NigeriansTalk

Uduak, of the Noll­yarts blog and co-producer of the child witches’ doc­u­men­tary — Edikan — shares her thoughts on the cov­er­age of the Akwa Ibom Child witch phe­nom­e­non in the Niger­ian blogosphere.

Say you’re one of them is a col­lec­tion of short sto­ries writ­ten by Father Uwem Akpan It won this year’s com­mon­wealth writer’s prize. When I first saw the title, I thought it had got to be about child witches, par­tic­u­larly as Father Akpan is from Akwa Ibom state. It is not, it is about child abuse in dif­fer­ent forms and in dif­fer­ent parts of the con­ti­nent. But I haven’t stopped think­ing about the title, and in my head insist­ing that the book should have been about child witches, it is a per­fect title, a per­fect descrip­tion of these hor­ren­dous act com­mit­ted on children.

Say you’re one of them, this is what the pas­tors ask the chil­dren to say, they are forced to admit that they are witches or face dire con­se­quences. And so chil­dren that they are, trust­ing that adults can only mean well, admit that they are witches so that they may be freed, but instead they are thrown into the lake of fire.

I first read about the Akwa Ibom child witches on Jeremy’s blog. I thought it was the usual west­ern pro­pa­ganda so I dis­missed it. Then I read it on Headandaround’s blog and I know her to be very thor­ough so I thought there had to be some truth there. And there was.
Some chil­dren in Akwa Ibom, mostly Eket and Oron have been labelled witches by some men parad­ing as pas­tors. These pas­tors often require a cer­tain amount of money to deliver these chil­dren. The amount can range from NGN50,000 to NGN250,000. In a pre­dom­i­nantly civil ser­vice state, this money is hard to come by forc­ing par­ents to aban­don their chil­dren in fear of the havoc an unde­liv­ered child may cause in the home. The aban­doned ones may actu­ally be the more lucky ones as the ones who can afford to be deliv­ered are taken through an atro­cious rou­tine of beat­ings, star­va­tion etc. The par­ents pay money to get their chil­dren flogged.

On the part of the pas­tors it is sheer greed mixed with a crim­i­nal mind. It is busi­ness, pure and sim­ple. A means to make money. Deliver your chil­dren and you will be free. All your prob­lems will end. On the part of the par­ents, it is igno­rance, fool­ish­ness, poverty. There is a high level of illit­er­acy and poverty in Akwa Ibom state, the peo­ple are des­per­ate for some­thing, any­thing and so these men have pro­vided them with the solu­tion. We have always believed in witches in Akwa Ibom state, prob­a­bly more than any other part of Nige­ria, if you have an acci­dent, it’s witch­craft, even if the dri­ver was drunk, and if you die dur­ing child­birth, it’s witch­craft too, never mind that there was no medi­a­cal aid avail­able. And so it’s easy for the ‘pas­tors’ to take advan­tage of an already pol­luted mind.

Unfor­tu­nately, the sit­u­a­tion hasn’t gen­er­ated as much cov­er­age on blogville as one would have thought. Ini­tially sev­eral blog­gers cov­ered it but it has died down. Per­haps peo­ple are too shocked to speak. But Jeremy has been con­sis­tent. I am not a big fan of his but on this one, I doff my hat for him. He has fol­lowed the progress of Step­ping Stones Nige­ria and CRARN(the NGO’s work­ing for the chil­dren) closely. Recently there have been sev­eral attacks on them but thank­fully the gov­ern­ment intervened.

It may take a long time, but the child witches will even­tu­ally become child lead­ers through everyone’s col­lec­tive effort. The ‘pas­tors’ will be brought to book but more impor­tantly, my peo­ple need an edu­ca­tion as only knowl­edge can truly set us free.