ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) - Trying to take the curse off its slumping soccer team, Ivory Coast is turning to witch doctors.
Presenting sorcerers last week with the traditional bottle of alcohol and a cash offering, Defence Minister Moisa Lida Kouassi appealed for "their continued help to the republic, and, in particular, the Sports Ministry."
Ivory Coast's Elephants haven't won an African Nations Cup since 1992, their first such cup triumph.
That year, the Elephants won in a dramatic penalty shootout over Ghana in the finals in Dakar, Senegal.
Popular belief has it that the government solicited off-field help that year from the sorcerers of Akradio, a village outside the commercial capital of Abidjan.
But the witch doctors were supposedly never paid for their assistance - and many believe they took it out on the soccer team.
The Elephants have done dismally since - once, in 2000, being locked up and lectured in a military camp by the then-ruling junta after losing in the first round up that year's cup.
Again in 2002, the Elephants floundered in the cup's first round.
Kouassi, visiting Akradio to kick off a development project, alluded to the allegedly unpaid witch-doctor debt.
"In the name of the government . . . I ask pardon for the unkept promises after the 1992 African Nations Cup," he said, turning over the alcohol and $200.