growth comes from putting in place structures that can confront the economic realities, not merely resorting to the promises of supernatural help,” Aderounmu added.
Echoing a similar line of thought, another economist, Seun Wusu, explained that much of what people attribute to ‘crowd-pulling’ magic is actually business strategies that have been proven to work.
“If you study any organisation where people are saying there is a charm working for them, you will find that it’s an intersection of community engagement, unique selling point, pricing strategy, improved customer service, and personalisation at work.
“While it must be admitted that Nigerian businesses face challenges such as unreliable power supply, limited access to essential services, political uncertainty, and corruption, we must also accept that our people’s thinking is too immersed in supernatural beliefs. Whatever we fail to understand, we quickly attribute to the influence of spirits or magic.
“The ‘magic’ that many businesses around the world are employing is artificial intelligence. Smart business strategies are being offered through AI, and more effective alternatives are being provided. The world is too digitalised for a person to be relying on sprinkling water inside their stores to guarantee patronage.
“What Nigerian business owners should be looking at are technological and sociological tools that can be deployed to boost customer service and drive business success,” Wusu stated.
